IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 3 ENGLISH | Page 100

February 1961, the Ministry of Industry was created, and sugar mills were put under its control,
as if it were just any old industry. Comandante
Che Guevara was assigned to run the Ministry; he
was the leader of the development program during those years. Unfavorable results were quick in
coming and if Cuba managed to produce 6.8 million metric tons of sugar in 1961, by 1963 it was

The alliance with the Soviet Union became the regime’s option for survival. Mistrustfully, at first,
and later with intense dependency, sugar became
the life raft of the devastated Cuban economy.
There has been little research about how our industries were able to survive the incredible shortage of replacement parts, the almost non-existent
technological innovation, and the loss of account-

“Mercedes” Sugar mill
less than 4 million. This shortfall was not made
up for by the expected results for this industrialist
program; the shortcoming became overwhelming
and the liturgy of industrialization ceased, only to
initiate an accelerated march backwards: the
recreation of sugar production.
Reynaldo Castro Yedra told Álvarez Rodríguez
that in 1963, during May Day festivities, it was
the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces,
Commander Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz, who presided over the event in the Plaza of the Revolution. The absence of Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
was due to the fact he was in the Soviet Union,
from whence he’d come with a new economic
plan: to increase sugar production in such a way
that there would be a Harvest of Ten Million Tons
by 1970.1

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ing and control systems. La callada molienda offers a number of clues. Sugar workers, women
and men from all over the country were left in
charge of the sugar mills, be they peasants, industrial workers, technicians or scientists. They were
responsible for now allowing so many shortages
to destroy Cuba’s productive capacity. This reality further deepened the traditional attachment
that Cuban towns had for the source of work,
study and play; everything came together at sugar
mills, as the following testimony gathered by Álvarez Rodríguez attests:
Gladys Abreu Cárdenas: “One day, they