Cuba is one of the few socialist countries that existed after the end of the Cold War, it is not only famous for cigars, but also famous for Castro's spirit of beauty to the end, because of its distance from the mainland, people have different conjectures about its strangeness, some people think that it is a closed and poor country, and some people praise the "happiness" that its "free welfare" brings to the people. Objectively speaking, Cuba is not too poor, from the figures, Cuba's per capita GDP ranks 77 in 2022, which is not low, and the so-called welfare does exist, and its human development index is also classified as high in the ranks of high development, ranking 83rd in the world, but in March this year, the president of Cuba disclosed a figure that the country had never made public before, that is, Cuban households spend "more than 70%" of their income on food, knowing that according to the standard Engel coefficient (food expenditure/total expenditure) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is 60% The above is absolute poverty, and here it is only talking about the expenditure part, while the Cuban government is talking about the income part, so the situation is much more serious, in fact, it has been rich in history, but how has it changed?
Clothing store in Cuba in the 50s
1. Age of Empires
Cuba was discovered by Columbus in 1492, and in 1511 the white people began to establish colonies in the area, and foreign diseases and massacres wiped out the indigenous people almost overnight, and Cuba began to be involved in colonial wars and economies. In the war of the 18th century, the Spanish colony of Cuba was occupied by the British, and later the Spaniards exchanged Florida for Cuba, the Spanish value Cuba so much because of its economic value, Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, the land is fertile and suitable for growing different crops, coffee in the mountains, tobacco on the coast and the far west and east of the island, Sugar in the central part of the island, due to the lack of local population, Spain imported a large number of slaves, from 1789 to 1860 the Spanish government had more than 600,000 black slaves, Argentina's developed animal husbandry provided enough food for slaves, so that Cuba's population structure is relatively rich and the labor force is sufficient, in 1790 Havana and its surrounding areas have a population of nearly 100,000, becoming the third largest city in the Americas.
Indigenous peoples of Cuba (1919)
At the end of the 18th century, the slave rebellion in the French colony of Haiti indirectly promoted the development of Cuba, Haiti was once the most developed area of the Caribbean sugar industry, the black slave rebellion directly eliminated Cuba's competitors, and the large influx of white refugees into Cuba brought advanced production technology, on the other hand, the turmoil in Haiti led to the rise in sugar prices, which directly made Cuba a lot of money. The development of the Cuban economy is inseparable from the land reform, at the turn of the 19th century, all the land in Cuba was owned by the Spanish crown, and the land crops could not be changed without the consent of the king, which undoubtedly hindered the development of the capitalist economy. The Spanish crown gained its wealth by selling land to immigrants, and with the development of large tracts of land and the lifting of restrictions on the real estate market, Cuba was finally able to consolidate its transition to an export-oriented economy with large-scale plantations, and by 1830 Cuba had become the world's largest sugar producer.
Cuban slaves in the 19th century
The Spanish colonizers not only integrated Cuba into the capitalist economic system, but also brought about social change in the region. At the end of the 18th century, the king of Spain began to send mayors to manage the city, and the freedmen paid taxes to the municipalities in exchange for the king's military protection, and the continuous European immigration leveled the local population structure to achieve balance, and Spain was an important bridge between Cuba and the European market, so everyone was still at peace in the early 19th century, but with the increase in the wealth of local elites and began to generate political demands, after compromise, Cuba produced local councils, but due to the rise of the wave of South American independence, Spain tightened constitutional reforms, and the governor's power was increased to weaken Cuba's autonomyIn 1823, all suspicious militias in Cuba were disbanded, newspapers were banned, and elected parliamentarians were dismissed, and anti-Spanish nationalism arose during this period, although it is interesting to note that revolutions in other Spanish colonies led to the arrival of many royalist refugees in Cuba, which suppressed independence to some extent.
