BY PATRICK BROWN AND JOSHUA CARROLL
MELENA DEL SUR, Cuba - During the potato harvest in mid- February, workers at the Sierra Maestra farm cooperative 40 miles east of Havana welcomed a team of Militant reporters. Cooperative members discussed steps they are taking to increase the yield and quality of their crops, to provide food and housing for their families, and to maintain security and discipline on the property of 20 caballerías (one caballería is about 33 acres).

Our visit began in the workers' meeting room. A number of awards proudly displayed along one wall indicated that this cooperative is considered a model in Cuba, with achievements centered on the discipline, initiatives, and hard work of its members.

In his welcoming remarks, Augustin Acosta, the president of the cooperative, explained that the Sierra Maestra UBPC (Basic Unit of Cooperative Production) is one of six cooperatives established by workers here in September 1993 following the decision to break up the previously existing state farm. This was part of a process, carried out primarily in 1993 - 94, through which the big majority of state farms were reorganized into UBPCs. The aim of this large-scale reorganization, initiated by the government, is to boost agricultural production by cutting back the top-heavy bureaucratic organization of the old state farms and providing direct individual incentives for workers to take more responsibility for the land they work and the food they produce. Unlike workers on state farms, UBPC members own their harvest.

Food-producing UBPCs, which make up a bit over half of the total number of cooperatives established in this process, sell a previously agreed upon portion of their harvest to the state at government-set prices. The surplus is generally sold by the UBPC at agricultural markets in the cities, at unregulated prices. The Sierra Maestra sells 80 percent of its produce to the state distribution agency; the remaining 20 percent is sold to its own members at preferential prices or on the open market. The cooperative owns the machinery it uses and purchases seed, fuel, fertilizer, and other supplies out of its revenues. The land remains nationalized and cannot be sold, rented, bequeathed, mortgaged, or used as collateral for loans.

The number of food-producing UBPCs in Cuba grew from 800 at the end of 1993 to 1,567 in mid-1997, involving by that time more than 122,000 rural workers, 114,000 of whom were cooperative members and the rest contracted labor. There are some 1,100 sugar-producing UBPCs in Cuba as well. UBPC members currently till 37 percent of Cuba's arable land not devoted to sugarcane. The scope of this reorganization of agriculture can be seen in the fact that in 1989 the Cuban state managed 78 percent of all agricultural land; by 1996 it managed less than 25 percent.

The creation of the UBPCs was prompted by the need to increase agricultural production, which fell precipitously in the early 1990s. This drop was a part of the broader economic crisis, referred to by Cubans as the Special Period, which was triggered by the loss of development aid and trade at preferential prices with the Soviet bloc countries. Prior to 1989 the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe accounted for 85 percent of Cuba's foreign trade. The abrupt end to these relations produced critical shortages affecting everything from industrial production to personal life. Between 1989 and 1994, food production declined by about one-third, and agricultural and livestock production plummeted by more than 50 percent. Among the reasons were the lack of fertilizers, pesticides, fuel and spare parts, as well as boots, machetes, and other essentials. This situation, which reached its lowest point in 1993 and the first half of 1994, was substantially aggravated by the U.S. government's nearly four-decade-long economic war against the people of Cuba.

An article by Eduardo Valenzuela in the October 1997 issue of the magazine Cuba Business, published in London, reported that "in 1993 the Department of Social Development of the Ministry of Economy and Planning [of Cuba] calculated that average daily consumption of a diet composed of 82 food products had declined from 2,845 to 1,863 calories. In June 1995 the government told the Secretary General of the United Nations that `for the year 1993 the average daily Cuban diet was 60% lower in proteins than in 1989, 63% lower in fats, 67% lower in Vitamin A and 62% lower in Vitamin C' and that `the proportion of underweight newborn babies increased from 7.6% in 1990 to 9% in 1993.' "

This crisis in agricultural production was also due to "our own deficiencies and mistakes," the economic resolution adopted last October by the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba noted. Even prior to the Special Period, the government had begun to reverse many long-standing policies that had led to declining production and morale in the agricultural sector.

