Max Borges del Junco Pioneering Cuban
Background
In preparing for a family trip to Cuba in the fall of 2023, I took a deep dive into the Borges family history to help guide our time in Havana.
My wife Ketty's father, Henry Borges, grew up in Havana, the third and youngest son of Max Borges del Junco. I remember Henry often talking about his late father, always speaking with great respect and admiration. He clearly held his father in extremely high esteem. Ketty has said that on a number of occasions, her Dad professed that "someone should write a book about my father's life". Unfortunately that book was never written. Knowing that Henry had lost his mother at age 7, I figured it was a natural thing that he idolized his father, who raised three boys to adulthood without their mother.
Many of the personal stories that tell of Max Borges del Junco's life are simply lost to the passage of time. However, in digging through the internet and family files, I've found a great deal of evidence that Max was indeed an extraordinary man. The facts and details that I have have gathered confirm without a doubt, that Henry was right about his father. Max Borges del Junco who came from a humble beginning achieved great success, with high moral character and far reaching impact. That book undoubtedly should have been written.
Jaruco Cuba 1890
Imagine, it is 1890 in the small town of Jaruco Cuba 30 miles outside of Havana, a rugged and beautiful landscape where hills and rock walls rise from the plains. Because of it's geography, a railroad line, and proximity to the capitol city of Havana, Juraco was home to one of the largest and most fortified garrisons of the Colonial Spanish Army in Cuba. This is where on May 28th 1890 Maximiliano de la Luz Borges y del Junco a.k.a. Max Borges del Junco was the born son of a cigar roller, in rural war torn Cuba.
In the 1890's the Cuban people were suffering under an oppressive Spanish colonial government and fighting a brutally violent long running insurgent war of independence. In caves in the nearby hills outside of Juraco, Cuban insurgent fighter's had established an important strategic command post. Before long as the revolution took hold, that small town where Max Borges del Junco was born, was to become a casualty of war. In March of 1896, the Spanish Army was driven from Juraco, and the triumphant insurgents destroyed the garrison, and looted and burned the town. Published reports of the attack on Jaruco by the rebels state that the insurgents burned 131 buildings -- 32 stone houses, 50 frame structures, and some 40 huts. It is not known exactly how the Borges family endured in this war zone, but as a young boy, these circumstances surely must have contributed to the strength of character and strong will he would take with him to Havana.
Personal Life
When Max Borges del Junco was born his father Agustin Borges was 62 and his mother Gertrudis del Junco was 40. Max never knew his father, a torcedor or cigar roller, who died when Max was only 2 years old.
Details of Max's childhood are not known, but he grew up, made his way from Jaruco to Havana, acquired an education, and launched a promising career as an architect.
On October 18th 1917 at the age of 27, Max married 21 year old Enriqueta "Quetica" Recio y Heymann. Together they had three sons Max Jr, Alberto and Enrique. With a growing business and thriving family, the young couple settled in Havana's affluent Vedado neighborhood. Unfortunately the prosperous family's and good life in Havana's society was shattered when tragically, Quetica became gravely ill.
It was October of 1932, with a diagnosis of uterine cancer, when Max brought his wife to Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore in order to receive the world's best possible medical treatment. Enriqueta and Max moved into the Hotel Altamont in Baltimore, and stayed in Maryland as she underwent treatment for 3+ months.
In November, Max returned to Cuba and brought young Albert 10 and Enrique 6 to Baltimore visit their mother. Then in January Max again went back to Cuba and returned with Quetica's sisters Serafina, Isabel, Maria Josefina and Celia to comfort their ailing sister. Finally on February 26 1933 Max Borges brought his Quetica back "home" to Cuba.
Enriqueta lost her battle with uterine cancer. She died on August 24 1933 in Havana at the age of 37. Max Jr was 15, Albert 14, and Enrique was just 7.
After his wife's death Max relied heavily on his sister Maria Victoria Olivera to help raise and guide the young Borges boys. The Borges brothers and their Olivera cousins essentially grew up together and became as close as true siblings.
Four years after Enriqueta's death in 1937 Max married Josefina Otilia Lucia Sieglie y Crusellas.
Max and Josefina moved to a new home that Max designed and built on the waterfront in Miramar, where they had two daughters. The family lived there until they chose to leave Cuba in 1959 to escape Fidel Castro's Communist regime. Max was 69 years old.
Max died of a heart attack on June 9th 1963 in Arlington, Virginia at the age of 73. Josefina passed away in 2008 in Coral Gables, Florida, at the age of 92.
Professional Career
It's not certain when young Max came to the city of Havana but in February of 1916 at the age of twenty six he received a degree in civil engineering from the University of Havana and in June of that same year he established the Max Borges Construction company and presented plans to the Municipal Chamber of Marianao for his first housing project. A year later in 1917 Max received his degree and license of Architecture from the Cuban National College of Architects.
Max Borges' first housing project was approved by the Marianao Chamber in 1916. It consisted of a number of small affordable houses made with brick walls and steep wooden roofs. To reduce costs, the homes included standard pre-designed pre-fabricated cement elements, such as arches, doorways and window frames. Borges’ focus on affordable working class housing and pre-fabricated components was key to his early success and was a precursor to his future groundbreaking concepts and tremendous achievements.
The success of those first stone houses provided Borges with enough capital to take his home building business in a new and pioneering direction. In addition to designing homes, Max dedicated himself to the development of construction systems, production processes, and standard building materials with an aim to dramatically lower the costs and increase the production rate of housing construction. His concept was likely modeled after or inspired by the Sears & Roebuck Company's mail order kit houses that were becoming popular in the United States at the time.
