Janet Diaz-Bonilla, an accomplished South Florida writer with two books and several short films under her belt, is starting a new endeavor in the rum business.
The 49-year-old is the first Cuban American immigrant woman to own a rum brand, which she named La Marielita, an ode to the 1980 Mariel boatlift exodus from Cuba’s Mariel Harbor to the South Florida coastline, including the Florida Keys, which is where Diaz-Bonilla and her family ended up.
She was only six years old when she stepped onto a wooden boat with her parents, desperate to flee the communist regime. Diaz-Bonilla still recalls moments from that 17-hour journey across the Florida Straits — the giant waves that slammed into the boat, the shrieks from frightened passengers and the sheer terror she felt while huddled in her parents’ arms.
Now living in the Miami area with her husband of 18 years, Luis, and their two children, Sebastian, 15, and Valentina, 12, her experience escaping Cuba has understandably impacted her life. She turned her memories from that time into a screenplay, also named “La Marielita,” and during her research for the play, she learned that her grandfather was once a businessman in Cuba who had imported premium rums. The government eventually seized everything he had worked so hard for.
Diaz-Bonilla is now walking in her grandfather’s footsteps as an entrepreneur — a path she is incredibly proud to follow.
“I am honoring his legacy,” says Diaz-Bonilla, who serves as founder and CEO of La Marielita Rum. The rum is available in Florida, California and New York or online at lamarielita.com. Distilled in Las Cabras de Pese, Panama, it is matured in American White Oak Bourbon casks and then aged for 18 years. The rum is blended by world-renowned Master Blender Francisco Jose “Don Pancho” Fernandez Perez, also nicknamed the Godfather of Rum.
Diaz-Bonilla is also author of the books “The Rainbow House” and “Carpool,” and she’s written several short stories. One of them, called “Daydream,” which is about Alzheimer’s disease, was turned into a short film in 2020. Just as with the rum, family also inspired this story because Diaz-Bonilla’s mother currently suffers from Alzheimer’s and Diaz-Bonilla’s father is her mother’s caretaker. Her work earned her the title of best director of a short foreign film at the International Film Festival in Madrid in 2021.
Her next goal? To see her script, “La Marielita,” one day come to life on a big screen.
“What I want people to know the most is that we aren’t all like Tony Montana from ‘Scarface.’ That painted all of us like drug dealers,” she says. “A lot of hard-working families came through the boat lift. I was proud that I came over here, even at a young age. I understood the sacrifices of my parents.”