The creation of the UBPCs was a key element in a wide- ranging response to the agricultural crisis by the Cuban government. As a result, reports Cuba Business, by the end of 1996 the direction had been reversed. "Rice consumption per head, for example, is now more than 4kg [per month], compared with 2.5kg in 1990" - a 60 percent increase.

A `disastrous' first year The Sierra Maestra cooperative has 16 caballeriías under cultivation. Its crops include potatoes, black beans, garlic, boniato (a kind of sweet potato), yucca, tomatoes, and corn. In addition, the farm has 130 sheep, 150 chickens, 50 pigs, and a lagoon for the cultivation of fish.

Like many UBPCs, the Sierra Maestra had a rough first year, one that Acosta described as "disastrous." That year it ran a deficit of 112,000 pesos, and two-thirds of the membership left - of the 98 original members, only 34 remained. A new leadership was elected the following year and workers began taking a more active role in the organization of production. The new network of unregulated produce markets began operating in October 1994. For the financial year ending June 30, 1995, the Sierra Maestra registered a surplus of 230,000 pesos. There has been steady improvement since then, although Acosta projected that the coming year will show less progress due to recent storms that severely damaged the potato crop.

Although the large majority of UBPCs are showing signs of progress, the Sierra Maestra is one of a small number that have actually broken even or achieved profitability. At the Fourth National Conference of Basic Units of Cooperative Production held last fall in the eastern province of Santiago, representatives from non-sugar-producing UBPCs discussed ways for improving the organizational and productive methods of the cooperatives in general. Cuban vice president Carlos Lage explained to the meeting that "even though 71 percent of [UBPCs] are showing losses, the constant reduction of those losses and improved results in production are favorable aspects in the course of Cuban agriculture." He further explained that while the population's needs were not yet being met by the UBPCs, "the advances made have allowed us to reduce the level of food imported before the Special Period by 65 percent, and to confirm that the essential way of resolving the population's food needs is through production rather than increased imports." In 1996 Cuba produced a record 1.7 million tons of root vegetables. This, however, fell short of satisfying total demand that is estimated by the Cuban government to be 3.5 million tons.

Goals for the UBPCs
Acosta discussed five goals adopted by the Central Organization of Cuban Workers, the national trade union federation in Cuba, that guide the work of the Sierra Maestra cooperative. Three have been accomplished. They are labor force stability; increasing the use of draft animals and maintaining their conditions so that work can proceed when circumstances do not allow for the use of tractors; and "linking workers to the work site" (la vinculación del hombre al área) - i.e., organizing production and pay to assure workers take the greatest possible responsibility for the land they till.

Acosta explained that in the first years there had been a great deal of fluctuation in the size and composition of the membership of the cooperative, and this had made it harder to organize production efficiently. Stabilizing the workforce was a challenge, he stressed; "not everyone can handle this kind of work." Acosta continued, "I am not talking about age necessarily. Some of the current cooperative members are 60 years old and older. At the same time there are youth who quit, telling me they can't handle working from sunup to sundown." In the past two years, he reported, the UBPC's retention rate has reached 80 to 85 percent. Pedro Martínez, who is 60 years old, joined the cooperative a year and a half ago. Before that he was a truck driver in Havana. He said, "the hours here are long, but they are not as long as at my last job." Cooperative members generally work anywhere from 9 to 11 hours a day, six days a week, and half days on Sunday. They often work more during the harvest. When asked when they get a break, one member of the cooperative laughed and said, "we take breaks when it rains." Martínez prefers working at the UBPC because members receive a higher income when they exceed their quota to the state. He also likes taking part in the decisions about what crops to grow. Seventy-one-year-old Umberto Nicolás Pérez González, a former sugar mill worker who spoke as he harvested potatoes, told Militant reporters that he liked the fact that work on the UBPC was based on "greater cooperation."

The average age of the 113 members of the Sierra Maestra is about 35. Ninety-seven are directly involved in production, including truck drivers, mechanics, and others who work for the entire area. The remaining 16 includes cooks, a janitor, a nurse, and elected individuals with administrative responsibilities. Twenty-three members of the cooperative are women. Thirteen are members Union of Young Communists; 23 are members of the Communist Party; and all belong to the National Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers.

Individuals are taken into membership in the cooperative by majority vote of the members after they have spent at least one month, but more often three, working on the farm. For this initial period of time, they are not members of the UBPC, and do not share in its proceeds, but rather work on a contract.

