Sugar and Railroads

A Cuban History, 1837-1959

Oscar Zanetti, Alejandro Garcia, Franklin W. Knight, Mary Todd, Franklin W. Knight, Mary Todd

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780807866436
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Though Cuba was among the first countries in the world to utilize rail transport, the history of its railroads has been little studied. This English translation of the prize-winning Caminos para el azucar traces the story of railroads in Cuba from their introduction in the nineteenth century through the 1959 Revolution.
More broadly, the book uses the development of the Cuban rail transport system to provide a fascinating perspective on Cuban history, particularly the story of its predominant agro-industry, sugar. While railroads facilitated the sugar industry's rapid growth after 1837, the authors argue, sugar interests determined where railroads would be built and who would benefit
from them. Zanetti and Garcia explore the implications of this symbiotic relationship for the technological development of the railroads, the economic evolution of Cuba, and the lives of the railroad workers.
As this work shows, the economic benefits that accompanied the rise of railroads in Europe and the United States were not repeated in Cuba. Sugar and Railroads provides a poignant demonstration of the fact that technological progress alone is far from sufficient for development.

1 The Problems of Transportation

In the last decades of the eighteenth century Cuba experienced an enormous demographic and economic transformation. After centuries of slow evolution, the local economy began a rapid change that would, a few years later, convert the largest of the Greater Antilles into “the world’s sugar bowl.” Such a spectacular modification resulted from the progressive elimination of several inhibiting factors that eventually led to an ever rising rate of sugar production. Overland transportation proved to be one of the most troublesome factors in getting the fledgling sugar industry off the ground.

The increasing sugar production in Cuba resulted from a combination of fortuitous circumstances: ample, fertile lands in the interior of the island; capital amassed over the previous years; and, above all, imported labor exploited under the most inhumane conditions. Equally important were the coincidence of favorable political circumstances and an exceptionally attractive economic climate initiated by the independence of the thirteen British North American colonies. After 1783, the United States of America began to import from the island tropical products formerly supplied by the British West Indian colonies. This unexpected commercial opportunity expanded the economic possibilities created shortly before by Spain by the adoption of the Reglamento para el comercio libre de España a Indias (Regulation of Free Trade between Spain and the Indies) in 1776. Thanks to this new regulation, ports like Santiago de Cuba, Trinidad (Casilda), and Batabanó were included in the category of “minor ports” and authorized to conduct free trade directly with Spain and, on certain occasions, with neutral and allied countries. As a consequence of the slave revolt in French Saint-Domingue in 1791, Cuba’s capacity to supply Europe’s demand for tropical products on a large scale slowly became a reality. Cuban exports to Europe, sometimes carried out directly, and sometimes through the American “neutrals,” greatly increased. This situation became relatively stable during the wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire. Cuba took advantage of the rising prices of products in great demand such as sugar and coffee.¹

At the same time the metropolitan government applied favorable measures to boost commerce, such as the elimination of some export taxes, as well as others applied regularly to the importation of goods and equipment for the sugar industry. These measures culminated in the enactment of free trade with foreigners, although certain restrictions were retained through customs procedures. After a short period, the authorization to conduct international commerce was extended to additional new ports like Matanzas, Manzanillo, Guantánamo, Santa Cruz del Sur, and Mariel.

The economic development of the sugar industry that started around the decade of the 1790s stimulated the process of transformation of the agricultural regime. Land was granted by the municipal governments (cabildos), and the new tenants formed a very close-knit oligarchy. The impact of commercial agriculture on the great estates was noticeable in the western part of the island. Lands previously destined for tobacco fields gave way to the construction of sugar milk, coffee plantations, and pasture grounds. This process also promoted the exploitation of potentially productive but previously uninhabited lands. Nevertheless, the rural properties in the central and eastern parts of the island, with some local exceptions, continued to suffer from underpopulation and remained virtually untouched.

The new conditions prevailing in industry and agriculture required the strong support of the Spanish imperial legislation. On this occasion, the support manifested itself through two fundamental measures: the royal order of August 30, 1815, granting the free use of woods and land cultivation, and the act of the Ministerio de Hacienda (Ministry of Finance and Treasury), dated July 19,1819, that gave complete powers over the land grants received before 1729.² These acts allowed full control and rights over those lands held by the traditional oligarchic landowners, to the detriment of the small tobacco or foodstuff producers whose cultivation fell within the boundaries of the estates. The measures also made those oligarchic families linked to the Havana town council powerful instruments in the growth of the sugar industry by creating a compact group of Creole plantation owners who assumed the direction of the economic and political life of the colony. The role played by these plantation owners in the sugar industry boom at the end of the eighteenth century was complemented by two other human and social factors: the critical slave labor force violently uprooted from the African continent, and the new merchant community partly stemming from the oligarchic families and partly from public officials and Spanish immigrants already settled in the country.

