Abstract

"Beyond Sugar and Tobacco: Cuban Economic Counterpoints, 1920-1940"

Maikel Farinas Borrego, University of North Carolina, Greensboro (m_farina@uncg.edu)

In 1932, the Uruguayan Ambassador in Havana addressed a group of local entrepreneurs to promote a treaty with Montevideo. The 1927 Cuban tariff had severely affected jerky imports from the South American nation, and within a few years, a livestock industry flourished in Camagüey and Oriente provinces. The alcohol export industry stood in opposition to these developments given the reaction from Uruguay to add a 50 percent surcharge to Cuban products, therefore suffocating the South American market for Cuban aguardientes. Alcohol's interests advocated for a commerce treaty with Uruguay claiming that the natural trade between the two nations stopped because of the measures to protect an industry that did not exist up to that point “in detriment of natural productions of the country.” The Ambassador words added salt in the wound indicating that Cuban foreign trade premises were “wrong,” because of the island’s “relations with the United States,” and that, given such a troubled relationship, Cuban national interests would be best served in keeping and nurturing other foreign partners.
The Cuban Counterpoint between tobacco and sugar industries was more than a philosophical debate between two economic endeavors; it was an echo of a broader national discussion in republican Cuba. I argue that urban entrepreneurs on the island, whose business interests were not directly tied to any agricultural production, sought to change the island’s economic principles within the margins of capitalism; which also affected the island's relations with other Latin American nations. I further discuss that new economic aspirations and options for entrepreneurship had to struggle against established industries and foreign interests in Cuba. My final contention is that counterpoints between alcohol and livestock industries illustrate how Cuban businessmen envisioned different economic paths for the nation, beyond sugar and tobacco.