The Czarnikow-Rionda Company was formed on September 1, 1909, as the successor to Czarnikow, MacDougall and Company. Until its Cuban assets were seized in 1961, Czarnikow-Rionda's primary activity was the importation of raw cane sugar and molasses from factories in Cuba for delivery to refiners in the United States. The records of Czarnikow, MacDougall and Company reveal earlier commerce in coffee, cacao, and other commodities and a substantial sugar trade with Puerto Rico and Java. Czarnikow-Rionda was exclusively a sugar house. But, it would continue to buy limited amounts of sugar and molasses outside of Cuba and export sugarcane products to areas outside North America.

In addition to its sugar import business, Czarnikow-Rionda also managed an export operation. An Export Department was created in 1901 to provide provisions and machinery to Cuba's sugar estates. The jute bags used to ship raw sugar made up a large portion of the company's export business with Czarnikow-Rionda supplying about thirty percent of Cuba's needs. A separate Bags Department was created in the early 1950s. By that time, the remaining export business was an insignificant part of the company's business activity.

A portion of Czarnikow-Rionda's sugar was supplied by mills affiliated with the company. The number varied over the years, but at the time of the Revolution of 1959 there were six such "house estates". Most sugar, however, was purchased from independent mills referred to as "client estates". Czarnikow-Rionda was also responsible for securing short-term bank loans to finance the annual harvest and grinding. Mills receiving the loans were required to sell their sugar to Czarnikow-Rionda as part of the loan settlement. All of the house estates and many of Czarnikow-Rionda's client estates received bank loans via the company's Cash Department.

Czarnikow-Rionda was a member of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange. Like the other sugar houses, it bought spot sugar in Cuba and elsewhere and sold sugar futures. However, not all of the sugar brokered by Czarnikow-Rionda was handled directly by the company. Employees of Czarnikow-Rionda often acted as independent brokers referred to as the "little houses." As early as the 1940s, for example, George and Ronny (B. Rionda) Braga brokered sugar on the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange under the name of Braga Brothers.

Initially, Czarnikow, MacDougall operated in Cuba under its own name and employed commission agents to carry out its business. In 1907, the Cuban Trading Company was established with offices in Havana. The Cuban Trading Company bought sugar, arranged loans to mills and cane farmers, sold jute bags, handled insurance claims, resolved local disputes, and provided legal and notary services. The Cuban Trading Company kept the parent company informed of its competitors' activities and played the critical role of liaison to the Cuban government. The first president of the Cuban Trading Company was Victor Zevallos who was succeeded by Higinio Fanjúl. His son, Alfonso Fanjúl, was the third and last president of the Cuban Trading Company.

Czarnikow-Rionda reached its business zenith during World War I, but its position declined in the twenty years following the war. Prior to the war, the company had secured over fifty percent of Cuba's sugar exports. Although the war stimulated sugar prices and industry expansion, the postwar period brought about tremendous market instability. The 1920s found the company's finances and personnel stretched thin and its market share dwindling. The company survived the crisis years of the early 1930s, in part, by focusing on its arbitrage business. The 1934 Reciprocity Treaty between the United States and Cuba brought some stability to the market and enabled the company and its subsidiaries to retrench and reorganize. World War II brought additional respite. The period between the end of World War II and the Cuban Revolution of 1959 was one of gradual recovery for the company. This, however, was shattered by the Cuban Revolution.

With the termination of commercial relations between Cuba and the United States, Czarnikow-Rionda sought new sources of sugar and new markets. The Philippines and the Dominican Republic replaced much of the Cuban trade as did mainland expansion in south Florida. Czarnikow-Rionda also moved into Great Britain and competed with its former parent company, C. Czarnikow, Ltd., in the European market. The company was thus able to survive yet another crisis. Its main competitor, Galban, Lobo and Company, was not so fortunate. This company dissolved in 1965 and the remaining business of its subsidiary, Olavarria and Company, was acquired by Czarnikow-Rionda. These assets consisted of Olavarria's sales of refined sugar from Puerto Rico to retail outlets in the United States.

In 1969, Czarnikow-Rionda's sugar interests and name were sold to C. Brewer and Company, Ltd., a subsidiary of the International Utilities Corporation. The original company retained its molasses operations and continued as Braga Brothers, Inc. Brewer owned Czarnikow-Rionda only briefly before selling it to the company's employees. The company dissolved in the late 1990s. The collection stops in 1970 shortly after the sale to C. Brewer.