Cuban War of Independence
Although Cuba was constitutionally considered Spanish territory, the independence movement in Cuba's administration was torn between colonies and overseas provinces, and economic problems exacerbated independence tendencies. The economic crisis of 1857 caused many businesses to close down, but the colonial government still levied 6% on them On the other hand, the existence of slavery made employers further reduce the working conditions, which was opposed by white laborers, and the increase in slave importation also made the elite aware of the crisis of demographic change, so abolitionism arose, under the interweaving of various contradictions, Cuba broke out in 1868 Ten years of war, forced by pressure Spain and the rebels to reach the Sanjon Peace Treaty, promising to give Cuban representation in the Spanish parliament and abolish Cuban slavery, some of the radicals of the rebel army started the war again in 1879 but quickly failed, but Spain did not have substantive reforms, which led to the outbreak of the Cuban War of Independence in 1895This attracted the attention of Cuba's future lifelong enemy, the United States, which coveted the richness of Cuba and landed in Cuba in 1898 in the Spanish-American War, and the United States began to take over Cuba.
Cuban sugar mill at the end of the 19th century
2. The Democracy Experiment
After the Spanish-American War, the U.S. military government in Cuba was established, and the Republic of Cuba was established in 1902, and the 1901 Cuban Constitution reserved the power of the United States to intervene in Cuban affairs and supervise Cuba's financial and diplomatic relations. In the 1901 presidential and congressional elections in Cuba, the candidate Estrada Palma was a pro-American Cuban revolutionary and another Cuban revolutionary leader, Bartolomé Palma. Marceau withdrew from the election under pressure from the United States, and Parma was elected as the first president of Cuba without surprise in this situation, but fortunately, Parma regarded Cuba as a country of ethnic equality, with equal power for blacks and whites, and adopted a sound fiscal policy in the economy, although it actively developed the country's public affairs and built more than 328 kilometers of roads for Cuba, but did not adopt a populist squandering of money, so the Cuban economy was generally stable during this period. When Parma left office, Cuba's finance ministry had millions of dollars at its disposal.
Estrada Palma
However, Parma was unwilling to give up power, and in the second presidential election fraudulently caused political turmoil, both Parma and the Cuban Liberal Party led by the opposition José Miguel Gómez asked the United States to intervene to suppress each other, the United States had expected a compromise between the two sides but the differences were too great to succeed, Parma resigned decisively when he realized that the United States would not take sides, and the American military established a provisional government of Cuba to fill the power vacuum. The U.S. ambassador to Panama, Charles Edward Magon, was appointed interim governor, and he reversed Parma's conservative policies in the past, invested a lot of Parma's surplus finances in infrastructure, was accused of financial waste, and signed some contracts with American companies on behalf of the Cuban government, plundering Cuba's resources, but fortunately his term was relatively short, and in 1908 Cuba held elections to end the provisional government, the aforementioned Gómez defeated the Conservative candidate Mario García. Menocal became the new president of Cuba, and during his tenure he built some 521 kilometers of new roads to encourage commercial activity and industry, although the unfavorable treatment of racial issues led to black riots and the corruption of his tenure.
José Miguel Gómez
Gómez's merits were not economic, but political stability, on the one hand, he introduced a series of laws to guarantee workers' rights, such as a minimum wage for workers, and on the other hand, he did not seek re-election as a model for a democratic republic, and in 1912 and 1916 his rival Menocal defeated Alfredo Zayas of the Liberal Party for re-election. During the Menokal period, Cuba caught up with the good times of the First World War, and the price of sugar on the international market jumped from a few cents per pound to about 20 cents per pound, which made Cuba a lot of money, and Menocal carried out financial reforms, social reforms and infrastructure construction during this period, the birth of a national currency supported by the gold standard, the establishment of compulsory work-related injury insurance and the introduction of state mediation of labor disputes. Cuba was in a state of prosperity thanks to improvements in railway transportation and sugar technology, the world's largest sugar producer in 1917 with a sugar harvest of more than 3 million tons, and the use of this wealth for public utilities, the installation of more than 20,000 telephones in Havana, the establishment of teacher training schools in all provinces of the country, the raising of teachers' salaries and the creation of itinerant teacher services in the mountains.