Although both plantation owners and traders benefited from the exploitation of slaves, there were obviously some clear differences between them. The plantation owners were the proprietors of the land, the sugar mills, and the slaves, the basic elements in the production of that society. The merchants were also a potentially powerful group. In their hands were the export of sugar and the import of slaves— legally or illegally—as well as machines and equipment such as boilers, packing crates, and other articles for use the on the plantations. The influence of the merchants increased with the capital they amassed through commercial transactions, as well as the banking functions destined to finance the sugar plantation owners. The port warehouses rounded out the financing power of the merchants in a country that began to depend almost completely on foreign trade. The complementary relationship existing between merchants and plantation owners created conflicting interests between the two social groups. Nevertheless, some merchants later became landowners and vice versa so that in some cases a single individual or entity came to control the functions of producing, financing, and exporting sugar.

The organization of large-scale production and international commerce required increased institutionalization of the operations in the colony with the corresponding involvement in administration. The Spanish colonial structure had only two economic institutions that could satisfy the requirements of the moment: the local patriotic societies and the consulados or chambers of commerce. Both had ancient precedence, but, influenced by the “enlightened despotism” of the eighteenth century and the demands of the Creole plantation owners, their functions were expanded considerably.

In 1793, the Sociedad Económica del Amigos del País (Royal Economic Society of Havana) was founded. This society had a weak precedent on the island in a similar society previously founded in Santiago de Cuba. The petition for the foundation was presented with the connivance of Governor Luis de las Casas and a significant group of members of the Havana oligarchy that included the counts of Casa Montalvo, Casa Bayona, and Jibacoa, the marquises of San Felipe y Santiago and of Casa Calvo y de Arcos, as well as Juan Manuel, and José Ricardo O’Farrill, Nicolás Calvo, and other Creoles equally famous for their sugar wealth as for their extensive landowning. Controlled by the Creole producers and supported by outstanding intellectuals, this society took part in almost all the activities that could contribute to the development of the plantation economy and provided useful counsel for colonial officials. The principal role of the society, however, was the introduction and fostering of economic ideas, technology, public administration, and education.

Two plantation owners, Francisco de Arango y Parreño and the count of Casa Montalvo, endeavored to create a department for the promotion of agriculture. These efforts paralleled a measure taken by the metropolitan government to establish a chamber of commerce on the island similar to those already created in other cities throughout Spanish America. The result of this duality of purposes, both of which involved the control of the most important factors of the country’s economy, was the creation on April 10,1795, of a new organization that resulted in an institutional union between merchants and plantation owners: The Royal Havana Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce (Real Consulado de Agricultura y Comercio de la Habana). Its main objectives were supposed to benefit both social groups, and were predicated on the improvement of agricultural production by means of an increase in population, the opening and improvement of ports, and the construction of roads, navigation canals, and irrigation. The first council included the owners of twenty-six sugar mills, including the count of Casa Montalvo, Francisco de Arango y Parreño, and the marquis of Casa Peñal-ver.³ The conflict of interests between merchants and plantation owners was systematically manifested in the council. Nevertheless, from the time of its founding under Governor Luis de las Casas to the time of Francisco Dionisio Vives in 1832, the governors of the island were often receptive to the aspirations of the sugar plantation owners and generally endorsed their goals.

The wonderful opportunities opened to the Cuban plantation owners and merchants by the expanding European and North American markets were complemented by the interest of the metropolitan government in fostering the colonial economy and, in a certain way, by the particular geographical location of the largest of the Greater Antilles. Due to its strategic geographical position, Cuba was considered the crossroads of the Spanish Caribbean for centuries and an almost unavoidable stopover for transport and communications between America and Europe. Such strategic and commercial importance made Havana a port of exceptional significance for maritime transport between the island and ports of Europe and America, either continental or insular. Nevertheless, as the port of Havana had the exclusive privilege to conduct the foreign commerce for the entire Cuban colony, the other coastal cities were forced to decide between a legal commerce through Havana up to the middle of the eighteenth century and an illicit trade called “ransom” (de rescate). The first type of commercial activity— the legal one—involved the use of cabotage or, in its place, the opening of new roads through the then thick subtropical forest of the island.

The long and narrow shape of the island of Cuba presented an excellent solution to some inland communications, either by the construction of an arterial highway capable of linking the various regions throughout the island or by the use of cabotage. Cuba is 1,250 kilometers long, with 5,736 kilometers of coastline and a maximum width of 191 kilometers. As its average width is 110 kilometers, there is no point within the island more than 100 kilometers from the coast. This geographical shape enhanced the construction of a central road with short lateral feeder roads. Together the overland transport and cabotage were propitious to the development of an export economy and an efficient supply system for the interior island markets. The Cuban shoreline has over two hundred bays, ports, and coves, many of which are considered among the widest and most protected in the world. Nevertheless, not all its coastal stretches can be easily navigated by large vessels due to the long stretches of shallow waters and abundant keys.