Record Group 3 contains the administrative files of fourteen company officials as well as records generated by ten departments. Also included are several reference files with information related to the Cuban sugar industry and the international sugar market as well as series with no discernible department provenance. The records of Czarnikow-Rionda's first president, Manuel Rionda y Polledo, are found in Record Group 2. Limited records from his successors, Bernardo Braga Rionda and George Atkinson Braga, are found in Record Group 3, but these fall far short of the comprehensive documentation found in Manuel Rionda's files. Missing as well are the files of executive vice president Ronny Braga. This is compensated to some degree by the existence of records from other vice presidents. The most significant of these are the records, 1933-1960, of Henry George Atkinson and the records, 1953-1965, of Michael J. P. Malone. Malone's files provide the only extensive coverage of the Cuban Revolution and its effects on the company. Of special interest are Malone's records on the expansion of the Florida sugarcane industry in the early 1960s and his support of the Cuban exile community in the United States.

The department and reference files document various facets of the company's operations. Included are records from the Bags, Engineering, Export, Cash, Insurance, Molasses, Refined Sugar, and Research departments. The reference files contain information on annual sugar production, industry regulations, and legislation and decrees issued by the Cuban government. Finally, the Record Group includes some of the company's accounting books, accountants' reports, and a copy of the company's claims filed with the State Department in 1967 for properties seized by the Cuban government.

The records of the Trading Department figure prominently. The sugar crystals produced at the mills are referred to in the sugar trade as "raws" or "centrifugals". Until the advent of bulk shipping, Cuban raw sugar was transported in jute bags weighing 325 Spanish pounds (or 329.59 English pounds.) These bags were a standard unit of trade on the sugar exchange.

Record Group 3 is divided into thirty-four series.

Bernardo Braga Rionda, the third child of José Braga y Diaz and Bibiana Rionda y Polledo, was born in the town of Noreña in the Spanish province of Asturias in 1875. He came to the United States sometime around 1886, several years after the death of his mother. Like so many nephews before and after him, Braga was placed under the care of his uncle, Manuel Rionda y Polledo, and educated in the Abbott School in Farmington, Maine. He later graduated from the Packard Business School.

In 1900, Braga joined the firm of Gillespie Brothers where he created an export department to do business in Cuba. He was asked to establish an export department at Czarnikow, MacDougall the next year. Czarnikow, MacDougall's Export Department grew quickly. In addition to supplies and provisions for sugar mills, the Export Department also served as a sales agent in Cuba for several American companies. Braga was later transferred to the Sugar Department and was appointed a vice president in the Czarnikow-Rionda Company. He rose to executive vice president and assumed the presidency and chairmanship of the company when Manuel Rionda died in September, 1943. Braga relinquished the presidency to his eldest son, George Atkinson Braga, in 1950. A series of strokes in 1954 ended his career. He died on December 23, 1960.

Bernardo Braga was married to Margaret (Maud) O'Reilly Atkinson (d. 1922) in 1903. (See Series 17 for her papers.) George Braga was born in 1904 and another son, Bernardo Rionda Braga, was born in 1911. He remarried to Helen Wright in 1923.

Bernardo Braga's records and papers are divided into three parts: letterbooks, subject files, and autobiographical notes. The first part consists of ten letterbooks containing copies of his letters. The earliest letterbook is dated 1891-1896 and consists of personal letters to his grandfather, aunts and uncles, and his sister, Josefa. Many of the letters are illegible or difficult to read; all but a few are in Spanish. This letterbook is followed by eight business letterbooks documenting his tenure as head of the Export Department from 1901 to 1910. In addition to copies of his letters, these letterbooks also contain letters from the Export Department written to him during his trips to Cuba. The remaining letterbook in the series covers the years 1920-1922 and was found with other documents that had been pulled for a 1936 court case. (See Series 10 for further information.)

The second part of Series 8 consists of fragments of Braga's subject files. The earliest records cover the period 1915-1926 and appear to have been part of a file for incoming mail. These were originally filed by year and then alphabetically by subject. Many of the annual files are missing. The years documented under each file heading are noted on the contents list. The files for 1915-1926 contain incoming mail, reports, minutes of meetings, financial statements, and copies of letters routed to Braga. The remaining files are believed to be files selected by Braga's son, George Atkinson Braga, as research materials for his memoire, "A bundle of relations." They contain the same types of records as the earlier files, but also include copies of Braga's letters. These files have been divided into two time periods: 1927-1943, when Braga was still a vice president in Czarnikow-Rionda, and 1944-1953, the years that Braga led the company. These last files represent the only documentation from the president's office during his tenure. Although the records are few in number, they shed considerable light on conflicts within the company and provide some evidence of the company's efforts to recover its standing in the trade after the collapse of the sugar market in the 1920s and 1930s.

