Notes1 Put simply, the model of state-run agriculture implanted in Cuba after the Revolution worked—albeit far from optimally—so long as the state had the means to furnish the imported equipment, spare parts, fuel, lubricants, fertilizer and plant chemicals on which producers had become increasingly dependent. When the Cuban economy lost its Soviet-bloc supports, the island’s […]

A brief flurry of excitement gripped Cuba and Cuba watchers abroad when the video of a meeting in January 2008, at which students at the University of Computer Science in Havana questioned Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly, on government policy in several areas became public knowledge through the BBC (Ravsberg, 2008) and […]

Notes1 The announcement of July 31, 2006, that President Fidel Castro had temporarily transferred his duties to his brother Raúl while recovering from a serious illness2 resulted in increased interest in the long-standing succession versus transition issue. Three days later, the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy began its sixteenth annual meeting in […]

Against a background of high current and foreseeable food import prices, agriculture shows an unsatisfactory performance, with lower production of provision crops, vegetables, beans, citrus fruits, corn and other products. This sector is marked by subjective management deficiencies [and] a decline in labor productivity and also in the average hours worked. While not forgetting the […]

The last fifty years have been the most turbulent in the long history of the Cuban sugar industry.1 On the heels of the revolutionary movement’s rise to power came agrarian reform, nationalization of the sugar mills and the transfer of Cuba’s entire sugar industry—except for small growers—into state ownership, entailing the creation of a host […]