The northern coast has the most favorable areas for navigation, especially the stretches between Bahía Honda and the Hicacos Peninsula in the west, and between Nuevitas and Maisi, in the east. Along these stretches of coast are wonderful bays suitable for ports and wharves such as Cabanas, Mariel, Havana, Matanzas, Nuevitas, Banes, Nipe, and Sagua de Tánamo. In a central region north of Las Villas and Camagüey, which is characterized by marine terraced plains and shallow waters strewn with keys and small islands, the imperative need of sugar exports forced the dredging of the ports of Cárdenas, La Isabela, and Caibarién. The southern coast has less ports and wharves than the northern. In the east, the bays of Guantánamo and Santiago de Cuba have very deep waters, but to the west navigation becomes difficult except in the area between Maria Aguilar in Trinidad, and Cienfuegos. Artificial modifications of certain shore features made ports like Manzanillo, Santa Cruz del Sur, Júcaro, and Tunas del Zaza accessible to vessels of considerable draft. Also in this area, Surgidero de Batabanó became important, as the natural obstacles to navigation were removed. The proximity of this last port to Havana—fifty-eight kilometers across the plains—encouraged its development as a strategic cabotage point. Batabanó linked the capital to the southern ports and Isla de Pinos (Isle of Pines) until the twentieth century.

Set along two well-defined slopes—the northern with 236 rivers and the southern with 327—the Cuban river system with its generally narrow basins does not present important obstacles for communications between the north and south of the island. But it presents obstructions for the east-west movements in areas not far from the coast. The water levels of Cuban rivers vary considerably during the year. The rivers change from raging torrents during the rainy season from May to November when 80 percent of the rainfall occurs, to small streams during the dry season from December to April. These variations, together with the deep canyons frequently found near the shores, make the Cuban rivers inadequate for satisfactory communication, providing transit for only small crafts for a few kilometers inland.

Although the rainy period prevailing in the country allows the cultivation of yearly crops that can be harvested in the dry season, freight transportation was difficult and hazardous since the wide plains became swampy from the rains and the frequent flooding of nearby rivers. The fertile plains were broken intermittently by gentle hills throughout the island. In the west almost grouped together, are Guaniguanico hills and the slate hills of the south and north. Another lower series of hills runs between Havana and Matanzas on the north and center (the Bejucal-Madruga-Coliseo hills), surrounding the great red southern plains that extend from Artemisa to the outskirts of Cienfuegos. Swamp lands to the south of these plains, mainly in the Zapata Peninsula, inhibit transportation of crops to the south. In the center of the island, the productive lands of the former province of Las Villas fall between the Santa Clara hills to the north and the Guamuhaya Mountains and the Sierra de Trinidad on the south, while the Najasa and Cubitas virtually surround the plains of Camagüey.

The highest mountains in the country are in the eastern region. The hills of Maniabón, Nipe, and Cristal, and the Moa and Toa Cliffs, practically block the east and northeast of the eastern provinces. Toward the south, the Sierra Maestra forms a long coastal ridge hindering overland transportation.

Originally the wild subtropical vegetation of the island was a temporary obstacle to overland transport and communication. Hardwood like caoba (mahogany), ácana, and different species of júcaro were very useful for the construction of ships, docks, and wharves; but the development of commercial cultivation in the second half of the eighteenth century began the process of deforestation of Cuba, which continued to the twentieth century. The abundance of woods also constituted a valuable resource for buildings in general, and a source of fuel for the furnaces and steam boilers of the sugar mills.

The expansion of the sugar industry changed the rural landscape enormously. Sugar estates decimated the forests and even replaced the tobacco fields and coffee plantations. The concentration of sugar estates established around Havana, Guanabacoa, Guanabo, Rio Blanco, Jibacoa, and Canasi was considerable, and it extended eastward in a series of small productive centers including Cangrejeras, Guatao, El Cano, Rincón, Santiago, San Antonio, Managua, and Santa Maria del Rosario. An almost immediate shift towards the lands west of the Mariel Bay occurred between Guanajay and Quiebra Hacha. This area was considered the most important sugar production center of the country during the first years of the nineteenth century. Although the highest number of sugar mills was located near the coasts, cultivation moved to the southern plains, growing vigorously in the valley of Güines. From four sugar mills existing in 1784, twenty-two more were built in the next twenty years, and by 1827, this number again doubled. Taking advantage of the rich lands of the great southern plains, new concentrations of sugar mills sprang up to the west, toward Artemisa, and to the east toward Palos and Nueva Paz, near the production areas of Matanzas.

In Matanzas the demands of sugar production created a similar situation. The impressive growth of this area took place between 1800 and 1820, covering the space between Corral Nuevo to the west of Matanzas Bay, down to Alacranes and Sabanilla del Encomendador to the south, and all along the Guanábana-Coliseo road to the southeast. The proliferation of sugar production zones in almost all the region made it n...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• FIGURES
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Preface
• 1 The Problems of Transportation
• 2 The Güines Railroad
• 3 The Initial Expansion, 1838–1852
• 4 The Years of the Railroad Boom
• 5 The Island Railroad Network
• 6 Human Dimensions of Cuban Railroads
• 7 Relative Stagnation
• 8 The Impact of Structural Changes
• 9 Denationalization
• 10 U.S. Intervention
• 11 The Ferrocarril Central and Imperial Interests
• 12 British Monopoly in the West
• 13 War, Sugar, and Railroads
• 14 U.S. Monopolies and the Tarafa Bill
• 15 Organization of the Railroad Proletariat
• 16 The Crisis
• 17 Temporary Recovery
• 18 In the Shadow of the Bourgeois State
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Sources
• Index