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E
C O N O M Y |
Havana.
July 21, 2005 |
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The law that
unleashed the U.S. economic war against Cuba
• More
than half of the best productive land before 1959
was in foreign hands, as Dr. Fidel Castro stated in
his self-defense plea History Will Absolve Me
• With the 1st Agrarian Reform Act, 5.6
million hectares of land given over to campesinos •
Helms-Burton Act an attempt to recoup land
expropriations from foreign companies and Cuban
landowners
WHEN the First Agrarian Reform Act was signed in
Cuba on May 17, 1959, the United States sentenced
the Cuban Revolution to death with an economic war
that it continues to maintain by way of the blockade.
History acknowledges that it was the owners of
Cuban and U.S. sugar mills, amongst other large
companies who drafted a memorandum to the US State
Department, suggesting the suspension of the sugar
quota.
The government in Washington decided to put a
stop to the import of Cuban sugar and divided this
quota amongst other Latin American countries which,
in return, supported Cuba’s expulsion from the
Organization of American States (OAS).
The US companies refused to refine Russian oil
and these industries had to be nationalized. Cuban
bank funds deposited in US banks were frozen. Oil
supplies from the U.S. were reduced, as was
industrial equipment and other commercial items of
utmost importance to the survival of the Cuban
economy.
And so began the longest blockade in history by a
capitalist power against a small socialist country.
January 4, 1953 Children stare sadly from
inside a cot. Three girls and a little boy who eaten
nothing more than cassava. In the rural area of Las
Cañas, in Pinar del Río, a journalist from
Bohemia magazine captures the drama of the
landless campesinos. On another farm in western
Cuba, Rosa Ledesma, a widow who survives on public
charity, saw one of her children die in her arms
while she was out begging. The madness prompted by
her loss made her hold out the baby’s corpse until a
man approached and stopped her. Paradoxically, the
area was called La Armonia (Harmony).
February 2, 1953 Another Bohemia
report recalls how a campesino who only owned one
cow has to sell even his last drop of milk without
being able to save any for his own children. Another
man carries water in exchange for a plate of flour.
Luis, an eleven-year-old boy, clears a field of taro
to root out something, lowering his sad and shameful
regard.
April 12, 1953 A charlatan takes advantage of
the absence of medical services in the rural areas.
For the worms that swell the bellies of the children,
he recommends the use of wormseed, but overuse
causes the deaths of two children in the eastern
region of the island. For asthmatics, he suggests
the fried entrails of turkey vulture and cooked
sheep’s wool. The funeral of a child victim of the
parasite’s fake treatments moves even the most cold-hearted
person.
"The people we count on in our struggle are these:
Six hundred thousand Cubans without work, who desire
to earn their daily bread honestly without having to
emigrate from their homeland in search of a
livelihood; five hundred thousand farm laborers
inhabiting miserable shacks, who work four months of
the year and starve during the rest, sharing their
misery with their children; who have not an inch of
land to till, and whose existence would move any
heart not made of stone; ( ¼
) one hundred thousand small farmers who live and
die working on land that is not theirs, looking at
it with sadness as Moses looked at the promised land,
to die without ever owning it; who, like feudal
serfs, have a portion of its products; who cannot
love it, improve it, beautify it, nor plant a cedar
or an orange tree on it, because they never know
when a sheriff will come with the rural guard to
evict them from it¼
(Fidel Castro,
in History Will Absolve Me, his self-defense
plea at the trial for having organized the attack on
the Batista dictatorship’s Moncada Garrison on July
26, 1953)
An agricultural census in 1943 revealed the
existence of 143,000 campesinos, of whom 64% did not
own the land on which they worked. At the end of the
1950s, it was calculated that the landless
constituted 70% of the Cuban rural population. They
worked the land as in feudal times, paying rent in
money or in produce just for the right to be able to
work on a farm that was not theirs.
The infant mortality rate was 60 per 1,000 live
births. Illnesses such as gastroenteritis took the
lives of 86 of every 100,000 inhabitants.
