Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:35:16.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Past and present land reform in Cuba (1959–2020): from peasant collectivisation to re-peasantisation and beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2021

Elisa Botella-Rodríguez Open the ORCID record for Elisa Botella-Rodríguez [Opens in a new window]  and
Ángel Luis González-Esteban Open the ORCID record for Ángel Luis González-Esteban [Opens in a new window]
Elisa Botella-Rodríguez*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Economic History and Instituto de Iberoamérica, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
Ángel Luis González-Esteban
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Economics and Economic History, UNED, Madrid, Spain
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cuba is a paradigmatic case where the term and concept of the peasantry remains of lived importance. Cuban peasants had a significant role in the past as they did return to the political agenda after the Revolution with particular emphasis under Raul Castro’s administration. However, the Cuban case has not been significantly explored from a long-term perspective that connects the old debates and dimensions of land reforms under developmentalist states to the new agrarian questions in the global era. Based on secondary sources, semi-structured interviews and updated data on land structures, this article explores the long-term process of land reform in Cuba.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , October 2021 , pp. 249 - 264
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Akram-Lodhi, A. H. and Kay, C., eds. 2009. Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question (London).Google Scholar
Altieri, M. A. and Funes-Monzote, F. R. 2012. ‘The paradox of Cuban agriculture’, Monthly Review, 63:8, 23–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Álvarez, J. 2004. Cuba’s Agricultural Sector (Florida).Google Scholar
Aranda, S. 1968. La revolución agraria en Cuba (México D.F).Google Scholar
Bernstein, H. 2001. ‘“The Peasantry” in Global Capitalism: Who, Where, and Why?’, in Panitch, L. and Leys, C., eds, Socialist Register 2001: Working Classes Global Realities (London), pp. 25–51.Google Scholar
Blutstein, H. I., Anderson, L. C. and Betters, E. C. 1971. Area Handbook for Cuba (Washington, DC).Google Scholar
Borras, S. M. 2007. Pro-poor Land Reform: A Critique (Ottawa).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borras, S. M. 2004. ‘La Vía Campesina: An Evolving Transnational Social Movement’, TNI Briefing Series, No. 2004/6 (Amsterdam).Google Scholar
Canler, E. 2000. ‘The miracle of the Cuban economy in the 1990s’, Cuba in Transition, 10: 64–9.Google Scholar
Castro Ruz, F. 1953. History Will Absolve (Havana).Google Scholar
Clark, P. 2017. ‘Neo-developmentalism and a “vía campesina” for rural development: unreconciled projects in Ecuador’s citizen’s revolution’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 17:2, 348–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deere, C. D., ed. 1992. ‘Toward a periodization of the Cuban collectivization process: changing incentives and peasant response’, Cuban Studies, 22: 115–49.Google Scholar
Díaz-Briquets, S. and Pérez López, J. 2000. Conquering Nature: The Environmental Legacy of Socialism in Cuba (Pittsburgh, PA).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Díaz-Briquets, S. and Pérez-López, J. 1998. ‘Socialism and environmental disruption: implications for Cuba’, Cuba in Transition, 8: 154–72.Google Scholar
Evans, P. 1989. ‘Predatory, developmental, and other apparatuses: a comparative political economy perspective on the third world state’, Sociological Forum, 4:4, 561–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, P. 1995. Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, NJ).Google Scholar
Funes, F. et al. 2002. Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food Production in Cuba (Oakland, CA).Google Scholar
Funes-Monzote, F. 2008. ‘Farming Like We’re Here to Stay: The Mixed Farming Alternative for Cuba’, PhD thesis, Wageningen University (The Netherlands).Google Scholar