Mario García Menorca
The end of the First World War halted Cuba's prosperity, and the workers' movement was surged by the layoffs of workers, which in turn gave rise to serious corruption and a renewed crisis that led to the Liberal Party's defeat to Zayas in the 1920 elections. Zayas inherited a country on the verge of bankruptcy, so on the one hand, he cut public spending (including reducing the salaries of civil servants) and increased the "1% sales tax", and applied for loans of about 50 million pesos to pay off overdue debts, and on the other hand, he carried out positive social reforms, enacting a series of social and state welfare laws, including pensions, Freedom of speech and the press were fully guaranteed, and in 1924 Cuba was restored to all public utilities and became the first country in the world to restore its treasury and pay off its American debt after the First World War, thanks to the fact that Chinese he did not seek re-election, Gerardo Machado was elected president with his support.
Alfredo Zayas
Machado's rise to power coincided with a boom in American investment in the sugar industry, and he launched an ambitious public works program to make Cuba the "Switzerland of the Americas." First, he built a series of factories and enriched agricultural products to reduce dependence on the sugar industry, concluded commercial treaties with Spain, Portugal, Japan, and Chile to mitigate American influence, and built the "Seven Architectural Wonders of Cuba" during his tenure One of the 1,144 kilometers of central highways and the completion of 710 public works worth $300 million across the country, the Havana Capitol in Cuba, which resembles the U.S. Capitol, was built during this period, and Machado began to promote constitutional reform under the aura of efficient administration, and in 1928 the presidential term was extended from four to six years, but it used imprisonment, Torture and other illegal means of persecuting rivals led to the election of the president without a rival in the 1928 presidential election, and the 1929 economic crisis in the United States increased popular dissatisfaction with the regime.
Gerardo Machado
3. A new order
In 1932, the sharp drop in sugar prices led to the deterioration of the Cuban economy, and Machado's repressive politics led to a general strike in August 1933, in which Machado was forced to resign, and Cespedes Quesada, the son of the father of the Cuban nation, was elected interim president, whose 1901 constitution was restored and general elections were planned for the following year. However, the DEU, a predominantly middle-class university student organization, demanded a new constitution that ruled out U.S. interference, and there were calls for a complete purge of the Machado army. On September 3 of that year, Battista and others took advantage of Cespedes' departure from Havana to visit the disaster situation to incite middle- and lower-level officers to control the army and force the government officials who remained in the capital to step down, Cespedes gladly accepted the result, but the old officers gathered at the National Hotel of Cuba to counteract, and after 11 hours of fighting, the old forces in the army were completely liquidated.
Fulgencio Batista
After the Sergeant Uprising, the Cuban government formed three factions, the Minister of the Interior Antonio Guitras on behalf of the left, the Army Chief of Staff Battista on behalf of the military, and the reformists led by President Ramón Grau. Because Ramon was anti-American and not recognized by the United States, Batista, who was eager for power, privately approached the United States to seek recognition, although the United States did not directly intervene in this, but the act of non-intervention actually gave Batista, who was in charge of the army, the opportunity to act, so in January 1934 Batista forced Ramon to resign and appoint Minister of Agriculture Carlos Hevia as interim president. Mendieta was appointed interim president, and although Batista did not directly serve as head of state at this time, he had already ushered in the Batista era in Cuba, and the United States immediately recognized the new government.
Member of the Hundred Days Government
The United States gave the new government enough face, and in May 1934 the Cuban-North American Relations Treaty was signed, which abolished the legal provisions of American interventionism, and in August Cuba signed a reciprocal treaty with the United States, which provided for the United States Secretary of Agriculture to determine the annual quota of sugar that must be purchased from Cuba. However, the economic problems remained severe, and Secretary of State Joseph Barnett replaced Mendieta as interim president despite the ongoing strikes, and the 1936 presidential election was held again. Gomez became the new president, but Gomez soon had a disagreement with Batista, who was born in the countryside and knew the hardships of the countryside and pushed forward a series of reform plans long before Gomez took office, which not only involved health care, but also sent the military to the countryside to promote the integration of military and civilian education in rural areas.