A survey carried out by the Catholic Grouping in
1954 revealed that just 4% of Cuban campesinos ate
meat on a regular basis; 2.2% ate eggs from time to
time; only 11.2% regularly drank milk; and just one
per cent occasionally ate fish.
A study undertaken into the level of US capital
in the island’s sugar industry prior to the triumph
of the Revolution in 1959, indicates that the major
proprietors were Cuban Atlantic Sugar with 284,401
hectares; American Cuban Refining (136,546 ha); and
Cuban American Sugar Company (143,648 ha). Cuban
latifundistas Julio Lobo and Falla Gutiérrez were
the owners of 164, 297 ha and 144,050 ha
respectively.
"Eighty-five per cent of small farmers in Cuba
pay rent and live under the constant threat of being
dispossessed from the land they till. More than half
of the most productive land belongs to foreigners.
In Oriente, the largest province, the lands of the
United Fruit Company and the West Indian Company
join the North with the South coast. There are
200,000 campesino families who do not have a single
acre of land to till to provide food for their
starving children. On the other hand, nearly 300,000
caballerías of cultivable land owned by
powerful interests remain uncultivated."(Fidel
Castro in History Will Absolve Me)
May 17, 1959. "Latifundia are prohibited",
said Dr. Fidel Castro in La Plata, the spot in the
Sierra Maestra where he established his command
during the insurrectional struggle against dictator
Fulgencio Batista, until the latter fled the country
in the early hours of January 1, 1959. With this
legislation, 5.6 million hectares of land was handed
over to campesinos.
The First Agrarian Reform Act established a
maximum limit of land possession of up to 402
hectares. Land that was the property of one person
and exceeded this limit was expropriated for
distribution amongst campesinos and agricultural
workers.
But with this first act, a sector of the Cuban
agricultural bourgeoisie were not entirely
eliminated and they began to conspire in order to
defeat the Revolution when the socialist nature of
the process begun in January 1959 was confirmed.
Allied to the interests of the United States,
this fifth column received a mortal blow when the
Second Agrarian Reform Act was signed on October 3,
1961, which reduced the maximum land limit to 66
hectares.
On the large-scale plantations, the land was not
divided into parcels to distribute and create small
farms, but peoples’ farms were organized that would
then form part of programs for the development of
cattle-raising, coffee, rice and citric fruits. New
technologies were introduced that humanized
agricultural work and raised the level of soil
productivity.
The first kind of cooperative to emerge was for
applying for credits and services, in which
associates continued to be the individual owners of
their farms. These were known as Credit and Services
Cooperatives (CCS). Afterwards, in 1976, the
Agricultural Production Cooperatives (CPA) came into
being, in which the workers voluntarily contributed
their land and founded collective farms.
When the Agricultural Production Cooperatives
began, there were already around 200,000 private
producers. Half of these campesinos decided to unite
their farms and begin a new stage as collective
owners.
VARIOUS FORMS OF COOPERATIVES COEXIST
Twelve years ago, a process began in the sector
that has been recognized as one of the most
significant changes in the history of agriculture
since the First Agrarian Reform Act.
The large-scale state farms with high levels of
mechanization and fuel and fertilizer usage had to
be modified in order to adapt to the new conditions
imposed by the Special Period. In September 1993,
the Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPC)
were formed with the conversion of the state farms
to this form of production.
More than one million hectares were handed over
in usufruct to workers’ collectives who worked on
state farms. They were sold the means of production
(tractors, facilities, warehouses, and irrigation
systems ¼ ) It did not
just signify adjusting the productive structure to
new conditions, but radical changes also began in
the exploitation of the land in order to assume a
sustainable and profitable model.
That new productive pattern had not been written
down in manuals, although it assimilated many of the
experiences of the campesino Agricultural Production
Cooperatives. But like every new form of production,
the UBPC’s had to overcome difficulties. With its
formation, authenticity would come in time. For some
the changes were easier, but for others, the road
has been more torturous.
