Sugar and Railroads: A Cuban History, 1837-1959

More broadly, the book uses the development of the Cuban rail transport system to provide a fascinating perspective on Cuban history, particularly the story of its predominant agro-industry, sugar. While railroads facilitated the sugar industry's rapid growth after 1837, the authors argue, sugar interests determined where railroads would be built and who would benefit from them. Zanetti and Garc’a explore the implications of this symbiotic relationship for the technological development of the railroads, the economic evolution of Cuba, and the lives of the railroad workers.

As this work shows, the economic benefits that accompanied the rise of railroads in Europe and the United States were not repeated in Cuba. Sugar and Railroads provides a poignant demonstration of the fact that technological progress alone is far from sufficient for development.

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Should be read as one eats Fuji fish with due respect to the poison, 2007-03-06
Zanetti Lecuona, Oscar and Alejandro Garcia Alvarez 1998 Sugar & railroads: a Cuban history, 1837-1959. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, (translated by Franklin W, Knight and Mary Todd from Caminos para el azucar 1987 Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, Havana) ISBN-10 0807823856 ISBN-13 978-0807823859.


This is an interesting book with much useful information on Cuban railroads and Cuba in general. However, it should only be read as one eats Fuji fish with due respect to the poison. This work is a product of an official Cuban government press and thus infused with communist propaganda and factual distortion. For instance the discussion of Horatio S. Rubens completely omits reference to the work Rubens did for Cuban Independence as lawyer for the Mambi Independence fighters (see Liberty: The Story of Cuba (Hardcover) by Horatio S. Rubens ISBN-10 0404006337; ISBN-13: 978-0404006334). In this Zanetti and Garcia volume the section on Cuban president and then dictator Gerardo Machado (pp. 309-337 and others) much emphasis is given to labor conflict, and yet on p. 337 the tolerance of Machado for the Cuban Communist Party (Stalinist) is strikingly out of context, and the collaboration of this party with the increasingly dictatorial Machado is finessed e.g. p. 321 "With Varona murdered and the Hermandad handed over to traitorous yellow leaders, the railroad proletariat was helpless against the Machado dictatorship" (page numbers are taken from the hard cover edition). And then there is the almost comical ideology of the statement on page 306 "Since the victorious October (Soviet) Revolution had sown panic among the exploiters..." Still the book is useful to track down details of Cuban history such as the map on page 230 which emphasizes the importance of the (Victoria de las) Tunas station in the 1917 Chambelona War (e.g. The New York Times. March 8, 1917, Thursday p 1. "Pablo Menocal, brother of the President and commander of the militia forces in Oriente Province, telegraphed today that General (Calixto Garcia-Iñiguez) Enamorado, hearing that a band of rebels were burning the cars at Dominguez Station, attacked, killing eighteen, including their chief, Capitan José Pantoja."). Thus until, as a historian friend points out, the Cuban files are again open to general inspection one cannot expect objective histories from inside the island. Therefore when one seeks information on the highly developed Cuban railroad system, one must by present necessity refer with great caution to this very flawed book.

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