Miguel Mariano Gómez
Vice-President Federico Laredo Blue succeeded Gómez, who had good relations with Batista during his tenure and carried out the work of reviving the economy and restoring the constitution. First he passed a bill vetoed by his predecessor to pay for village schools, and then promoted a three-year plan to give the state control of resources and financial power through the creation of a national bank and the development of mining and oil extraction, economic development requires a stable society, so many political prisoners were pardoned, the Communist Party of Cuba reached a reconciliation with the Cuban government, and the 1940 Constitution was introduced with the participation of all classes, the biggest difference between the law and the 1901 Constitution was that the rights and interests of workers were written into the constitution, such as the eight-hour working day, In the context of unprecedented unity, the Communist Party and the Liberal Party formed the Democratic Socialist Alliance, and in the 1940 presidential election, Batista defeated the previous Ramon with the support of the alliance and was elected as the new president of Cuba.
Cuba in the 40s
Fourth, temporary freedom
Batista took over the country's economy, but the entry of the United States into the war changed the situation, and the United States purchased from Cuba all the sugar produced during the four harvest seasons from 1942 to 1945, plus honey with an estimated value of $967,874,282, in addition to a $30 million loan from the United States. The money benefited the country and ordinary people, as the government rebuilt and renovated the infrastructure, improved irrigation and freezing projects to ensure the storage of cash crops, and on the other hand, the wages of workers were significantly increased, although the lack of supply of domestic products due to large-scale exports led to an 84 per cent increase in the cost of living, but wages of 108 per cent Batista could have been re-elected in the event of such an achievement, but in order not to confirm the conjecture of his autocracy, Batista did not participate in the 1944 presidential election, and Ramon Grau, whom he had overthrown, defeated the candidate supported by Batista in this election to become the new president.
Havana, Cuba in the 40s
Ramón Grau's initial tenure aimed at uniting the working class was attended by the 4th Congress of the Central Committee of the 500,000-member Confederation of Workers of Cuba (CTC), where he negotiated an increase in the minimum wage, the creation of a pension fund, an extra day off in the summer, and negotiated with the United States to raise the price of sugar, with the proceeds used to subsidize imported food and public welfare projects. However, the CTC lost its previous unity due to the struggle between the Communist Party and other parties, Ramón also faced serious corruption and crime problems, with 59 people killed and 53 injured by gang activity during his tenure, and Education Secretary Alemán later slipped to the United States with 19 million pesos, and although Ramon's True Revolutionary Party was full of corruption, its nationalist slogan of "Cuba for Cubans" and good relations with the trade unions allowed them to win the 1948 presidential election again. Socarras becomes the new president of Cuba.
50's Cuban bread and dessert shop
In 1950, Prio invited a committee of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) led by Francis Adam Truslo to conduct a detailed study of the Cuban economy, which stated that Cuba had everything it needed for economic take-off except fuel, which required economic diversification to break up the monolithic production of sugar, increase sugar-derived industries, stimulate tourism, improve communication routes, increase the number of landowners, and reform monetary and fiscal policy. Although Prio was enthusiastic about his plan, the problems of corruption and crime remained unsolved, and the army was dissatisfied with the increase in the salaries of congressmen and senior officials without considering the army, so Batista saw the hope of a comeback, but in the polls before the 1952 presidential election, Batista led the coalition of joint actions far behind the third place, and Batista was unwilling to lose, so he went off the rails and did the old business of the coup, on March 10, 1952, Batista returned strongly, Prio took refuge in the Mexican embassy in Havana, and the army attacked the presidential palace and paid the price of two people killed after the coup was successful。
Batista
Fifth, deformed prosperity
When Batista came to power, he began to implement the recommendations of the 1951 Truslow Report. In agriculture, he created storage and refrigeration facilities, increased mechanization, fertilization, irrigation, scientific research, and provided technical and economic assistance to smallholder farmers, resulting in the largest sugar harvest in history (7.2 million tons). Through food production, it guaranteed 75 per cent of domestic consumption, and the economic boom allowed Cuba in the 50s to have a car for every 40 people, a telephone for every 38 people, a radio for every 6 people, and a television for every 25 people, while the per capita television ownership was the first in Latin America and the fifth in the world; in terms of health care, Cuba had 128 doctors and dentists per 100,000 people, which was on par with the Netherlands at that time and ahead of the United Kingdom (122 per 100,000 people) and Finland (96); and in education, Cuba had 23 percent of GDP was spent on education (first in Latin America), reducing illiteracy to 23% (second in Latin America), and building 5,000 public buildings between 1954 and 1958 on infrastructure. At this time, Cuba's per capita GDP was comparable to that of Italy, making it one of the five most developed countries in Latin America.
