![]() ![]() “Once we were the country that exported the most sugar,” Dionis Perez, director of communications at Azcuba, the state agency that regulates sugar production, told Al Jazeera.īut “this is the first year that Cuba doesn’t plan to export more sugar than it consumes”. This year, the target is even lower as Cuba heads for its worst sugar harvest in more than a century. While the island regularly produced more than 7 million tonnes in the 1980s, last season - squeezed by new “maximum pressure” United States sanctions - it yielded only 480,000 tonnes. ![]() During the “Dance of the Millions”, when the price of sugar soared after the outbreak of World War I, the local “sugarocracy”, not knowing what else to do with their dizzying profits, commissioned decadent Renaissance and Art Nouveau mansions that still line Havana’s more affluent suburbs.īut for decades, the industry has been in decline. Sugar also brought development and luxury to Cuba. Later, it fuelled rebellion, when slaves wielded their machetes against the Spanish to emancipate themselves and win their nation’s sovereignty. For countless Africans brought here to cut it, sugar meant servitude. Cienfuegos, Cuba – “Without sugar, there’s no country,” the old Cuban saying goes.įrom the moment Spanish colonists first planted cane here in the 16th century, sugar has been etched into this island’s soul. ![]()
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