Sugar Hand
Cuba and the Cane Sugar
Cane sugar has been known by humankind for several millennia before Christ due to its sweetness; according to descriptions of travellers to India, the inhabitants of the Indo Valley chewed the cane in order to obtain the juice of it some 500 years B.C. In Spain, the cane sugar made its entrance during the Moorish period, and Christopher Columbus included the cane among the animals and plants he brought during his third trip to the New World (August 30, 1498). Planted in the soft lands of Santo Domingo and due to the weather of the tropics, the sugar cane grew so fine as to produce the best of its sweetness. Already in 1506, Brother Bartholomew of las Casas made reference to the first rustic sugar mill on the island.
As almost everything brought to Cuba during that time, the conqueror Diego Velazquez was the one to introduce the sugar cane from Santo Domingo; and from that moment on, the settlers began to produce guarapo (the juice extracted from the cane) necessary for obtaining the sugar. The surplus of this home-made sugar elaboration was the main basis to trade with other settlers; and the sugar plus salted meat and corn became the basis to trade with pirates in order to get slaves.
The first commercial sugar mill was installed during the last decades of the 16 century in the Havana area and already in 1600, 60 sugar mills were functioning. During this period, Cuba was behind La Hispaniola and other colonies in the sugar production. It was during the Storming of the English in 1762 that the Cuban trade opened and an increase of the sugar production was seen. The first production was counted in 1799 and it reached six thousand tons with the six hundred sugar mills existing at the time.
Sugar refineries did not appear until the first decades of the 19th century with the introduction of the steam engine. According to a census of that period, in 1830 there were more than one thousand sugar refineries producing around 94 thousand tons; and when in 1837 the steam locomotives arrived in Cuba, the sugar production increased to unprecedented figures. Cuba was the seventh country in the world to have railroads, and the first in Latin America thanks to the rising sugar industry.
The independence of Cuba on May 20, 1902 favored the introduction of new machinery and the presence of American capital. With less than 200 large sugar mills in 1925, the rising Cuban nation produced more than five million tons of sugar. During this period, the vast majority of sugar mills and sugar plantations were in the hands of foreign capital; however, some social laws applied between 1935 and 1945 made possible that in 1950 of 161 large sugar mills working, 131 were in the hands of Cubans, controlling 60% of total production.
With the Triumph of the Revolution, the sugar mills were nationalized and became socialist companies as well as the majority of the plantations that were in the hands of small and leading producers. Although the millionaire productions were kept, the industry and agriculture based on the sugar cane have been declining during the last 50 years. Nowadays, sugar is not an important product in the trading scale of Cuba. Almost 70 large sugar mills have been dismantled, and a huge part of the sugar cane cultivated today is destined to the production of sugar-cane syrups and refined spirits for the chemical industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the liquor production (the Havana Club rum being among them). The last known results of a sugarcane harvest dates from 2006-2007 with a production of 1,115,000 tons of sugar, quite similar to the harvest of 1894.
About the Author
This brief history of Cane Sugar in Cuba was written by a Cuba travel expert from Cuba For Less, a specialist in fully customizable Cuba vacation packages.
Sugar Bits, Grim Tales- U & Ur Hand
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