Group+1+Cuban+Revolution

= __Successes and Failures of Fidel Castro 1960-1990__ = ==== Fidel Alejandro Castro, nicknamed "The Guerilla Prince", led a successful revolution against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, culminating in his violent takeover of the government in 1959. Over the next thirty years, Castro and Cuba would go through much change. The Castro government witnessed many successes and suffered numerous failures. Throughout it all, Castro managed to maintain control of the government and national stability.====

__Economic Restructuring of the 1960's__
====Fidel Castro and his revolutionary government made extreme changes in the first ten years. Chief among these were income redistribution, agrarian reform, and industrialization. The primary engine of these goals would be collectivization. Collectivization called for the large scale expropriation of land and industry from private ownership. The government will be responsible for the administration of these important resources. Unfortunately, what the revolutionaries had in zeal, they lacked in economic administration and technical expertise. This would plague the Cuban economy, which would be wrought with failures throughout the 1960's(Keen and Hayes, p. 440).====

Income redistribution was one of the first goals of the revolutionary government. Between 1960 and 1963, the government was largely successful, largely though the expropriation of large farms and heavy industry on the island. Most of the new income mostly benefited the rural and urban poor, whose wages and purchasing power rose 40% and 20% respectively. Unemployment was virtually nonexistant. (Keen and Hayes, p.440)
 * __Income Redistribution__ **

The 1st Law of Agrarian Reform was passed in May 1959, fulfilling one of the most influential goals of the Cuban Revolution: land reform. Through land expropriation, Castro decreased the size of private land ownership by decreasing personal ownership of land to a stated limit, which did away with basically all large farms in Cuba, as well as seizure of estates belonging to supporters of Batista. 85% of all land in Cuba was under jurisdiction of the First Law of Agrarian Reform because most of the land in Cuba belonged to a select few wealth landowners. The Second Law of Agrarian Reform, passed in May of 1963, expropriated most small and medium sized farms (Keen and Hayes, p.440).
 * __The 1st and 2nd Laws of Agrarian Reform__ **  


 * __Continued Land Reform and Collectivization__ ** As the government gained control of large portions of arable land, the Institute of Agricultural Reform (INRA), set up granjas del pueblo (state run farms) (Keen and Hayes,p.441). Collectivization increased after the oil crisis of 1960 between the United States and Cuba. INRA increased expropriation of foreign owned industry and land. Unfortunately, the urge to diversify agriculture and decrease the sugar monoculture effected the efficiency of Cuba's most cultivatable land. After the exceptionally good sugar harvests of 1961 and 1962, Cuba's overall argricultural production dropped 7% between 1962 and 1969 (Keen and Hayes, p.441). Castro introduced rationing of foodstuffs in 1962, which largely saved Cuba from starvation in the 1960's (Balfour, p.82).

One of the goals of the early Revolutionary government was to quickly industrialize Cuba. Unfortunately, the Revolutionaries were unable to adequately plan and administer industrialization. The U.S. Embargo further compounded this problem, causing chronic shortages of parts and oil for Cuban factories. Industrialization was officially put off till 1963 (Keen and Hayes, p.441). Increased purchase of sugar by the Soviet Union forced Cuba to reemphasize its sugar production in the late 1960's (Keen and Hayes, p.439).
 * __Industrialization__ **

__**The Mao-Guevara Model **__ __By__ 1966, Cuba suffered from the failure of its numerous previous economic models. The Soviet Model for development had proved incompatable with Cuba. Fidel Castro became frustrated with the lack of progress, and endorsed the new Mao-Guevarist Model. Unfortunately, Che Guevara, the major proponent for this plan, had already resigned as the head of INRA. The Mao-Guevara model called for increased collectization, which culminated in the 1968 "Revolutionary Offensive" which appropriated nearly all of the 56,000 private, non-agriculture sector businesses. It also called for a decrease in economic incentives and replaced them with moral incentives. This largely failed, as work quotas put in place usually went unnoticed, and overall efficiency in the workplace decreased. This model also called for a large cadre of highly trained technicians and economists to be successful, which Cuba was woefully short of. Another problem was that JUCEPLAN, the central planning committee decided to enact thousands of microplans, which was caused widespread shortages and bottlenecks of materials because of poor logistical support (Mesa-Lago, p.63). Overall, Mao-Guevara proved unsucessful until it was replaced in 1970.

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__1980's Economy__
<span style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse; color: #404040;">The 1980's saw a substantial amount of growth for Cuba's economy, starting in 1960 Cuba saw an increase of 3.1% annually in income growth per capita in contrast to the rest of Latin America's much slower rate of increase at just 1.8% annually. As a result of unprecedented growth, by 1987, the average per capita income reached an astounding $3,500 almost 50% more than the average of $2,223 for the rest of Latin America. Cuba's most rapidly growing industry was the export of capitol goods, in part because of Cuba's reduced reliance on the sugar industry as its main source of income, not to say that the sugar industry was less important its rate of increase was just not climbing as rapidly as that of other industries. As of 1986 Cuba's manufacturing output had increased 1000% from 2% in 1961 to the astounding 20% in 1986, between 1980 and 1985 Cuba introduced 111 new export products and saw significant increases in many product exports, such as:citrus fruits, fish products, steel products, recycled raw materials, scrap metals, gas stoves, paper products, soldering irons, electrodes, non-electrical machinery, transportation materials and machinery, fiberboard, radios, sulphuric acid, batteries, teletransmission and processing equipment. Balfour, Sebastian. //Castro (Profiles in Power)//. New York: Longman, 2003. Print.
 * __WORKS CITED__ **

Keen, Benjamin. //History of Latin America//. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Print.

Meso-Lago, Carmelo. //The Economy of Socialist Cuba: A Two-Decade Appraisal.// Albuquerque, N.M: University of New Mexico Press, 1981. Print.

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