Boom and Bust

Between 1895 and 1925, world output of sugar increased from seven million to twenty-five million tonnes, while Cuba’s production increased from one million to over five million tonnes. This period became known as the “Dance of the Millions.”

In the 1920s, large loans from US banks had financed Cuban efforts to profit from a short-lived speculative boom in world sugar prices in 1920. When the boom collapsed at the start of the Depression, the same banks took over defaulting Cuban producers and financiers, giving effective control of the industry to North American corporations.

While attempts had been made since 1917 to build a sugar workers’ trade union, these efforts only really came to fruition in 1932, with the founding of the Sindicato Nacional Obrero de la Industria Azucarera (SNOIA, National Workers’ Union of the Sugar Industry). This organizing drive was under the leadership of the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC, Communist Party of Cuba), which grew from 350 members in 1930 to 6,000 in 1934.

During the summer of 1933, a widespread strike paralyzed the sugar industry, with many workers occupying the sugar mills calling their strike committees “soviets.” This movement expanded into a general strike, which brought an end to the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. However, the victory was short-lived, and the reformist government of Ramón Grau San Martín was removed in a coup led by Sergeant (later Colonel) Fulgencio Batista in 1934. Trade union organization was effectively destroyed the following year following the defeat of a general strike.

The Reciprocal Agreement of 1934 between the United States and Cuba assured Cuba a fixed quota of 1.9 million tons of sugar in the US market and reduced the duty for Cuban sugar from 2 cents to 0.9 cents per pound. The US Sugar Act of 1937 created a fixed quota system based on total US consumption requirements, and it allotted Cuba 28.6 percent of the US market. This protected both the Cuban sugar industry and US supplies during World War II.

Batista and the Communists

Following several years of indirect control, Batista was elected president of Cuba with Communist support in 1940. The PCC had reached an understanding with Batista whereby, in return for legalization and some reforms in the interests of the working class, they would work to broaden his narrow social base. One of the outcomes of this arrangement was the establishment of the new trade union federation, the Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC, Confederation of Workers of Cuba), which, from its foundation, was dependent on its relationship with the Cuban state.

This dependency was increased by the CTC’s approach to defending its members’ interests, which in most industries relied on the leadership’s relationship with the Ministry of Labour, rather than industrial action or collective bargaining. This produced some real improvements for Cuban workers and was part of the process that led to the 1940 constitution, widely recognized as the most progressive in Latin America. Nevertheless, it left the Communists vulnerable to attack when the wartime social truce ended.

US president Franklin D. Roosevelt had been unhappy with the fact that Batista included two Communist ministers in his government: while legalizing the PCC in return for their support of the war effort was a tolerable move for Washington, bringing them into the cabinet was not. Thus, when Batista’s term of office came to an end in 1944, the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) dispatched Meyer Lansky, a Mafia gangster with business interests in Cuba, as a go-between to quietly tell Batista that the US government did not wish him to seek reelection. The 1944 elections were won by Ramón Grau San Martín, an anti-communist figure who started preparing to drive the Communists out of the CTC.

After the Allied victory in 1945, the US government began negotiations for a new trade agreement with the intention of reducing the cost of imported sugar. The sugar workers federation within the CTC, the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Azucareros (FNTA, National Federation of Sugar Workers), sought the inclusion of organized labor in the official negotiating team. However, President Grau initially refused and Jesús Menéndez, general secretary of the FNTA, went privately to Washington in an attempt to win US trade union support for the Cuban position.

In the aftermath of these failed negotiations, the Cuban government withheld part of the 1946 sugar harvest, and the US secretary of agriculture came to Havana for direct negotiations. This time, Menéndez was included in the official negotiating team and succeeded in inserting a Guarantee Clause in the final agreement, which linked the price paid for sugar to inflation in goods imported from the United States. This resulted in a “diferencial” (differential) of thirty-six million pesos, from which the FNTA forced the government to distribute twenty-five million pesos among the sugar workers as a bonus (one peso was valued at one dollar during this period).

However, the following year, the US government was keen to cut the level of Cuban sugar imports from 5.7 to 3.2 million tons and thereby claw back some of the advantage that it had lost in the 1947 negotiations. Menéndez visited Washington and New York in July 1947, campaigning for the retention of the 1946 level of imports and terms of purchase.

He received the support of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), whose president, Jacob Potovski, succeeded in getting him an interview with the US secretary of agriculture. But this proved to be of no avail, as the Cuban Senate approved a new treaty on July 25, 1947, and President Grau annulled the Guarantee Clause with its diferencial bonus for sugar workers.

The FNTA congress at the end of November 1947 decided to fight for a diferencial of 8 percent and the same wage levels as the previous year. A campaign of strikes and demonstrations was organized from the beginning of the sugar harvest. The government responded by sending soldiers and the rural guard to intimidate and attack union meetings in the localities.

Menéndez toured the eastern end of the island encouraging and supporting the strikes. On January 22, 1948, when he arrived at Matanzas station, an army officer, Captain Joaquín Casillas shot him in the back and killed him. Casillas claimed to have been trying to arrest Menéndez despite his parliamentary immunity.