Streets of Havana in the 50s
Batista also made Cuba a "hedonistic playground for the world's elite." In 1955 he announced that Cuba would issue a gaming license to anyone who invested $1 million in a hotel or $200,000 in a new nightclub – the government would provide matching public funds for construction, 10 years of tax exemption, and exemption from customs duties on imported equipment and furniture for new hotels, and each casino would pay $250,000 to the government for a license, plus a percentage of the profits. In order to develop tourism, by 1958 Cuba had 128 hotel facilities and 7,728 rooms for international tourism, with an average annual growth rate of 7.3 per cent for tourists, and Cuba's tourism income increased from $17.1 million in 1950 to $62.1 million in 1957, an average annual growth rate of 20.2 per cent, with 85 to 86.7 per cent of these tourists Between North America, these tourists are mainly attracted by the country's gambling industry and beautiful natural scenery, in 1957 the tourism income of 36 million US dollars, special industries are tempting, in the 50s there were 270 brothels in Havana, cocaine can also be enjoyed here, in the 50s Cuba was immersed in drunkenness.
Cuban tavern in the 50s
Although Cuba in the 50s achieved relatively good economic success, it had serious economic problems. Cuba is a highly dependent country on sugar, with North American companies controlling 25% of the best arable land, home to 15 of the largest estates, and owning 36 of the country's 161 best sugar mills, the sugar industry occupies about one-fifth of the country's land and employs 15% of the workforce, the aforementioned tourism income accounts for only 10% of the sugar industry, and a single industry leads to an underdigested labor force of 15% to 20% In terms of wages, although the wages of industrial workers in Cuba were 130 pesos per month (the equivalent of pesos to the US dollar at the time), the wages of agricultural workers were 65 pesos per month, higher than in some European countries, and the middle class also made up a third of the country, but homogenization made necessities dependent on foreign goods, real wages fell with the rise of imports in the 50s, and the rampant real estate speculation after the Second World War made many people unable to buy houses, and three-quarters of Havana households lived in rented houses。
Bakery in Cuba in the 50s
It doesn't matter if you're poor, the most annoying thing is that you don't suffer from widowhood but suffer from inequality. The aforementioned figures are due to the fact that Cuba has more urban than rural populations, but the gap between urban and rural areas is severe, with 52.6 per cent of the population living in brick and stone houses and only 2.5 per cent of rural residents, and most of the country's resources in health care are concentrated in urban areas, with only 8 per cent of rural people receiving state-paid health care, and 67 per cent of the 1.5 million inhabitants who have not completed a year of education Living in rural areas, on the other hand, there is the gap between the common people and the elite, Batista is willing to invest in tourism and his interests are linked, he earns up to 30% of the profits from casinos and hotels, which are controlled by American gangs who donate millions of dollars a year to Batista's Swiss bank account in order to obtain money laundering guarantees in Cuba, Batista has long forgotten about the class from which he once came from poverty, and corruption and political undemocracy make people feel " In the past, although corrupt, there were elections, so he was a thief, and Batista is now acting in a blatant robbery", and finally a revolution is coming!
Cuban poor
Sources:
1. Success and Failure Series - Dimas Castellanos (2021)
2.古巴旅游业分析-Deneb BermúdezTarifa(2009)
3. Cuba before the Revolution - Samuel Faber (2015)
4. Cuba: An Unnecessary Revolution - Adolfo Rivero Caro
5. Cuba during the Cold War: Housing and Economy - Lisa Reynolds Wolf (2013)
6. Cuba: yesterday the worker earned 40 times as much as his grandson today - Roberto Álvarez Quiniones (2018)
7. Cuban agriculture before 1959: the state of society - José Álvarez (2004)
8. What was life like in Cuba in the 50s of the 20th century?-Francisca Lopez Civeira (2021)