Another of the changes that emerged from the
Special Period was the handing over of idle land in
usufruct for cultivating diverse crops. Resolution
357, 1993 made it possible to distribute idle land
suitable for tobacco. To date, more than 59,893
hectares have been handed over the cultivation of
this crop.
In addition, through Resolution 419 of 1994, the
granting of land for growing coffee and cacao was
authorized. Around 75,440 hectares have been
allocated in order to increase production in the
mountainous areas.
Another of the objectives for handing over land
was directed at providing parcels of land for use by
families to provide for themselves. With this goal
in mind, around 73,420 hectares have been conceded,
of which the majority are devoted to rice production.
Land heritage has been increased with respect to
the campesino cooperative sector. Space on adjacent
idle land was provided to outstanding campesinos by
way of Resolution 223. In accordance with this
ruling, some 11,600 hectares have been handed over.
Something similar occurred with the Agricultural
Production Cooperatives, which received 42,796
hectares to extend their collection of land.
People with usufruct land benefiting from land
suitable for tobacco, coffee, and cacao plus the
family farms total more than 98,000 and make up the
National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), which
has more than 327,380 affiliates, organized in 4,355
Agricultural Production Cooperatives and Credit and
Services Cooperatives.
"The Agrarian Reform Act is a total symbol of
what the Revolution has been" (Fidel
Castro during the central event to celebrate the
40th anniversary of the First Agrarian Reform Act on
May 17, 1999 in the main hall of the Ministry of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces.)
May 17, 2005. The 46th anniversary of the
First Agrarian Reform Act. Some 22% of arable land
throughout the country is in the hands of campesinos
and cooperative workers. The campesino-cooperative
sector produces 93% of all tobacco harvested in
Cuba; 75% of corn; 82% of beans; 65% of cacao; 60%
of fresh vegetables; 56% of root vegetables and 70%
of pork. They also produce a significant percentage
of milk and other products.
For Orlando Lugo Fonte, president of ANAP,
campesinos receive many other facilities for their
economic and social development in addition to their
land. Straight away a law relating to credits was
passed in order for them to have access to bank
loans repayable at an interest rate of just 4%.
In cases of natural disasters, producers benefit
from a State Insurance law that assumes the losses
related to harvests, whether the cause be hurricanes
or droughts. This year, more than 500 cooperatives
have received long-term loans
to alleviate the effects of the prolonged absence
of rainfall prior to Hurricane Dennis.
"Our country is accused of not allowing a private
sector to exist and that everything is state-owned.
However, the First Agrarian Reform Act created the
largest private sector after the Revolution. It
converted 200,000 campesinos into the owners of
farms because all those who worked the land received
a plot for their own livelihood," commented Lugo
Fonte.
"We campesinos will always be indebted to the
Revolution, because it amply fulfilled what Fidel
promised in the Moncada program."
Within the Helms-Burton Act, the US
administration introduced the possibility of "trafficking"
in properties of US nationals nationalized,
confiscated or expropriated by the Cuban government
and subject to reclamation by that country. The term
"trafficking" also covers transferal, distribution,
purchase, the receiving, obtaining control,
acquisition, improvements, investment, management,
renting, possession, use, interest on property;
causing, leading, participating in or benefiting
from direct or indirect trafficking with these
properties.
According to the rulings of the US courts. Those
responsible for "trafficking" must compensate
claimants with a sum that could be three times the
value of the reclaimed property, plus animal herds,
court costs and lawyers’ fees. The foregoing is not
confined to reclamations certified by the Foreign
Settlement Commission, as in virtue of this act they
can be reclaimed and thus the object of trafficking
in properties nationalized, confiscated or
expropriated by the Cuban government on or after
January 1, 1959. This opens the door to reclamations
from persons who at the point of nationalization etc,
had another nationality and subsequently acquired US
citizenship, among whom can be found individuals
from the Batista dictatorship and their descendants.
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