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The Cuban Sugar Economy: Collapse, Reform and Prospects for Recovery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 1997

BRIAN H. POLLITT
BRIAN H. POLLITT
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow
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Abstract

The collapse of Cuba's import-intensive sugar economy in the 1990s is analysed in the context of the disintegration of COMECON and of the USSR. Salient features of post-revolutionary cane farming are contrasted with those of the 1950s. Falling production in the 1990s, and the main institutional responses to it, are compared with those of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The analysis is illustrated with primary data collected in fieldwork carried out in 1994 and before. The complexities of current ‘technical regression’ from more to less import-intensive agricultural practices are outlined and the impact of acute national investment constraints upon the recovery prospects of the sugar economy are appraised.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 1997 , pp. 171 - 210
Copyright
© 1997 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The author is grateful to national and local officials of the Cuban Sugar Ministry and of the Small Farmers' Association for facilitating fieldwork in 1994 and to cane farm members and managers for freely giving facts and opinions. Fieldwork was funded by grants from the Nuffield Foundation and the University of Glasgow. A substantial debt is owed to G. B. Hagelberg for the ruthless pruning of much of a more extensive and less precise draft text. The version published here was published as an occasional paper by the University of Glasgow; it represents only the author's views.