Students from a nearby high-school-level boarding school come to work in the fields three hours a day. Half the students work in the morning, half in the afternoon. This sort of program, combining study and work, is a cornerstone of the Cuban educational system. The Sierra Maestra provides most of the food for the meals at the school.

Linking workers to the land
Acosta explained how the organization of production to link workers to the land is applied concretely at the Sierra Maestra cooperative. "We have divided the UBPC into three areas," he explained, each of which includes roughly equal portions of the various grades of soil that exist in the region.

Groups of 25 - 30 workers have responsibility for each area, and within each area, individual workers take responsibility for specific plots of land; what they earn is based on their individual production results. Efforts are pooled for major harvests, such as the potato crop. Members receive a share of the profit derived from selling what has been produced in their area. Half the proceeds from sale of the surplus is distributed among members of the UBPC and half goes to a general fund for the cooperative as a whole to pay back loans, make investments, and cover other needs. On a monthly basis, each worker is given an advance on expected income that ranges from 8.40 to 10.75 pesos a day.

A vanguard UBPC
Most UBPCs have not been as successful as the Sierra Maestra in linking workers' remuneration to the results of their labor. In fact, as reported in Granma, the newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, the recent UBPC meeting in Santiago noted that this is a "goal which had been discussed constantly but has not always been put into practice."

One of the main criticisms of the UBPCs is the fact that "90% of the members' income comes from advance payments they receive and only 10% comes from the profits recorded at the end of the fiscal year," reported Granma International in a December 28 article last year. Workers receive these advances whether or not their cooperative ever actually meets its contractual obligations. And the majority do not. María Caridad, who is 29 and was a founding member of the Sierra Maestra, was a worker on the state farm before 1993. She remembered the first years of trying to organize the cooperative. She agreed that "they were a disaster." Caridad credits the turnaround to the fact that the members of the cooperative replaced the old leadership by electing a new one that, among other things, has been able to lead the implementation of the goal of linking workers to the work site. She said, "It's better to work here now. The more work you do, the more you make." She added, "the longer you are here, the more you learn." Progress on this front is one of the many accomplishments that distinguishes the Sierra Maestra as a vanguard UBPC.

This year, the UBPC intends to allocate the best of its crop for export. With the much needed dollars this will bring in, they will buy extra work clothes, shoes, spare parts for equipment, and other things that cannot be purchased for pesos. Additionally, as part of encouraging production, the Cuba Fruta state plant, to which the Sierra Maestra sells a big portion of its potato harvest, places 25 percent of the payments it makes to the UBPC in an account from which the cooperative can make withdrawals in dollars. Tomás Pineda, a member of the co-op since 1994, discussed some of the advances they have made in organization. He pointed to one particular example of the creative ingenuity that the workers use to increase efficiency. El burrito (the little donkey) is a welded steel frame with hooks on the top that holds open a potato sack for a worker to fill. Using el burrito makes it unnecessary for another worker to hold the sack and thereby makes it possible for more workers to gather potatoes from the ground.

Discipline and decision-making
Absenteeism at the Sierra Maestra is almost nonexistent. This has mostly to do with the morale and confidence of the workers, and the fact that it is they themselves who have consciously organized to increase their discipline in order to increase production, Acosta explained. The internal rules of the cooperative - decided on by the workers - stipulate that for one unexcused absence, a worker loses a month's share in the income of the UBPC beyond the advance he has already received; for the second one, he loses two months'; for the third unexcused absence, he is expelled from the cooperative.

All decisions on what crops to plant are made by the membership of the cooperative. Before the planting season begins, the UBPC leadership, in consultation with state agencies, draws up a plan. This is discussed and modified by the workers in each area. Final proposals are decided on by a general assembly of the members of the cooperative.

The Sierra Maestra, at the request of the state, had been allotting five caballerías to growing potatoes. Last year, however, the members thought that given the cooperative's size, this volume was too large. They noted that the potato harvest requires particularly labor-intensive work, and this work must be done in a relatively short period of time. They proposed that they grow only two caballerías of potatoes. This was agreed to.