Gaceta Oficial (Havana), First Agrarian Reform Law, 3rd June 1959.Google Scholar
Gaceta Oficial (Havana), Decree Law No. 358: ‘On the Delivery of Ociose State Land in Usufruct’, 7th August 2018.Google Scholar
Gastón, M. W. et al. 1957. Why Agrarian Reform, Serie-B, Apologetics, Booklet No. 23, Buró de Información y Propaganda (Havana).Google Scholar
González, C. G. 2003. ‘Seasons of resistance: sustainable agriculture and food security in Cuba’, Tulane Environmental Law Journal, 16: 685–732.Google Scholar
Granma (Havana), 18th July 2008.Google Scholar
Guerra, R. 1970. Azúcar y población en las Antillas (Havana).Google Scholar
Hagelberg, G. B. 2010. ‘If it were just the maraboú … Cuba’s agriculture 2009–10’, Cuba in Transition, 20: 32–46.Google Scholar
IPES-food. 2020. COVID-19 and the Crisis in Food Systems: Symptoms, Causes, and Potential Solutions. Communiqué by IPES-Food.Google Scholar
Kay, C. 1988. ‘Economic reforms and collectivisation in Cuban agriculture’, Third World Quarterly, 10:3, 1239–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, C. 2002. ‘Why East Asia overtook Latin America: agrarian reform, industrialization and development’, Third World Quarterly, 23:6, 1073–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, C. 2019. ‘Land reform in Latin America: past, present, and future’, Latin American Research Review, 54:3, 747–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kost, W. 1998. ‘Cuba’s agriculture: collapse and economic reform’, Agricultural Outlook, Economic Research Service/USDA, vol. October, pp. 26–30.Google Scholar
Le Riverend, J. 1971. Historia económica de Cuba (Havana).Google Scholar
Lipton, M. 1973. ‘Towards a Theory of Land Reform’, in Lehmann, D., ed., Peasants, Landlords and Governments: Agrarian Reform in the Third World (New York).Google Scholar
Lipton, M. 1974. ‘Towards a Theory of Land Reform’, in Lehmann, D., ed., Agrarian Reform and Agrarian Reformism: Studies of Peru, Chile, China and India (London), pp. 269–315.Google Scholar
Lipton, M. 1977. Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias in World Development (Cambridge, MA).Google Scholar
Lipton, M. 2009. Land Reform in Developing Countries: Property Rights and Property Wrongs (London).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machín, B. et al. 2010. Agroecological Revolution: The Movement from Peasant to Peasant of ANAP in Cuba (Havana and Jakarta).Google Scholar
Martí, I., Puig, S. and Baumeister, E. 2017. ‘Agrarian policies in Nicaragua: from revolution to the revival of agro-exports, 1979–2015’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 17:2, 381–96.Google Scholar
Martín Cano, D. R., Teubal, M. and Gomez, C. 2007. ‘La reforma agraria en América Latina desde los movimientos sociale’, XXVI Congress of the Latin American Sociology Association. Latin American Sociology Association (Guadalajara).Google Scholar
McMichael, P. 2009. ‘A food regime genealogy’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36:1, 139–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mesa-Lago, C. et al. 2016. Voces de cambio en el sector no estatal cubano: cuentapropistas, usufructuarios, socios de cooperativas y compraventa de viviendas (Frankfurt).Google Scholar
MINAGRI. 2011. Basic Data. Ministry of Agriculture (Havana).Google Scholar
MEP (Ministerio de Economía y Planificación de Cuba). 2020. Economic and Social Strategy to Strengthen the Economy and to Confront the Crisis Generated by the Pandemic COVID-19 (Havana), 16th July.Google Scholar
Nova, A. 2001. ‘Cuba: Hacia una agricultura sustentabl’, Revista CUBA: Investigación Económica, INIE, No. 4, October to December 1996.Google Scholar
Nova, A. 2006. Agriculture in Cuba: Evolution and Trajectory, 1959–2005 (Havana).Google Scholar
Nova, A. 2013. El Modelo agrícola y los lineamientos de la política económica y social en Cuba (Havana).Google Scholar
Nova, A., y González-Corzo, M. 2015. ‘Cuba’s agricultural transformations’, Journal of Agricultural Studies, 3:2, 175–93.Google Scholar
ONE. 1996. Statistical Yearbook of Cuba, 1996 (Havana).Google Scholar
ONE. 2007. Statistical Yearbook of Cuba, Panorama Land Use, Cuba, 2007 (Havana).Google Scholar
