By Susan Salisbury,
Palm Beach Post Staff
Writer. Monday, June 18, 2001.
BELLE GLADE -- Jose Alvarez has had two close encounters with Cuba's sugar
industry -- one as a captive laborer with a machete in his hands, the other as a
long-term researcher equipped with pen, paper and several academic degrees.
He despised the first experience, as a cane cutter seeking to win his
freedom from Cuba, and has a scar on the little finger of his left hand to prove
it. The second, involving many visits to Cuba's sugar mills and fields, has led
to
Cuba's Sugar Industry, which looks at the industry's past and future. The
book has just been published by the University Press of Florida.
Alvarez, 60, a professor and agricultural economist at the University of
Florida's Everglades and Education Center in Belle Glade, and co-author Lazaro
Pena Castellanos, a researcher at the University of Havana, began work on the
book in 1993. They took trips back and forth between the two countries, visiting
cooperatives, state farms, sugar cane collection centers, mills and refineries,
and interviewed those at work in the sugar and agriculture ministries.
The 161-page book, which costs $55, is designed for a scholarly audience,
primarily of sugar industry members, agricultural economists and others who
follow political and economic developments in Cuba. Its primary focus is on the
Cuban sugar industry after 1980, but it begins with an overview of the 1959-79
period. It ends with a discussion of the future of the industry and possible
restructuring, including competition between Cuba and the United States.
Sugar, which has been grown in Cuba for two centuries, is the island
nation's largest crop, and the country's economic health has depended on it. The
Cuban crop has close historical ties to Florida and someday could again have an
effect here, Alvarez said.
"Cuba considers sugar its national crop. Sugar has been associated with
every single historical event in Cuba," Alvarez said.
Before the revolution of 1959, the United States and Cuba were major trading
partners. Cuba was selling about 3 million tons of its sugar to the United
States each year at a premium price, supplying about one-third of total U.S.
sugar demand.
After Fidel Castro took power and trade with Cuba ended in 1960, the Soviet
Union became Cuba's largest customer.
To fill that gap, Florida's sugar industry jump-started its growth in the
1960s, increasing production in the Glades south of Lake Okeechobee to more than
1 million tons by 1975 from 160,000 tons in 1960. This year, Florida's major
sugar growers -- Palm Beach-based Florida Crystals, U.S. Sugar Corp. of
Clewiston and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida in Belle Glade --
produced more than 2 million tons of sugar.
Florida Crystals is owned by the Fanjul family, whose roots in the sugar
industry in Cuba date to the mid-19th century and grew to ownership of 10 sugar
mills by 1959, when Castro seized power and nationalized the sugar industry. The
family fled the country as political refugees and launched their Florida sugar
cane operation in 1961.
Today, sugar imports annually to the United States from 40 countries total
1.5 million tons, half of Cuba's former quota.
Florida sugar growers are concerned about Cuba-grown sugar coming back into
the United States as relations between the two countries are eased. But Congress
would have to restore Cuba's sugar quota before that could happen, Alvarez said.
"It's impossible that we would get back the previous Cuban quota,"
Alvarez said. "That's out of the question. I foresee Cuba being allowed to
send sugar to the U.S. only as U.S. consumption increases."
Even if direct trade with Cuba is allowed, restrictions governing the amount
of foreign sugar allowed into the United States would have to be changed before
Cuba's sugar could have any impact.
"It depends on how the U.S. policies change and (on) changes in the
Cuban government," Alvarez said. "With this administration and this
Congress, I don't see any possibility of it happening."
Compared with the U.S. sugar industry, with its state-of-the-art mills and
refineries and access to the best in fertilizers and crop management, Cuba's
industry is in disarray, Alvarez said. Without sufficient money for fertilizer,
herbicides and equipment, its crops have been below what they could have been.
Its facilities are outdated, with its newest mills at least 30 years old.
Cuba also is hampered by a lack of agricultural laborers, he said.
Cuban sugar production last season was 4.2 million tons, and this season is
expected to be 3.7 million tons by the time the harvest ends in July, Alvarez
said. The peak year was 1969--70 when Castro focused on the industry, which
produced a record 8.54 million tons. Alvarez predicts that with economic reforms
such as farmers being allowed a share of profit, Cuban sugar production will
reach 7 million tons within the next few years.
Most of Cuba's cane is harvested mechanically. It wasn't like that when
Alvarez was forced to work in the fields for five months from October 1968 to
February 1969, sometimes for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. It was the price
Alvarez and others had to pay while waiting to leave Cuba.
"Everybody who wanted to leave the country and was between the ages of
18 and 45 was put out in the countryside. I worked in the cane fields cutting
cane with a machete. It was like a prison. Guards watched us. I hated it.
"Sometimes I had to carry a heavy sack and spread fertilizer. That was
even worse," Alvarez said.
After leaving Cuba in 1969, Alvarez lived in Gainesville, where he worked as
a waiter and studied at the University of Florida. He completed a bachelor's in
economics, and master's and doctoral degrees in food and resource economics,
finishing in 1977. He then began working for the university at the Belle Glade
center. He didn't return to Cuba until 1987, when he visited for two weeks as
part of a research project. He's returned many times since.
Although Castro has allowed foreign investment in citrus groves in Cuba, he
has not permitted foreign investment directly in the sugar industry. He has
allowed countries such as France to invest in the marketing and production of
sugar's derivatives, such as rum and other alcohol. Alvarez thinks that shows
Cuba's government is changing its mind about foreign investment.
In the near future, Cuba will step up its sugar production and would like to
sell some to the United States. But "that probably won't happen," he
said.
That's because the ultimate arbiter of what happens in the industry depends
on what happens between Washington and Havana, Alvarez said.
"It all hinges on politics," he said.
susan_salisbury@pbpost.com
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