Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 1997
The collapse of Cuba's import-intensive sugar economy in the 1990s is analysed in the context of the disintegration of COMECON and of the USSR. Salient features of post-revolutionary cane farming are contrasted with those of the 1950s. Falling production in the 1990s, and the main institutional responses to it, are compared with those of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The analysis is illustrated with primary data collected in fieldwork carried out in 1994 and before. The complexities of current ‘technical regression’ from more to less import-intensive agricultural practices are outlined and the impact of acute national investment constraints upon the recovery prospects of the sugar economy are appraised.