The third part of this series consists of autobiographical materials in which Braga reflects on his youth in Spain and the United States and his years with the firm. The text is undated, but reference to the death of Manuel Enrique Rionda in 1950 indicates that it was written between 1950 and 1954.

There are also a few miscellaneous items that do not pertain to any of the three parts. These have been placed at the beginning of box 1 and are listed in the contents list.

The materials in this series, with the exception of the 1920-1922 letterbook, were donated to the Libraries by members of the Braga family in 1993.

Born July 9, 1904, George Braga was the eldest son of Bernardo Braga Rionda and Margaret Atkinson Braga. He began his career in the sugar industry in the firm of Czarnikow-Rionda in 1924. His father was executive vice president of the firm and later president and chairman of the board. In 1950, his father stepped down as president and Braga was elected to succeed him. After his father was incapacitated by a severe stroke in 1953, Braga became the dominant figure in the company. He was also president of the Manati Sugar Company and served on the boards of the company's Cuban affiliates. In 1969, Braga negotiated the sale of Czarnikow-Rionda to C. Brewer, a subsidiary of International Utilities Corporation. He and his brother, B. Rionda (Ronny) Braga, retained Czarnikow-Rionda's molasses business and operated under the title Braga Brothers, Inc. (See Series 41.) The Bragas also worked with Rionda, dePass, a Czarnikow-Rionda subsidiary in London. In addition to his sugar and molasses businesses, Braga served on the board of directors of J. Henry Schroder Bank and Trust Company.

Braga was married to Gioia Marconi, daughter of Guglielmo Marconi, in 1954. He died in 1984. The Bragas had two children, a daughter, Allegra (born 1959), and a son, Michael (born 1961).

The series contains business and personal papers and is organized in three sections. The first two sections consist of business papers; the last contains private correspondence. The first section spans the years preceding Braga's tenure as president of Czarnikow-Rionda and consists primarily of documents related to Czarnikow-Rionda's reorganization in 1940 as well as notes and memoranda to and from Braga's uncle, Manuel Rionda y Polledo. Both shed light on the internal operations of the company. The second section, 1950-1984, documents Braga's leadership of Czarnikow-Rionda and his business career after leaving the firm in 1969. The private correspondence, 1932-1981, consists mostly of letters written to Braga. There is also a file related to Braga's service in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Of special note in the last section are the letters from Alfonso Fanjul, and other members of the Fanjul family, reflecting on family history and the political situation in Cuba under Fidel Castro.

A copy of his family history and memoir, "A bundle of relations", is also in the collection. (See Series 24.)

The materials in this series were donated to the Libraries by members of the Braga family in 1993.

Manuel Enrique Rionda was born in 1877 and was the only child of Joaquin Rionda y Polledo. His mother, Sophie Benjamin Rionda, died in childbirth. He was one of Manuel Rionda y Polledo's oldest nephews and was called "Manolo" by his uncle and aunts and "Pete" by his cousins. He graduated from Columbia University's School of Engineering in 1900 and promptly joined his uncle in Czarnikow, MacDougall. He became a vice president when the company was reorganized in 1909. He also served as a director or officer in the W. J. McCahan Sugar Refining and Molasses Co., the Francisco Sugar Company, the Manati Sugar Company, and several other sugar firms. He lived in Alpine, New Jersey, and was elected its mayor in 1932 and served into the mid-1940s. He married Ellen Goin in 1911. They had no children. Rionda died February 9, 1950, while on a business trip to Cuba.

This small series contains business and family correspondence. Included in the family correspondence are letters from his grandfather, several aunts, and cousins. A few letters from the outgoing correspondence for 1938-1943 document his tenure as mayor of Alpine, New Jersey. The business correspondence concerns his involvement with the Manati Sugar Company, the Warner Sugar Company, and the Tropical Plant Research Foundation. (His correspondence can also be found in Series 10, Series 12, and Series 74.)

This series includes the files of Charles H. Johnson, who served as Secretary of the Czarnikow-Rionda Company until 1950, and Henry George Atkinson, who succeeded Johnson in 1951. It also contains Atkinson's files when he was Assistant Secretary. Both Johnson and Atkinson were also vice presidents in the company and had duties that extended beyond their roles as secretaries.

Johnson's files are contained in boxes 1-4 and are arranged according to subject. A letterbook containing outgoing correspondence for 1922-1928 also exists.

Atkinson's files are much more complete. Boxes 4-6 contain his copies of the minutes from 1920-1951. (The official minutes of the Czarnikow-Rionda Company are not contained in the Braga Brothers Collection, and this set is not complete.) The remainder of Atkinson's files is separated into two time periods. The first file starts in 1933 and continues to 1954, while the second starts in the latter year and ends in 1960. Both files are arranged alphabetically by subject and contain incoming and outgoing correspondence, reports, published material and other record types. All aspects of the company's business are documented.