ONEI. 2017. Statistical Yearbook of Cuba, Panorama Land Use 2017 (Havana).Google Scholar
ONEI. 2018. Statistical Yearbook of Cuba (Havana).Google Scholar
Page, T. L. 2010. ‘Can the state create campesinos? A comparative analysis of the Venezuelan and Cuban repeasantization programmes’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 10:2, 251–72.Google Scholar
PCC. 2011. Economic and Social Policy Guidelines of the Party and the Revolution. VI Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (Havana), 18th April.Google Scholar
PCC. 2017. Economic and Social Policy Guidelines of the Party and the Revolution for the Period 2016–2021. VI Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (Havana), July.Google Scholar
Petras, J. F. and Veltmeyer, H. 2001. Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st Century (London).Google Scholar
Piñeiro, D. E. and Cardeillac, J. 2017. ‘The Frente Amplio and agrarian policy in Uruguay’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 17:2, 594–626.Google Scholar
Regalado, A. 1979. Las Luchas Campesinas en Cuba (Havana).Google Scholar
Ríos, A. and Aguerrebere, S. 1998. ‘La tracción animal en Cuba’, Evento Internacional Agroingeniería (Havana).Google Scholar
Rodriguez Nodals, A. 2008. Estado actual de la agricultura urbana. Conferencia del evento de agricultura orgánica (Havana).Google Scholar
Rodriguez, C. R. 1965. ‘La Segunda Reforma Agraria cubana: causas y derivacione’, in Delgado, O., ed., Reformas Agrarias en America Latina (Mexico), p. 527.Google Scholar
Rosset, P. M. 1996. ‘Cuba: Alternative Agriculture during the Crisis’, in Thrupp, L. A., ed., New Partnerships for Sustainable Agriculture (Washington, DC), pp. 64–74.Google Scholar
Rosset, P. M. and Benjamin, M.. 1994. The Greening of the Revolution: Cuba’s Experiment with Organic Agriculture (Melbourne).Google Scholar
Rosset, P. M. 2013. ‘Re-thinking agrarian reform, land and territory in La Vía Campesina’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 40:4, 721–75.Google Scholar
Rosset, P. M. 2016. ‘La reforma agraria, la tierra y el territorio: evolución del pensamiento de La Vía Campesin’, Mundo Agrario, 17:35, 21.Google Scholar
Rosset, P. M. and Val, V. 2018, ‘The “Campesino a Campesino” Agroecology Movement in Cuba’, in Routledge Handbook of Food as a Commons (London).Google Scholar
Sáez, H. 1997. ‘Resource degradation, agricultural policies, and conservation in Cuba’, Cuban Studies, 27: 49–50.Google Scholar
Thiemann, L. and Spoor, M. 2019. ‘Beyond the “special period”: land reform, supermarkets and the prospects for peasant-driven food sovereignty in post-socialist Cuba (2008–2017)’, Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne études du développement <DOI: 10.1080/02255189.2019.1632174>.CrossRef.>Google Scholar
Thomas, H. 1998. Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (New York).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der Ploeg, J. D. 2010. New Peasants: Peasants and Food Empires (Madrid).Google Scholar
Vergara-Camus, and Kay, C. 2017. ‘Special issue: peasants, agribusiness, left-wing governments and neo-developmentalism in Latin America: exploring the contradictions’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 17:2, 237–437.Google Scholar
Vergara-Camus, L. 2017. in Veltmeyer, H. and Bowles, P., eds, The Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies (Abingdon and New York).Google Scholar
World Bank. 2008. World Development Report: Agriculture for Development (Washington, DC).Google Scholar
Wright, J. 2005. ‘¡Falta Petroleo! Cub’ʼs Experiences in the Transformation to a More Ecological Agriculture and Impact on Food Security’, PhD thesis, Wageningen University (The Netherlands).Google Scholar
Wright, J. 2012. Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in an Era of Oil Scarcity (New York).Google Scholar
Zimbalist, A. and Eckstein, S.. 1987. ‘Patterns of Cuban development: the first twenty-five years’, World Development, 15:1, 5–22.Google Scholar

Interviews

Funes-Monzote, Fernando. 2019. Usufructuario and agronomist, Finca Marta, Caimito, Artemisa, 19th February 2019.Google Scholar
Nova, Armando. 2019. Associate Professor at the University of Havana, CIEI, Havana, 22nd February 2019.Google Scholar