Steve Cushion
Jacobin
 |
Trabalhadores cortam talos de cana-de-açúcar em um campo sob palmeiras em Cuba, 1959. (Getty Images) |
Na primeira metade do século XX, Cuba era o maior produtor de açúcar do mundo, e o açúcar representava 80% das exportações do país. Essa dependência de uma única safra deixou toda a economia cubana à mercê do mercado mundial de açúcar.
Quando o preço mundial estava alto, isso trazia riqueza para os donos das plantações e trabalho mal pago e exaustivo para os cortadores de cana proletários rurais. Quando o preço caiu, os ricos mantiveram suas riquezas e demitiram os cortadores de cana, privando-os de sua subsistência.
Os trabalhadores do açúcar responderam formando uma das mais importantes organizações sindicais da América Latina, que organizou uma série de greves importantes. Tornou-se a espinha dorsal da greve geral que garantiu a vitória da Revolução em 1959.
Expansão e recessão/crise
Entre 1895 e 1925, a produção mundial de açúcar aumentou de sete milhões para vinte e cinco milhões de toneladas, enquanto a produção de Cuba aumentou de um milhão para mais de cinco milhões de toneladas. Este período ficou conhecido como a "Dança dos Milhões".
In the 1920s, large loans from US banks had financed Cuban efforts to profit from a short-lived speculative boom in world sugar prices in 1920. When the boom collapsed at the start of the Depression, the same banks took over defaulting Cuban producers and financiers, giving effective control of the industry to North American corporations.
While attempts had been made since 1917 to build a sugar workers’ trade union, these efforts only really came to fruition in 1932, with the founding of the Sindicato Nacional Obrero de la Industria Azucarera (SNOIA, National Workers’ Union of the Sugar Industry). This organizing drive was under the leadership of the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC, Communist Party of Cuba), which grew from 350 members in 1930 to 6,000 in 1934.
During the summer of 1933, a widespread strike paralyzed the sugar industry, with many workers occupying the sugar mills calling their strike committees “soviets.” This movement expanded into a general strike, which brought an end to the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. However, the victory was short-lived, and the reformist government of Ramón Grau San Martín was removed in a coup led by Sergeant (later Colonel) Fulgencio Batista in 1934. Trade union organization was effectively destroyed the following year following the defeat of a general strike.
The Reciprocal Agreement of 1934 between the United States and Cuba assured Cuba a fixed quota of 1.9 million tons of sugar in the US market and reduced the duty for Cuban sugar from 2 cents to 0.9 cents per pound. The US Sugar Act of 1937 created a fixed quota system based on total US consumption requirements, and it allotted Cuba 28.6 percent of the US market. This protected both the Cuban sugar industry and US supplies during World War II.
Quando o preço mundial estava alto, isso trazia riqueza para os donos das plantações e trabalho mal pago e exaustivo para os cortadores de cana proletários rurais. Quando o preço caiu, os ricos mantiveram suas riquezas e demitiram os cortadores de cana, privando-os de sua subsistência.
Os trabalhadores do açúcar responderam formando uma das mais importantes organizações sindicais da América Latina, que organizou uma série de greves importantes. Tornou-se a espinha dorsal da greve geral que garantiu a vitória da Revolução em 1959.
Expansão e recessão/crise
Entre 1895 e 1925, a produção mundial de açúcar aumentou de sete milhões para vinte e cinco milhões de toneladas, enquanto a produção de Cuba aumentou de um milhão para mais de cinco milhões de toneladas. Este período ficou conhecido como a "Dança dos Milhões".
In the 1920s, large loans from US banks had financed Cuban efforts to profit from a short-lived speculative boom in world sugar prices in 1920. When the boom collapsed at the start of the Depression, the same banks took over defaulting Cuban producers and financiers, giving effective control of the industry to North American corporations.
While attempts had been made since 1917 to build a sugar workers’ trade union, these efforts only really came to fruition in 1932, with the founding of the Sindicato Nacional Obrero de la Industria Azucarera (SNOIA, National Workers’ Union of the Sugar Industry). This organizing drive was under the leadership of the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC, Communist Party of Cuba), which grew from 350 members in 1930 to 6,000 in 1934.