The members of the cooperative meet once a month in a general assembly to make decisions about production schedules, organization, and other important business matters. They used to meet every three months, but recently decided that it was necessary to meet more often. Additionally, Saturdays at 6:30 a.m. all the members meet to make those pressing decisions that cannot wait until the monthly meeting. "These are practical meetings, however," said Acosta, explaining that they last only 20 - 25 minutes, "where everyone gets access to information, and where we vote on what needs to be voted on - then we get to work!"

There are two goals the Sierra Maestra cooperative has not yet met: achieving food self-sufficiency in animal protein; and the construction of adequate housing to fulfill the needs of cooperative members.

Acosta pointed out that while the cooperative produces enough food to supply its own dining room (workers get their main meal and two substantial snacks each day), they have not yet been able to produce enough food to supply all the needs of each family, especially with animal protein. Workers at the cooperative, however, do eat meat two to three times a week - much more than most Cubans. Only 25 percent of the food- producing UBPCs have achieved self-sufficiency even in food production such as root and garden vegetables, to say nothing of meat.

Housing: a leadership question
Neither has the cooperative yet been able to build the housing needed by its members, a number of whom live in dormitory-style housing on site. Building individual, private housing for these members and their families is a priority. "We need to construct 13 more homes for the members of the cooperative," explained Héctor del Cueto Rico, the UBPC's economist. When asked if the insufficient housing was due to the scarcity of resources, del Cueto Rico answered, "Sure, our resources are limited. But," he stressed, "finishing the construction of homes is a leadership question - with leadership you can overcome the problem of limited resources." Del Cueto Rico pointed out that they have just completed seven new homes on the property of the cooperative. Five more will be built this year; and the remaining eight, the year after that. Building adequate housing for UBPC members is one of the goals on which the least progress has been made in Cuba overall. In fact, in Granma International's October 5 report on the national meeting of the UBPCs, it notes that over the past four years only 18 percent of the total housing needed by the UBPC's has actually been built, "in spite of this activity having the highest priority."

Security
Acosta explained that the co-op has had to deal with the problem of theft - not by members, he stressed, but from the outside.

To confront this they organize their own security. Each night two teams of "worker guards" take shifts patrolling - every member participates. Those who live on the grounds make rounds twice each night as well. In addition, they have developed a "rapid response brigade." Acosta told a story about a time this brigade was called into action. Last year, the co-op's only horse was stolen in the middle of the night. They sounded the alarm, and within minutes members of the co-op came out, many in their underwear, he noted. They searched until five or six in the morning but were unable to find the mare. So they organized a smaller detachment, who "became bloodhounds" and "did some detective work." Ultimately, the mare was found in a cornfield not far from the farm. They never found the thieves.

Acosta explained the policy of the co-op when they do catch thieves. First, the thief is relieved of all the possessions he is carrying - tools, bicycle, knife, whatever. These become the property of the Sierra Maestra. Then a fine is discussed and decided on by the leadership of the cooperative. If the thief agrees to pay, he is let go. Half the fine goes to the workers who caught the thief, and the other half goes to the cooperative as a whole. If he refuses to accept these terms, he is turned over to the local police. These are a part of the internal bylaws of the Sierra Maestra, Acosta explained. "This is not the law in Cuba," he noted, "but it is what we do here."

Acosta told another story about someone who had been caught stealing. Not long ago, a young man had been caught with some yucca he had taken from the cooperative. It was obvious to Acosta that he was hungry and that his family needed the vegetable. "So we decided to let him keep it," Acosta explained, "but we told him that he should never steal from us again. We told him that the next time he needed food, we would sell it to him for what he could afford, or we would give it to him, but that he must ask us."

Overall Cuba's economy grew 2 percent in 1997, less than had been hoped for but considered an achievement in the face of the tightening of the U.S. embargo, more than $800 million in damage from Hurricane Lily, and a poor sugar harvest. Economic growth of 4 - 6 percent is projected for 1998 and 1999.

The discipline, morale, and collective effort displayed by workers at the Sierra Maestra show how working people in Cuba have consciously fought to confront the economic crisis through which they have been living, and how - in the process - they have advanced their revolution.

Mary-Alice Waters and Francisco Picado contributed to this article.  
 
 
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