On May 17, National Farmers’ Day in Cuba, working people across the island marked the anniversary of the First Agrarian Reform. It was carried through 67 years ago by the workers and farmers government that had taken power five months earlier on Jan. 1, 1959, led by Fidel Castro and the Rebel Army.
The law nationalized millions of acres of large plantations owned by foreign and Cuban capitalists, guaranteeing use of the land to those who live on and work it — a right that remains in force today.
Farmers across the island also celebrated the founding of the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), formed in 1961. ANAP organizes hundreds of thousands of independent farmers and cooperatives in the nonstate sector, who till the majority of the country’s agricultural land, growing 70% of the food.
“There is no political, economic, or social measure that has been taken in Cuba after the 1959 revolution in which ANAP has not played a leading role,” José Miguel Lara, a leader of the association, told Cuban television May 17.
These activities across Cuba were marked by farmers’ commitment to defend Cuba’s sovereignty and the gains of its socialist revolution in the face of Washington’s brutal and escalating economic sanctions and military threats.
In recent years, ANAP members have confronted the challenges caused by U.S. economic sanctions, as well as others caused by government bureaucratic practices that put obstacles in the way of food production.
Thousands received title to land
The agrarian reform “radically changed the life of Cuba’s peasantry,” Beatriz Navarro, head of ANAP’s international relations department, said on Cuban TV. “It ended the humiliation to which they were subjected. Today they are men and women with rights that had been denied to them” prior to the revolution.
Over 100,000 peasant families received land titles when Fidel Castro signed the reform law at La Plata, in the Sierra Maestra mountains. It was the first of a series of far-reaching advances carried out through the mobilization of millions of workers and peasants. It included a national campaign that wiped out illiteracy; countrywide construction of schools, housing and medical centers; and the electrification of rural Cuba. These were all conscious steps taken by the revolutionary leadership to close the gap between conditions in city and countryside.
The two anniversaries, marking gains that helped transform Cuba and its people, are part of the country’s living memory.
Before 1959 the best land in Cuba belonged to U.S. capitalist giants like the United Fruit Company and Cuban-American Sugar Mills Company as well as wealthy Cuban landowners. Cuba’s peasants were forced to work as sharecroppers, subject to arbitrary evictions and limited to seasonal work.
The land expropriations and other measures advanced by the revolution increased the well-being and confidence of working people at the expense of the capitalist exploiters, who responded with increasing virulence. The U.S. rulers, allied with landowners who still controlled 5 million acres, organized armed counterrevolutionary bands to attack and terrorize supporters of the revolution.
These counterrevolutionary efforts — aimed at preparing the ground for a U.S. military invasion — were ultimately defeated both politically and militarily, as peasants saw their interests lay with the revolution and fought to defend and advance it. In 1963 a second law was adopted that did away with the remaining large capitalist-owned estates.
The U.S. rulers have never forgiven working people in Cuba for taking control over their land, factories, banks, public utilities and mineral resources and used them to meet their needs. For over six decades the U.S. government — regardless of which capitalist party is in office — has waged a relentless economic war against the Cuban people to destroy their socialist revolution and restore capitalist exploitation.
Since January Washington has blocked fuel deliveries to Cuba and tightened sanctions aimed at suffocating the country’s economy and the lives of millions of Cubans. Washington’s threats of imposing tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba has succeeded in preventing any further deliveries except for one in March.
‘Heads high, hands in the soil’
Under the slogan “With our heads held high and our hands in the soil,” ANAP’s May 17 activities were an affirmation of Cuban farmers’ commitment to keep producing despite the U.S. rulers’ assault.
“We take on the big commitment to contribute everything we can,” said Alfredo García, vice president of the Fructuoso Rodríguez Cooperative in Boyeros, near Havana, May 10. “Many people depend on these products for farmers markets, childcare centers and other needs in the municipality.”
The Fructuoso Rodríguez, a farm that grows flowers, like many cooperatives across the country, has now reorganized production to also plant food crops, taking advantage of seasonal rainfall.
“We don’t have a set schedule to irrigate,” said García. “We do it whenever the electricity kicks in, whether at midnight, 1 a.m., 4 a.m., or whenever.”
In collaboration with government institutions, farm cooperatives are now pooling scarce fuel resources to deliver their fresh produce to area provincial markets. Even with these efforts, however, severe shortages and high prices are still widespread, especially in larger cities.
These conditions have aggravated the already existing bottlenecks in the collection and distribution of fresh milk, sold at subsidized prices for young children, pregnant women and people with special nutritional needs. More than 100,000 children are affected.
Cuban farmers are striving to make maximum use of the means we have available to find solutions, said Marcelino Acosta, a farmer in Boyeros. “With blackouts or without blackouts, we’re pushing ahead.”
“Every furrow we dig is a trench against the blockade,” said Ailén Amador Sánchez, at the main Peasants Day celebration in Aguada de Pasajeros, in Cienfuegos province. “Everything we can harvest with the scarce resources we have is the best tribute to Fidel, who made us the owners of the land.”