1. The British had taken Havana briefly in 1762.
-The Cuban economy was based on small tobacco plantations and on cattle ranching at the time.
2. Havana was a military bastion. Had craftsmen with advanced skills, a foundry of manufacturing cannon, warships. (I wonder what Eduardo Galeano means by all this, was cuban arms market sort of like illegal arms market in Durra, Pakistan? or was it more legitimate- quite frankly, I can't see it being more legitimate.)
3. In 11 months, The british bring in slaves and from that time on, the Cuban economy becomes shaped by the foreign need for sugar.
4. Everyone in Cuba starts turning into sugar production which eventually destroys the soil's fertility.
5. Dried meat, a Cuban export a few years earlier, was by 1792 arriving in
large quantities from abroad and was an import from then on. - Hmm. Why?
The Rio de la Plata meatpacking plants were already in operation. Argentina and Uruguay (then without separate existence and not so named) had adopted their economies to the massive export of dried and salted meat, hides, fats, and tallows. Brazil and Cuba, the nineteenth century's two great slave centers, were fine markets for dried meat, a very cheap food easily transported and warehoused since it did not go bad in the tropical heat. Cuba was the first market for Uruguayan meat--then
shipped in thin, dry slices--at the end of the eighteenth century. Cubans still call dried meat "Montevideo," but Uruguay stopped selling it to Cuba in 1985 when they joined the OAS anti- Cuban bloc, thus idiotically losing their last market for the product.
6. Sugarcane plantations destroyed the best Cuban forests.
7. "The present-day per hectare yield from sugar plantations in Cuba is more than
three times lower than in Peru and four and one-half times lower than in
Hawaii. Irrigation and fertilization of the land are priority tasks for the Cuban
Revolution. Large and small hydraulic dams are multiplying, fields are being irrigated, and fertilizer is being scattered over lands weak from
centuries of punishment."
8. In the mid-nineteenth century it had forty sugarmills producing 700,000 arrobas
of sugar.
9. The Sierra Maestra guerrilleros take power, Cuba's destiny is still
tied to sugar prices.
10. Sugar stands at $.22 a pound in 1920, Cuba beats the world record in per capita export. Latin America's highest per capita income.
11. In December of 1920. The price falls to $.04 and a crisis of hurricane force descends in 1921 -> many sugarmills go bankrupt.
(due to the fall in sugar prices on the US market)
12. General Enoch Crowder becomes Cuba's de facto governor.
13. Machado dictatorship comes to power in 1924.
14. 1930 - The Great Depression
15. The U.S. crisis has a fierce impact on Cuba's dependent and vulnerable economy.
16. The price of sugar sinks below $.01 by 1932
17. The value of exports fall by 75%/ unemployment rate high
18. in 1948, Cuba recovers its quota to the point of supplying 1/3 of the US sugar market. (thus limited by Washington's needs)
19. Fulgencio Batista takes power in 1952.
20. Batista falls in 1959. Cuba sells almost all its sugar to US.
"The nation that buys commands, the nation that sells serves; it is necessary to balance trade in order to ensure freedom; the country that wants to die sells only to one country, and the country that wants to survive sells to more than one.” says Che Guevara at the OS Punta del Este conference in 1961.
21. At the defeat of Spain, General Leonard Wood governs the island
22. The Philippines and Puerto Rico drop into the United States' lap.
(Puerto Rico had more soldiers fighting in Southeast Asian than the rest of the United States during the Vietnam war. Puerto ricans resisting compulsory military service were sent to U.S. penitentiaries.)
Other humiliations inherited from the invasion of 1898 and blessed by law (the law of the U.S. Congress) are added to service in the U.S. armed forces. Puerto Rico is symbolically represented in the Congress, being without vote and virtually without voice. In exchange for this right:
colonial status for an island that before the U.S. occupation had its own currency and carried on prosperous trade with the principal markets. Today the currency is the dollar and customs duties are fixed in Washington, where everything connected with the island's external and internal trade is decided. The same for foreign relations, transport, communications, wages, and work conditions. U.S, federal courts sit in judgment on Puerto Ricans; the local army is part of the U.S.
army. Industry and commerce are in the hands of U.S. private interests. The emigration of Puerto Ricans has threatened to make denationalization complete: poverty has driven more than a million to New York hoping to improve their lot at the cost of losing their national identity.
There they form a subprolerariat which piles up in the most sordid slums.) "They have been conferred upon us by the war," said President McKinley, including Cuba in his remarks, “and with God's help and in the name of the progress of humanity and civilization, it is our duty to respond to this great trust." In 1902 Toma Estrada Palma had to renounce the U.S. citizenship he had acquired while living there in exile; the US. occupation forces made him the first president of Cuba. In 1960 the former U.S. ambassador to Cuba, Earl Smith, told a Senate subcommittee: "Until
Castro came to power, the United States had such an irresistible influence in
Cuba that the U.S. ambassador was the country's second personage, sometimes
even more important than the Cuban president."
(Cuban revolution)
The country's economy moved in step with its sugar harvests. The
purchasing power of Cuban exports between 1952 and 1956 was no greater
than it had been thirty years earlier, although foreign currency was much more
needed. In the 1930s, when the crisis deepened the economy’s dependence
instead of helping to break it, newly installed factories were actually
dismantled to sell to other countries. When the Revolution triumphed on the
first day of 1959, Cuba's industrial development was poor and sluggish, over half the production was concentrated in Havana, and the few technologically modern factories were managed by remote control from the United States. A Cuban economist, Regino Boti, coauthor of the Sierra guerrilleros' economic theses, cites the example of a Nestle's affiliate producing condensed milk in Bayamo: “When there was a
breakdown, the technician simply phoned Connecticut and told them what he
thought had gone wrong. He was told at once what to do about it and he simply
followed instructions, without having to bother his head about theory. If this
did not do the trick, a plane would arrive four hours later with a team of
specialists. After nationalization, we could no longer phone for help, and the
few technicians who might have been able to deal with minor faults had
gone.”9 This illustrates precisely what problems the Revolution faced when it
embarked on the adventure of converting the colony into a fatherland.
Eduardo Galeano - Open veins of Latin America.
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