Of special note are the extensive files on the United States Cuban Sugar Council. These include sets of council memoranda that are found in each subject file. The council was a lobby for business interests associated with the Cuban sugar industry. The council kept abreast of public, media and government attitudes towards the importation of Cuban sugar.

Series 56 contains the files of Vice President Edward H. Costello, administrative head of the Cash Dept. of the Czarnikow-Rionda Company. Included in the series are lists of company stockholders for 1925-1939, banking records and balance sheets, materials related to the Compañía General de Tabacos Filipinas and Czarnikow-Rionda's efforts to revive Cuban sugar sales to Spain, and special account folders for employees of the company and their family. Some early files that predate Mr. Costello's association with the company are also retained in the series.

Series 61 contains files that originated in the office of Reed Clark. Reed Clark was listed in stockholders' reports as an assistant vice president in 1953 and vice president in 1955. An organizational chart from the same time period indicates that Clark was in the Selling Department. There is considerable information and correspondence in this series related to the sugar trade with Chile and Japan. The Puerto Rican sugar industry also receives attention. The confidential memoranda from the Cuban law firm of Gorrin, Mañas, Macía, y Alamilla regarding negotiations with the Cuban government and labor unions on issues affecting the sugar industry are especially significant. Box 1 includes photocopies of newspaper clippings from 1955-1958. Box 9 contains records of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange. Clark sat on the Exchange's Board of Managers in 1957 and 1958. The remainder of the series is an alphabetical file containing incoming and outgoing correspondence, reports, sugar trade data, and other records.

Series 63 contains the administrative files of Michael Joseph Patrick Malone. Malone was listed as an assistant vice president in a 1953 stockholders' report and as a vice president in 1955. Before the revolution, Malone dealt primarily with matters related to the company's Cuban affiliates and subsidiaries. He was deeply involved in the company's diversification and product development programs, including the company's Cuban cattle ranches, and was president of the Kenaf Corporation. (Files related to the latter form Series 51 in Record Group 4.)

Malone followed the political events of the late 1950s and early 1960s closely. As the vice president most closely linked to the Cuban operations, his files reveal the company's responses to the tremendous changes occurring there. The expropriation of the company's Cuban assets, the adjustment of hundreds of former Cuban employees to life in exile, and the first years of sugar development in the area south of Lake Okeechobee, Florida are well documented. Malone, himself, was involved in a joint venture with the New Tuinucu Sugar Company and Czarnikow-Rionda to buy and operate cattle ranches in the Belle Glade area. The New Tuinucu files end in 1965 when the ranch was sold to the Osceola Operating Corporation and King Ranch, Inc. All other files end in 1964 or earlier.

Malone was also involved in the early anti-Castro movement. Included are files on the Asociación para la Reconstrucción de la Economía Cubana and the Asociación Nacional de Hacendados de Cuba en Exilio, as well as several political activists in the Cuban exile community.

Vice President Malone began a clippings file on Cuba in 1956. Initially, the file documented all aspects of Cuba, but, as Cuba's political troubles mounted, the file became a daily chronicle of the revolution. The series is also noteworthy for the variety of materials it includes. In addition to clippings from major U.S. and Cuban periodicals, Malone gathered radio and television transcripts, and reports and newsletters from news agencies and political organizations.

Carr was the company's comptroller in 1944 and became Treasurer in 1951. He was made a vice president in the company in 1953.

Series 87 consists of records from the files of Vice President and Treasurer Joseph B. Carr. The records here relate to Czarnikow-Rionda's house estates in Cuba, principally the Cespedes Sugar Company and its subsidiaries, the Compañía Agrícola Caonao and the Destiladora Tinima. Also included are records from the Cuban Trading Company regarding sales of sugars from the Nueva Compañía Azucarera Gomez-Mena.

Series 26 consists of contract books for the Bags Dept. of the Czarnikow-Rionda Company. The contract books are separated into purchases and sales. The former contain contracts between Czarnikow-Rionda and jute bag merchants, while the sales books contain contracts between Czarnikow-Rionda and Cuban sugar mills. An index is included in each contract book.

Series 27 contains the administrative records of Bernardo Antuña and Daniel Rivera. Both were managers of the Bags Department. Antuña was also a vice president and director of the company and had been head of the Export Department before the Bags Department was created in 1956. The series consists of correspondence with bag manufacturers and distributors in India and with the Cuban Trading Company in Havana. Also included in the series are newsletters and other documents from the Burlap and Jute Association in New York City and material on shipping. Unrelated to the bags trade is a file on Cuban coffee from 1955-1956.