During the summer of 1933, a widespread strike paralyzed the sugar industry, with many workers occupying the sugar mills calling their strike committees “soviets.” This movement expanded into a general strike, which brought an end to the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. However, the victory was short-lived, and the reformist government of Ramón Grau San Martín was removed in a coup led by Sergeant (later Colonel) Fulgencio Batista in 1934. Trade union organization was effectively destroyed the following year following the defeat of a general strike.
The Reciprocal Agreement of 1934 between the United States and Cuba assured Cuba a fixed quota of 1.9 million tons of sugar in the US market and reduced the duty for Cuban sugar from 2 cents to 0.9 cents per pound. The US Sugar Act of 1937 created a fixed quota system based on total US consumption requirements, and it allotted Cuba 28.6 percent of the US market. This protected both the Cuban sugar industry and US supplies during World War II.
Batista and the Communists
Following several years of indirect control, Batista was elected president of Cuba with Communist support in 1940. The PCC had reached an understanding with Batista whereby, in return for legalization and some reforms in the interests of the working class, they would work to broaden his narrow social base. One of the outcomes of this arrangement was the establishment of the new trade union federation, the Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC, Confederation of Workers of Cuba), which, from its foundation, was dependent on its relationship with the Cuban state.
This dependency was increased by the CTC’s approach to defending its members’ interests, which in most industries relied on the leadership’s relationship with the Ministry of Labour, rather than industrial action or collective bargaining. This produced some real improvements for Cuban workers and was part of the process that led to the 1940 constitution, widely recognized as the most progressive in Latin America. Nevertheless, it left the Communists vulnerable to attack when the wartime social truce ended.
US president Franklin D. Roosevelt had been unhappy with the fact that Batista included two Communist ministers in his government: while legalizing the PCC in return for their support of the war effort was a tolerable move for Washington, bringing them into the cabinet was not. Thus, when Batista’s term of office came to an end in 1944, the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) dispatched Meyer Lansky, a Mafia gangster with business interests in Cuba, as a go-between to quietly tell Batista that the US government did not wish him to seek reelection. The 1944 elections were won by Ramón Grau San Martín, an anti-communist figure who started preparing to drive the Communists out of the CTC.
After the Allied victory in 1945, the US government began negotiations for a new trade agreement with the intention of reducing the cost of imported sugar. The sugar workers federation within the CTC, the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Azucareros (FNTA, National Federation of Sugar Workers), sought the inclusion of organized labor in the official negotiating team. However, President Grau initially refused and Jesús Menéndez, general secretary of the FNTA, went privately to Washington in an attempt to win US trade union support for the Cuban position.
In the aftermath of these failed negotiations, the Cuban government withheld part of the 1946 sugar harvest, and the US secretary of agriculture came to Havana for direct negotiations. This time, Menéndez was included in the official negotiating team and succeeded in inserting a Guarantee Clause in the final agreement, which linked the price paid for sugar to inflation in goods imported from the United States. This resulted in a “diferencial” (differential) of thirty-six million pesos, from which the FNTA forced the government to distribute twenty-five million pesos among the sugar workers as a bonus (one peso was valued at one dollar during this period).
However, the following year, the US government was keen to cut the level of Cuban sugar imports from 5.7 to 3.2 million tons and thereby claw back some of the advantage that it had lost in the 1947 negotiations. Menéndez visited Washington and New York in July 1947, campaigning for the retention of the 1946 level of imports and terms of purchase.
He received the support of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), whose president, Jacob Potovski, succeeded in getting him an interview with the US secretary of agriculture. But this proved to be of no avail, as the Cuban Senate approved a new treaty on July 25, 1947, and President Grau annulled the Guarantee Clause with its diferencial bonus for sugar workers.
The FNTA congress at the end of November 1947 decided to fight for a diferencial of 8 percent and the same wage levels as the previous year. A campaign of strikes and demonstrations was organized from the beginning of the sugar harvest. The government responded by sending soldiers and the rural guard to intimidate and attack union meetings in the localities.
