Cuba - The Bitterness of its Sugar

Cuba: The Bitterness of its Sugar / Ivan Garcia

Posted on September 23, 2013



In 23 years, Cuba has gone from being one of the world's sugar refining

nations to exporting the sweet grass for the consumption of the tourist

sector. If in 1990, in the dawning of that silent war that was the

"Special Period," 8.2 million tons of sugar were produced, in 2013 a

little less than one million was produced.



This year the sugar harvest was 11% less than predicted in the state

plan. Only with that fabulous capacity that the official media have to

cushion failures, did they adorn the disaster with tinges of optimism.



A peripatetic television reader said that, in spite of a deficit in the

production of 133 thousand tons, "the sugar harvest of 2012-2013 was the

best in the last nine years." According to the official version, the

poor results indicated "difficulties in efficiency due to technological

obsolescence in the agricultural industry and machinery, poor

organization and indiscipline."



The sugar harvest fiasco is a hard economic blow. A ton of sugar on the

world market is valued at 400 dollars. Therefore, the rickety state

finances lost an income of 53.2 million dollars.



President Raul Castro has tried to revitalize the formerly premier

national industry by making butcher cuts. In 2012 he closed the enormous

bureaucratic apparatus of the Ministry of Sugar and, with a third of the

employees, created a state enterprise called Azcuba.



The entity announced that it aspired to an increase of 20% in the sugar

production with respect to the prior harvest of 1.4 tons. The

possibility was studied of managing a center in the province of

Cienfuegos with the Brazilian firm Odebrecht.



The preparation of the harvest was thoroughly planned: petroleum to be

consumed by means of transport, inputs for cane cutters, pieces of spare

machine parts for the mills and output that should be obtained per

33-acre tract sowed with cane.



The forecast was a resounding failure. I asked a sugar industry expert

why, for a long time, the sugar production has not exceeded the barrier

of 2 million tons. Currently he is retired, but for several years he

worked in the Ministry of Sugar, in days gone by a powerful institution,

with a millionare budget and a structure surpassed only by the Armed

Forces and the Ministry of the Interior.



In that time, the official traveled half the world, buying equipment and

machinery. "If you want to know what has stopped working in the current

sugar campaigns, you have to do a little history. After 1911 in the

Cuban republic, sugar production fluctuated between 5 and 7 million

tons. They were harvests that rarely took three months. The productivity

per hectare was among the best on the planet. At the level of Hawaii or

any sugar power of that time. The Cuban industry was a jewel, with a

world class efficiency. With the arrival of Fidel Castro into power in

1959, there began the slow decline of our premier industry."



The specialist continues his story. "Blunders and volunteerism succeeded

each other in abundance. The lack of spare parts for the machinery of

the mills and the insufficient training of technical personnel in the

mills, who occupied important posts thanks to their political loyalty,

were undermining the sugar industry. Castro involved himself in the

sector on an authoritarian basis. His plans and fantasies caused a lot

of damage. By pure whim, he substituted the cane variety that was

planted in the fields, very resistant to plagues and with high sucrose

volume. The 'Ten Million Ton Sugar Harvest' in 1969-1970, was the coup

de grace. Those consequences are still taking their toll on the

production of sugar."



According to the expert, Castro was like a devastating hurricane, a

noxious plague. "He not only planned the cold campaign in a wrong way,

the subproducts that the cane generates were also wasted. Sugar powers

like Brazil take advantage of it all. The cane is not only sugar or

alcohol. It serves to produce furniture, medicine and animal protein,

among other features."



In the Cold War years, when Cuba allied with the communist countries of

Eastern Europe, the island sold its sugar production at a preferential

price. Inputs, fertilizers and machines were not lacking. In the Holguin

province, some 800 kilometers east of Havana, with Russian technology, a

factory was built that produced cane cuttings.



By the end of the 20th century, all the sugar machinery was being

dismantled. In 2002, the government put into place a plan of plant

conversion. Of the 156 existing plants, 71 produced sugar; 14, sugar and

molasses for livestock feed; and of the 71 others, 5 would be converted

into museums, 5 would be kept in reserve, and the other 61 would be

dismantled. But in 2005 government sources reported that between 40 and

50 of the still active plants would be closed.



In October 2002, Fidel Castrol designed a reordering of the sugar

industry and named it Alvaro Reinoso's Task (he was a considered a

founding father of the scientific agriculture in the island in the 19th

century). In a public speech he said that in the coming weeks schools

would be opened for no fewer than 90 thousand industry workers. In an

undercover manner, thousands of sugarcane workers were forced out of work.



Today, dozens of sugar mills and its warehouses are considered scrap.

Along with the "company towns" around them, where people subsist eating

little and badly and consuming alcohol in alarming quantities.



Via the rationing book people get five pounds of sugar per person. In

the black market the prices of this commodity is almost prohibitive in a

country where the average monthly salary is $20 dollars. The cost of a

pound of white or refined sugar is $8 Cuban pesos (40¢ US), and $6 Cuban

pesos (30¢ US) for raw or dark sugar. Due to its awful quality, there

have been more than a few occasions where the tourism industry has had

to import refined sugar from the Dominican Republic and Brazil.



When the history is retold about the leading and monumental failures of

Fidel Castro's revolution, the sugar industry will be in first place.

From a great exporter in the past to an importer in the present. That's

a bitter reality.



By Ivan Garcia



Translated by mlk / LYD



22 September 2013



Source: "Cuba: The Bitterness of its Sugar / Ivan Garcia | Translating

Cuba" -

http://translatingcuba.com/cuba-the-bitterness-of-its-sugar-ivan-garcia/