In 1919 Borges established the first ever factory in Cuba to produce all wooden pre-fabricated houses. The factory was built in the neighborhood of Naranjito on the outskirts of Havana, which at the time was a semi-rural region where both raw lumber and building materials could be readily transported via road and rail, and finish products easily delivered.
Just as Sears was doing in the U.S., Borges advertised his designs through magazines and postal catalogs. To attract buyers, his designs were presented in a way that could be modified according to the tastes and needs of the customer all done by exchange via the postal service. Customers could customize the facades, remove or add rooms, replace ornamental elements, door and window details, types of hardware and their quantities. In this way an unprecedented manufacturer-customer relationship was established. Although many owners chose the standard catalog design for their respective homes, the interaction of customers with the technicians and designers in Naranjito, led to numerous unique homes, built according to the individual needs of the families.
In the factory, the piece components of each house were marked with the numbers that appeared on the assembly plans. Transported to the customer's location, all the pieces arrived completely pre-prepared, pre-cut, and ready to be assembled. Many owners risked setting up their own houses with minimal technical supervision. According to Max Borges himself, their houses could be built in just "...24 hours with the same ease with which a piece of furniture is assembled...", without the need for experienced craftsmen. The final result was something dignified, comfortable and well proportioned.
Borges' wooden serial houses quickly became popular for their quality and price. Borges went further by allowing for installment payments to enable families of very modest means to afford to purchase. In just six years the Naranjito factory managed to manufacture and distribute over two thousand wooden houses throughout the country. The Max Borges del Junco factory reached an astonishing production rate of 200 houses per month, an average of seven houses per day. Because of the novelty of the business and the ease with which a house could be built in a very short time, numerous other professionals in the field soon began establishing businesses to compete with Borges. Over time the production of skeletal wooden houses grew across Cuba. In the end, Borges' innovation was behind a massive expansion and acceptance throughout the island of wooden serial houses manufactured in Cuba. These were the houses made for Cuba's working class, providing family homes of a quality and comfort that heretofore were unaffordable. The availability of this kind of housing stock became an important basis of economic growth in Cuba in the mid 20th century.
In 1926 despite a strong demand and high production rates, Borges decided to close the Naranjito factory. Difficult economic conditions, had led to increasing defaults of installment sales resulting in serious problems of accumulated debts. Author Emilio Roig in The Book of Cuba published in 1926 mentions the economic difficulties that the workshop faced and commented that "Mr. Borges was wishful that the whole humble family could obtain their house without great sacrifices, for several years he built thousands of bungalows selling in installments, sacrificing time and money from which often times he was not compensated…which undoubtedly made him give up his noble company. Max Borges did not speculate with the construction installments, he had the purpose, the pleasure, of contributing without prejudice...so that everyone could have his home."
In 1926, even though his manufacturing operation was closing, the Max Borges Construction company continued to thrive. By that time the company had branched out and become a major Havana architecture and construction firm. By the late 1920s Borges was credited with more than 400 buildings designed and constructed in and around Havana, including a great many eclectic mansions in Vedado and Miramar, numerous government buildings in municipalities surrounding Havana, as well as public infrastructure works such as the metal structure of a sports stadium, and the aqueducts of Melena del Sur a small city south of Havana. Although no longer in wooden home manufacturing , Max Borges Construction continued as a premier Havana business.
Government Service
In 1933 Fulgencio Batista took control of government in Cuba, and Federico Laredo Bru was appointed figurehead President under Batista's control. In 1936 Max Borges was appointed to President Bru's cabinet as Secretary of Public Works. Max had no experience in government service, nonetheless he was chosen because he was widely considered Cuba's leading architect and foremost construction engineer.
Borges' public works department was given a budget of $12.5 million (equivalent to $261 million in 2023) with the goal of making major improvements to the island's infrastructure. The largest public works project Max oversaw was the construction of the Charco Mono dam, reservoir and aqueducts to address a critical need to supply potable water to Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city in the Island. The project was completed in 1939. As of 2023, the dam and the aqueducts to Santiago de Cuba are still in use.
Also while in his position as secretary in response to a desperate request from a group of wooden structures manufacturers, Borges managed to repeal a 1931 regulation that had outlawed wooden construction in Havana and Marianao. With this repeal, structural wood was allowed again in Marianao (although not Havana), reviving the wood housing construction industry that Max had pioneered years before.
In 1938 Max resigned from his government post and returned to his private business.
Borges and Sons
After resigning his government position, Max went back to his architecture construction business which continued to prosper. As Max's boys grew up and completed their education, two of the three, Max and Enrique, followed in their father's footsteps. Both earned advanced degrees in Architecture and joined the family business, Max in 1940 and Enrique in 1948. Sometime after Enrique came on, Max changed the name of the company to Borges and Sons Construction.
The Borges and Sons Construction business grew ever larger throughout the 1940s and 50s. During those years the Borges' designed and built numerous private residences, apartment buildings, commercial builds, banks, factories, beach and night clubs (including the Tropicana), hospitals, theaters, and the Palace of Justice (Cuba's Supreme Court).
In 1959 Borges and sons were at the height of their success when Fidel Castro's Communist regime seized power. Max and his sons, along with the entire extended Borges family, fled Cuba and eventually settled in Northern Virginia. The Communist government confiscated the Borges' business and all of their properties in Cuba.
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