Menéndez toured the eastern end of the island encouraging and supporting the strikes. On January 22, 1948, when he arrived at Matanzas station, an army officer, Captain Joaquín Casillas shot him in the back and killed him. Casillas claimed to have been trying to arrest Menéndez despite his parliamentary immunity.
Menéndez’s funeral in Havana was attended by 150,000 people and there were a large number of protest strikes. Mere protest, however, would prove insufficient to deter the government and their gangster allies from continuing with their murderous campaign, and the strike wave was defeated.
Following several years of indirect control, Batista was elected president of Cuba with Communist support in 1940. The PCC had reached an understanding with Batista whereby, in return for legalization and some reforms in the interests of the working class, they would work to broaden his narrow social base. One of the outcomes of this arrangement was the establishment of the new trade union federation, the Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC, Confederation of Workers of Cuba), which, from its foundation, was dependent on its relationship with the Cuban state.
This dependency was increased by the CTC’s approach to defending its members’ interests, which in most industries relied on the leadership’s relationship with the Ministry of Labour, rather than industrial action or collective bargaining. This produced some real improvements for Cuban workers and was part of the process that led to the 1940 constitution, widely recognized as the most progressive in Latin America. Nevertheless, it left the Communists vulnerable to attack when the wartime social truce ended.
US president Franklin D. Roosevelt had been unhappy with the fact that Batista included two Communist ministers in his government: while legalizing the PCC in return for their support of the war effort was a tolerable move for Washington, bringing them into the cabinet was not. Thus, when Batista’s term of office came to an end in 1944, the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) dispatched Meyer Lansky, a Mafia gangster with business interests in Cuba, as a go-between to quietly tell Batista that the US government did not wish him to seek reelection. The 1944 elections were won by Ramón Grau San Martín, an anti-communist figure who started preparing to drive the Communists out of the CTC.
After the Allied victory in 1945, the US government began negotiations for a new trade agreement with the intention of reducing the cost of imported sugar. The sugar workers federation within the CTC, the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Azucareros (FNTA, National Federation of Sugar Workers), sought the inclusion of organized labor in the official negotiating team. However, President Grau initially refused and Jesús Menéndez, general secretary of the FNTA, went privately to Washington in an attempt to win US trade union support for the Cuban position.
In the aftermath of these failed negotiations, the Cuban government withheld part of the 1946 sugar harvest, and the US secretary of agriculture came to Havana for direct negotiations. This time, Menéndez was included in the official negotiating team and succeeded in inserting a Guarantee Clause in the final agreement, which linked the price paid for sugar to inflation in goods imported from the United States. This resulted in a “diferencial” (differential) of thirty-six million pesos, from which the FNTA forced the government to distribute twenty-five million pesos among the sugar workers as a bonus (one peso was valued at one dollar during this period).
However, the following year, the US government was keen to cut the level of Cuban sugar imports from 5.7 to 3.2 million tons and thereby claw back some of the advantage that it had lost in the 1947 negotiations. Menéndez visited Washington and New York in July 1947, campaigning for the retention of the 1946 level of imports and terms of purchase.
He received the support of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), whose president, Jacob Potovski, succeeded in getting him an interview with the US secretary of agriculture. But this proved to be of no avail, as the Cuban Senate approved a new treaty on July 25, 1947, and President Grau annulled the Guarantee Clause with its diferencial bonus for sugar workers.
The FNTA congress at the end of November 1947 decided to fight for a diferencial of 8 percent and the same wage levels as the previous year. A campaign of strikes and demonstrations was organized from the beginning of the sugar harvest. The government responded by sending soldiers and the rural guard to intimidate and attack union meetings in the localities.
Menéndez toured the eastern end of the island encouraging and supporting the strikes. On January 22, 1948, when he arrived at Matanzas station, an army officer, Captain Joaquín Casillas shot him in the back and killed him. Casillas claimed to have been trying to arrest Menéndez despite his parliamentary immunity.
Menéndez’s funeral in Havana was attended by 150,000 people and there were a large number of protest strikes. Mere protest, however, would prove insufficient to deter the government and their gangster allies from continuing with their murderous campaign, and the strike wave was defeated.
