The world is undergoing radical changes, characterized by the growing interdependence of all countries and sharpened competition in liberalized markets. For Cuba, the closing years of the old millennium spelled the end of an era and posed the challenge of adjusting its domestic economic order to integrate the island fully in the global economy. Cuba’s […]
The Sugarcane UBPCS Ten Years Later
This [UBPC] is not a temporary organization, nor a conjunctural one; it is a definitive one. —Fidel Castro, October 10, 1993 All openings have brought risks. If we must make additional openings and reforms, we will. But, for the moment, they are not necessary. —Fidel Castro, July 5, 1995 The main theme of this conference […]
Natural Disasters and Cuba’s Agricultural Performance: Is there a Correlation?
Notes1 Almost since the beginning of the revolution in 1959, the Cuban leadership and some foreign scholars have blamed mother nature for the failures or inefficiencies of the agricultural sector.2 I could easily fill many pages with quotes from Cuban officials, especially from President Castro, that illustrate my point. I think that the quotes in […]
Theoretical and Empirical Reflections on the Future of Cuban Agriculture
Notes1 It is not farfetched to believe that, sooner or later, Cuban agriculture will be centered on a free enterprise system.2 That transition, which many believe has already started with the breakup of the state monopoly on land and the creation of cooperatives in 1993 and of free agricultural markets in 1994, will rest on […]
Rationed Products and Something Else: Food Availability and Distribution in 2000 Cuba
The ration book—the Cuban consumer’s hated little passport to survival. —Christopher Dickey, August 31, 1982.2 The ration card is not only a testimony to scarcity. The Revolution has converted it… into a testimony to equality in difficulties. —Adolfo Gilly (1964, p. 69). Resolving the food crisis is essential for the very survival of the revolution. […]