The Cuban sugar harvest of 2024-2025 produced less than 150,000 metric tons, a figure lower than what Cuba achieved in 1899, when the country had just emerged from three years of devastating war.
The Cuban economist Mauricio de Miranda Parrondo, in a conversation with CiberCuba, directly pointed to Fidel Castro as the main responsible party for this historic collapse.
"The sugar industry in the 2024 or 2025 campaign produced less sugar. In that harvest, it produced less sugar than in 1899. 1899," De Miranda stated in a recent interview.
In that post-war year, with mills destroyed and labor scarce, Cuba had managed to produce approximately 332,000 tons. Some independent estimates place the most recent harvest below 129,000 tons.
De Miranda, a full professor at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Cali and a doctor in International Economics from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, was unequivocal in dismissing the U.S. embargo as the cause of this disaster: "Economic sanctions are not responsible for the destruction of the sugar industry."
"The ones responsible are, first of all, Fidel Castro, and secondly, the entire leadership team of the country that accepted what Fidel Castro proposed."
The origin of the collapse dates back to 2002, when Castro promoted the so-called "Álvaro Reynoso Task," which initially shut down 71 sugar mills out of the 156 in operation, leading to the dismantling of nearly 98 in total.
About 100,000 workers lost their jobs. The lands that were once sugarcane fields became overrun by marabou with no alternative economic activity emerging.
"In the end, this resulted in the creation of a marabou forest, because it hasn't even been possible to replace it with other types of productions. The agro-industrial and cultural complex that Moreno Fraginals spoke about in his brilliant work 'El ingenio' has been destroyed," the economist noted.
A brutal contrast
The contrast with the past is stark. In 1970, during the "Ten Million Harvest," Cuba achieved its historical record of 8.5 million tons, accounting for 25% of the world's production.
Today, the country does not even meet its internal consumption, estimated at 600,000-700,000 tons annually, and has been forced to import sugar.
In the 2024-2025 sugar harvest, only 6 of the 14 planned mills operated effectively. The provincial figures illustrate the extent of the failure: Las Tunas produced 7,200 tons, just 16% of its plan; Camagüey, 4,000 tons, 17%.
De Miranda extended the responsibility beyond Castro: "There are hundreds of deputies in the National Assembly who vote en masse, unanimously on all the resolutions and decrees presented to them, and they are co-responsible for all of this."
And he added: "We are still waiting for them to apologize to the country and to take responsibility with courage."
The sugar industry's collapse is part of a historical economic crisis. De Miranda estimated that the cumulative contraction of Cuba's GDP since 2019 reaches 23%, and The Economist Intelligence Unit projects an additional decline of 7.2% for 2026.
Cuba and Haiti were the only countries in Latin America to experience economic contraction in 2025, against a regional average growth of 2.4% according to ECLAC.
"Cuba and Haiti. We are in the worst-case scenario in the Latin American region," summarized the economist, who was blunt about the outlook: "There is no light at the end of the tunnel" under the current political conditions.
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