The law that unleashed the U.S. economic war against Cuba

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
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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 systems¼ ) 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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