Blazing Cane

Sugar was Cuba's principal export from the late eighteenth century throughout much of the twentieth, and the majority of the population depended on it for their livelihood. As Cuba's dominance in sugar production declined, however, long periods of unemployment and economic depression followed, and workers lit cane fires in reaction and protest. By analyzing the experiences of workers, farmers, managers, and residents in sugar communities, Gillian McGillivray illuminates the formation and transformation of the Cuban republic during a tumultuous ninety-year period in Cuba's history, as the country shifted from colonialism, through patronage and then populist rule, to full-scale revolutions in 1933 and 1959. Drawing upon long-neglected national and provincial archives in Cuba and the United States, McGillivray charts the course of Cuba on both a local and a national level, revealing in the process how the two intersect and reinforce one another. She focuses on two sugar communities - Chaparra, located in eastern Cuba, and Tuinucu, located in the central province of Sancti Spiritus - to examine how individuals built and sustained sugar communities, and how their actions altered the political, social, and economic structures of Cuba over time. Cane burning, at the hands of cane farmers, workers, and leaders at various points in Cuban history, became a surprising, unexpectedly powerful way to commit sabotage, take control of the harvest season, improve working conditions, protest political repression, attack colonialism and elite rule, force land reform, nationalize sugarmills, and ultimately acquire greater access to political and economic power on the island. Layering local Cuban experiences within global phenomena and international political trends, "Blazing Cane" reveals that much can be learned about Cuba's revolutionary and republican periods through a look at worker and farmer mobilization.