The Latin American Report # 585

A delegation from a Chinese business group will tour sugar mills in central Cuba to evaluate the potential for recovering and enhancing the outdated installed technological infrastructure, in an attempt to relaunch the sector's extremely diminished productive capacity, once a national banner and symbol. "Without sugar, there is no country," was once said about an industry that was born when Spain ruled business here, based on the exploitation of slave labor. One of the first points attacked by the Eisenhower administration to weaken the 1959's Cuban Revolution was precisely the country's quota in the US market.

In this sense, much water has passed under the bridge since, in 1970, and as part of a colossal effort, the historical record of 8.6 million tons of sugar was achieved. In the last harvest, production did not exceed 150,000 tons. The idea of a shock restructuring program for the sector, promoted by the late Fidel Castro in 2002, was to produce here only the 700,000 tons necessary to satisfy basic internal demands, reducing the productive infrastructure due to its unprofitability.

"The abuses of the developed world and subsidies led to sugar prices that were, in that world market, the price of sugar trash, while in Europe they paid their farmers two or three times more," Castro said in 2005. "There was, simply, no choice but to close mills, or we were heading for the Bartlett Trough," he added then, while in another speech three years earlier he had stated that "[it was not] possible to have 2 million hectares and 450,000 people dedicated to a job that provides losses in foreign currency." Years later, reality, seen as a trading chart, tells us that production is heading irremediably to the dust. In 1894, seven times more sugar was produced.

In this context, Chinese investment once again presents itself as an alternative, but no allied or "friendly" country has been sufficiently consistent and decisive to give a representative turnaround to Cuba's comprehensive crisis. Beyond the sensitive and sometimes crude delusions of internal government management, the comprehensive US sanctions, which directly and indirectly limit the maneuvering room of the national economy on a local and international scale, are the main cause of the socioeconomic nightmare the country is experiencing.

Regional news brief

• Approximately 2.3 tons of cocaine were seized in the Ecuadorian province of Carchi, transported in two tanker trucks that were stopped and inspected at a checkpoint. The drivers were of Colombian nationality, with the value of the seized drug on the Ecuadorian market exceeding five million dollars.
  

• In Argentina, tensions remain high. In a recent event reported by EFE, students divided in their political commitment between the government and the opposition clashed harshly, with bare fists, in the Law School of the symbolic University of Buenos Aires. It is truly very concerning that precisely law students decide to resolve their differences in this manner. At another event attended by Karina Milei, the secretary of the Pink House and sister of the president, some agitation was also reported. Everything has been aggravated there after a corruption scandal that involving Karina herself.