Price Collapse
Heightened international tensions at the time of the Korean War led to the stockpiling of sugar, then considered an important strategic foodstuff. This resulted in considerable price inflation so that, by December 1951, the world price of sugar was 4.84 cents a pound, climbing to a brief high of 5.42 cents the following March.
This high price encouraged a vast increase in worldwide production, with new areas being turned over to both cane and beet farming. But with no comparable increase in consumption to match the price hike, the resulting crisis of overproduction led, within a year, to a collapse in the price to a mere 3.55 cents a pound.
Cuba was producing 18 percent of the world total, and the market plunge was disastrous for its economy. Cuban sugar farmers had played their part in the general international scramble to grow more sugar, and the 1952 zafra (sugar harvest) was the biggest in history, at over seven million tons compared to the previous record of 5.5 million tons the year before. Unfortunately for the Cuban producers, however, of those seven million tons, they were only able to sell 4.8 million.
This posed a serious problem for the incoming government of Batista, recently brought to power by yet another coup, for which the restoration of profitability was one of the principal tasks. The government unilaterally cut back production, ruling that the 1953 harvest would be restricted to five million tons by shortening the length of time in which cane could be cut.
The tactic of restricting the length of the sugar harvest was designed to increase profits for the owners of the sugar companies at the expense of the workers. The sugar workers were only paid during the actual cane-cutting period, so if the harvest were of shorter duration, the wage bill would be reduced. Should the restriction be successful in raising or at least stabilizing the price of sugar, this would maintain or increase the employers’ income.
This gambit proved to be a complete failure as the national income from sugar fell from $655.5 million in 1952 to $404.9 million in 1953, while the total wage bill fell from $411.5 million to $253.9 million. An attempt by the UN to arrange an international agreement to restrict production also failed. It was against this backdrop that the US government also cut the amount it purchased under the sugar quote scheme.
The Strike
In November 1955, the FNTA demanded a five-million-ton harvest, an end to wage cuts, and the restoration of the previous year’s 7.31 percent wage cut, along with the reinstatement of all sacked workers. They also raised the demand for full payment of the diferencial. No diferencial had been paid since 1951, but the idea captured the imagination of the sugar workers.
The fact that confrontation should erupt over the diferencial highlights the gulf of comprehension that existed between employers and those employed in the sugar industry. To the employers, the drop in the international price meant that they were less able to pay their wage bill, rendering a bonus that dated back to better times unacceptable. The majority of workers, on the other hand, already living in conditions of miserable poverty, felt that they were being made to bear the brunt of a crisis not of their making. The fight over the diferencial thus became hugely symbolic for both sides.
Heightened international tensions at the time of the Korean War led to the stockpiling of sugar, then considered an important strategic foodstuff. This resulted in considerable price inflation so that, by December 1951, the world price of sugar was 4.84 cents a pound, climbing to a brief high of 5.42 cents the following March.
This high price encouraged a vast increase in worldwide production, with new areas being turned over to both cane and beet farming. But with no comparable increase in consumption to match the price hike, the resulting crisis of overproduction led, within a year, to a collapse in the price to a mere 3.55 cents a pound.
Cuba was producing 18 percent of the world total, and the market plunge was disastrous for its economy. Cuban sugar farmers had played their part in the general international scramble to grow more sugar, and the 1952 zafra (sugar harvest) was the biggest in history, at over seven million tons compared to the previous record of 5.5 million tons the year before. Unfortunately for the Cuban producers, however, of those seven million tons, they were only able to sell 4.8 million.
This posed a serious problem for the incoming government of Batista, recently brought to power by yet another coup, for which the restoration of profitability was one of the principal tasks. The government unilaterally cut back production, ruling that the 1953 harvest would be restricted to five million tons by shortening the length of time in which cane could be cut.
The tactic of restricting the length of the sugar harvest was designed to increase profits for the owners of the sugar companies at the expense of the workers. The sugar workers were only paid during the actual cane-cutting period, so if the harvest were of shorter duration, the wage bill would be reduced. Should the restriction be successful in raising or at least stabilizing the price of sugar, this would maintain or increase the employers’ income.
