The Fanjul Brothers

The Fanjul brothers -- Alfonso "Alfy", José "Pepe", Alexander, and Andres -- are owners of Flo-Sun, Inc., a vast sugar and real estate conglomerate in the United States and Dominican Republic, comprising the subsidiaries Domino Sugar, Florida Crystals, as well as the airport and resorts surrounding La Romana in the Dominican Republic.

The Fanjul brothers' ancestry is Cuban and they are descendants of the Spaniard Andres Gomez-Mena who immigrated to Cuba in the 19th century and built up an empire of sugar mills and property by the time he died in 1910. In 1936 his descendant Lillian Gomez-Mena married Alfonso Fanjul, Sr, the heir of the New York-based sugar companies the Czarnikow Rionda Company and the Cuban Trading Company. The couple's holdings were then combined to create a large business of sugar mills, refineries, distilleries, and significant amounts of real estate. With Fidel Castro's 1959 Marxist Cuban Revolution, the family moved to Florida along with other wealthy, dispossessed Cuban families. In 1960 Alfonso Sr., the father of the current CEO of FLO-SUN Alfonso Jr., bought convert|400|acre|km2 of property near Lake Okeechobee along with some sugar mills from Louisiana and started over. Alfonso Sr. and his son Alfy got the firm off its feet and Pepe, Alexander and Andres joined in the late 1960s and 1970s. [ [http://broward.jobing.com/jobfair_company.asp?i=13481 Florida Crystals / Okeelanta Corporation jobs in Broward, Florida from Jobing.com ] ] As of 2008, the company owned convert|450000|acre|km2 of property.

External links

* [http://www.flo-sun.com/ FLO-SUN]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/us/31sugar.html?_r=1&sq=a%20dance%20of%20environment%20and%20economics&st=cse&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&scp=1&adxnnlx=1219349477-mIKed1f7RJpHvjMiVu0UMQ A Dance of Environment and Economics in the Everglades]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/business/yourmoney/21smug.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&oref=slogin The Castro Collection]
* [http://www.opensecrets.org/pubs/cashingin_sugar/sugar08.html The Politics of Sugar]

Footnotes