Cuban Economics Essay -- Essays Papers

Introduction Modern Cuba is a country born of struggle. The revolutionary movement that formed the modern day government has remained in power for more than forty years. Indeed, the Cuban government is perhaps one of the most stable governments in the region. This fact is made even more evident by the recent fall of democracy in Haiti. However, the past ten years has seen a marked change in Cuban economic policy. Ostracized from the international community and faced with an embargo imposed by the United States, Cuba has turned to various sources of economic reform in order to survive in a global market. Background (1959 – 1991) During the early period after the revolution, Cuba’s primary economic base was based upon one agricultural resource: sugar (Packenham, pg. 137). Without a diversified agricultural or industrial base, Cuba was forced to become dependent on the only superpower that shared its political ideology, the Soviet Union. Indeed, Cuban trade with the Soviet Union reached a level of 69 percent in 1978, a level equivalent to the amount of trade conducted with the United States prior to the revolution (Packenham, pg. 139). As Cuba entered the 1980’s, it was plagued with the same problems that had plagued it since its inception: dependence on one agricultural produce and on one major trading partner. In the estimate of Carmelo Mesa-Lago, most of the Cuban growth from 1960-1984 came as a result of the $40 billion in Soviet aid (â€Å"Cuban Economy†, pg. 187). Leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban economy was in a terrible condition. In 1986, the economic growth in planned prices was only 1.4 percent compared to a planned rate of 3 percent. Labor productivity fell 1.6 per... ...orida Press (1994). Packenham, Robert A., â€Å"Cuba and the USSR since 1959: What Kind of Dependency†, pgs. 135-165 in Louis Horowitz ed., Cuban Communism (7th ed.), Transaction Publishers (1989). Perez-Lopez, Jorge F., Cuba’s Second Economy: From Behind the Scenes to Center Stage, Transaction Publishers (1995). Theriot, Lawrence H., â€Å"Cuba Faces the Economic Realities of the 1980’s†, pgs. 257-276 in Louis Horowitz ed., Cuban Communism (7th ed.), Transaction Publishers (1989). Watson, Hilbourne A., â€Å"The Techno-Paradigm Shift, Globalization, and Western Hemisphere Integration Trends and Tendencies: Mapping Issues in the Economic and Social Evolution of the Caribbean†, pgs. 59-88 in Joseph S. Tulchin, Andres Serbin, and Rafael Hernandez eds., Cuba and the Caribbean: Regional Issues and Trends in the Post-Cold War Era, Scholarly Resources (1997).