This gambit proved to be a complete failure as the national income from sugar fell from $655.5 million in 1952 to $404.9 million in 1953, while the total wage bill fell from $411.5 million to $253.9 million. An attempt by the UN to arrange an international agreement to restrict production also failed. It was against this backdrop that the US government also cut the amount it purchased under the sugar quote scheme.
The Strike
In November 1955, the FNTA demanded a five-million-ton harvest, an end to wage cuts, and the restoration of the previous year’s 7.31 percent wage cut, along with the reinstatement of all sacked workers. They also raised the demand for full payment of the diferencial. No diferencial had been paid since 1951, but the idea captured the imagination of the sugar workers.
The fact that confrontation should erupt over the diferencial highlights the gulf of comprehension that existed between employers and those employed in the sugar industry. To the employers, the drop in the international price meant that they were less able to pay their wage bill, rendering a bonus that dated back to better times unacceptable. The majority of workers, on the other hand, already living in conditions of miserable poverty, felt that they were being made to bear the brunt of a crisis not of their making. The fight over the diferencial thus became hugely symbolic for both sides.
Quando confrontados com um nível de repressão usado anteriormente apenas para atacar estudantes militantes, os próprios trabalhadores do açúcar recorreram à violência, montando bloqueios de estradas, queimando canaviais e ocupando prefeituras e centros urbanos. Centenas de trabalhadores foram presos ou feridos, com vários grevistas mortos. Além de uma paralisação completa da indústria do açúcar, houve greves de solidariedade entre ferroviários e estivadores, e o trabalho normal não foi totalmente retomado até 4 ou 5 de janeiro.
Os trabalhadores do açúcar foram espancados, mas não derrotados: sua organização ainda estava intacta e passou à clandestinidade. Esse confronto destruiu muitas ilusões e convenceu um grupo importante de líderes sindicais locais de que não havia mais nenhuma solução reformista disponível para seus problemas.
Isso, por sua vez, levou muitos trabalhadores do açúcar a apoiar o crescente movimento de guerrilha rebelde liderado por Fidel Castro. Dois congressos clandestinos de trabalhadores do açúcar realizados em território controlado pelos rebeldes no final de 1958 votaram para convocar uma greve nacional para a próxima colheita. Eles prometeram 20 por cento de quaisquer ganhos salariais para o exército rebelde e endossaram a estratégia de uma greve geral revolucionária apoiada por ação de guerrilha armada. O crescente sucesso militar do exército rebelde durante a segunda metade de 1958 forçou a desintegração progressiva das forças repressivas do estado.
Dois dos pré-requisitos para uma situação revolucionária são a ausência de uma solução reformista para os problemas de uma sociedade e a perda de confiança no sistema pela classe dominante. Dentro das restrições do sistema capitalista mundial, a economia cubana não conseguia mais sustentar os níveis de salário e emprego exigidos pelos trabalhadores, enquanto o fracasso do governo em proteger a propriedade e os lucros fez com que perdesse o apoio da burguesia.
Os trabalhadores resolveram a contradição com uma greve geral esmagadoramente bem-sucedida convocada por Castro em janeiro de 1959. Isso garantiu o triunfo da Revolução.
A colheita revolucionária
Como muitos outros países dependentes da produção de monoculturas, a economia de Cuba estava sujeita a períodos de expansão e retração dependendo das vicissitudes do mercado mundial. No caso de Cuba, o problema foi agravado pelo sistema de cotas para exportações para a América do Norte, que foi determinado pelo governo dos EUA.
Quando o mercado mundial de açúcar entrou em colapso no final da década de 1920 e novamente na década de 1950, os donos de plantações em Cuba tentaram manter seus lucros às custas dos trabalhadores, reduzindo sua folha de pagamento. Os trabalhadores açucareiros cubanos tinham uma longa história de militância e resistiram fortemente a tais ataques.
Embora tenham sido derrotados em 1935 e 1955, seu espírito não foi quebrado. Eles continuaram a apoiar o movimento rebelde de Castro e desempenharam um papel importante na vitória final da Revolução Cubana.
Colaborador
Steve Cushion é pesquisador sênior na University College London, Institute of the Americas. Ele é autor de A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrillas’ Victory.
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