Jose Maria Bosch Lamarque

José Maria Bosch Lamarque (Pepín Bosh) was a Cuban exile and the chief executive and president of Bacardi for 32 years. He is credited for saving the Bacardi company from bankruptcy and closure several times in his tenure, and oversaw its rum empire during the most tumultuous moments in the company's history, including the Great Depression and the Cuban Revolution. During his tenure at Bacardi, he transformed the company from a locally distributed Latin American rum, into the world's largest rum company. After the Cuban Revolution, Bosch created the Representation of Cuban Exiles (RECE), an exile group dedicated to the ouster of Fidel Castro.

Early life Bosch's father was a Spanish banker and owner of Cuban sugar mills, who made a fortune on the island.

In the 1930s Bosch financed the uprising against President Gerardo Machado which culminated in the Cuban Revolution of 1933, resulting in Cuba being ran by a group known as the Pentarchy. Time Magazine called him "The best Finance Minister Cuba ever had..." Bosch personally gave tens of thousands of dollars of his own money to the cause of the revolution. Pepín Bosch and Daniel Bacardi were two of the men to accompany Castro on his first trip to the United States after taking power in 1959, but Bosch soon began to fear what Castro's government would mean for the future of the Bacardi company. In 1964, Bosch informed the attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), that he was asked frequently to donate to anti-Castro activities, including several attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro and other Cuban government leaders. Bosch would often turn them down, informing them that he was not interested in murder. Calvo Ospina also suggested that Bosch and the Bacardi company not only bankrolled these organizations, but also planned the deliberate bombing of Cuban oil refineries and plunging the island into a nationwide blackout.

Bosch was a member of the Movimiento Resistencia Cívico (MRC, trans. "Civic Resistance Movement"). He was a major financial backer of the exile militant group Representatación Cubana en el Exilio (RECE, trans. "Cuban Representation in Exile").

Later life Enriqueta Bacardi died in 1975. Bosch retired the next year, by the time he did, Bacardi was the largest rum company in the world.

Bosch's second wife was Maria Miller Bosch. In 1992, Bosch moved to Florida.