Menéndez’s funeral in Havana was attended by 150,000 people and there were a large number of protest strikes. Mere protest, however, would prove insufficient to deter the government and their gangster allies from continuing with their murderous campaign, and the strike wave was defeated.

Price Collapse

Heightened international tensions at the time of the Korean War led to the stockpiling of sugar, then considered an important strategic foodstuff. This resulted in considerable price inflation so that, by December 1951, the world price of sugar was 4.84 cents a pound, climbing to a brief high of 5.42 cents the following March.

This high price encouraged a vast increase in worldwide production, with new areas being turned over to both cane and beet farming. But with no comparable increase in consumption to match the price hike, the resulting crisis of overproduction led, within a year, to a collapse in the price to a mere 3.55 cents a pound.

Cuba was producing 18 percent of the world total, and the market plunge was disastrous for its economy. Cuban sugar farmers had played their part in the general international scramble to grow more sugar, and the 1952 zafra (sugar harvest) was the biggest in history, at over seven million tons compared to the previous record of 5.5 million tons the year before. Unfortunately for the Cuban producers, however, of those seven million tons, they were only able to sell 4.8 million.

This posed a serious problem for the incoming government of Batista, recently brought to power by yet another coup, for which the restoration of profitability was one of the principal tasks. The government unilaterally cut back production, ruling that the 1953 harvest would be restricted to five million tons by shortening the length of time in which cane could be cut.

The tactic of restricting the length of the sugar harvest was designed to increase profits for the owners of the sugar companies at the expense of the workers. The sugar workers were only paid during the actual cane-cutting period, so if the harvest were of shorter duration, the wage bill would be reduced. Should the restriction be successful in raising or at least stabilizing the price of sugar, this would maintain or increase the employers’ income.

This gambit proved to be a complete failure as the national income from sugar fell from $655.5 million in 1952 to $404.9 million in 1953, while the total wage bill fell from $411.5 million to $253.9 million. An attempt by the UN to arrange an international agreement to restrict production also failed. It was against this backdrop that the US government also cut the amount it purchased under the sugar quote scheme.

The Strike

In November 1955, the FNTA demanded a five-million-ton harvest, an end to wage cuts, and the restoration of the previous year’s 7.31 percent wage cut, along with the reinstatement of all sacked workers. They also raised the demand for full payment of the diferencial. No diferencial had been paid since 1951, but the idea captured the imagination of the sugar workers.

The fact that confrontation should erupt over the diferencial highlights the gulf of comprehension that existed between employers and those employed in the sugar industry. To the employers, the drop in the international price meant that they were less able to pay their wage bill, rendering a bonus that dated back to better times unacceptable. The majority of workers, on the other hand, already living in conditions of miserable poverty, felt that they were being made to bear the brunt of a crisis not of their making. The fight over the diferencial thus became hugely symbolic for both sides.

When faced with a level of repression only previously used to attack militant students, the sugar workers themselves resorted to violence, setting up roadblocks, burning cane fields, and occupying town halls and city centers. Hundreds of workers were arrested or wounded, with several strikers killed. In addition to a complete stoppage of the sugar industry, there were solidarity strikes among rail- and dockworkers, and normal working was not fully resumed until the January 4 or 5.

The sugar workers were beaten but not defeated: their organization was still intact and went underground. This confrontation destroyed many illusions and convinced an important group of local trade union leaders that there was no longer any reformist solution available for their problems.

This in turn led many sugar workers to support the growing rebel guerrilla movement led by Fidel Castro. Two clandestine congresses of sugar workers held in rebel-controlled territory in late 1958 voted to call a national strike for the forthcoming harvest. They pledged 20 percent of any wage gains to the rebel army and endorsed the strategy of a revolutionary general strike supported by armed guerrilla action. The increasing military success of the rebel army through the second half of 1958 forced the progressive disintegration of the repressive forces of the state.

Two of the prerequisites for a revolutionary situation are the absence of a reformist solution to a society’s problems and the loss of confidence in the system by the ruling class. Within the constraints of the world capitalist system, the Cuban economy could no longer sustain the wage and employment levels demanded by workers, while the government’s failure to protect property and profits lost it the support of the bourgeoisie.

The workers resolved the contradiction with an overwhelmingly successful general strike called by Castro in January 1959. This ensured the triumph of the Revolution.

The Revolutionary Crop

Like many other countries dependent on monocrop production, the economy of Cuba was liable to periods of boom and bust depending on the vicissitudes of the world market. In the case of Cuba, the problem was compounded by the quota system for exports to North America, which was determined by the US government.

When the world sugar market collapsed in the late 1920s and again in the 1950s, the plantation owners in Cuba attempted to maintain their profits at the expense of the workers by reducing their wage bill. Cuban sugar workers had a long history of militancy, and they strongly resisted such attacks.

Although they were beaten in both 1935 and 1955, their spirit was not broken. They went on to throw their support behind Castro’s rebel movement and played an important role in the ultimate victory of the Cuban Revolution.