Cuba - Lonely Planet [137]
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SURGIDERO DE BATABANÓ
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Spanish colonizers founded the original settlement of Havana on the site of present day Surgidero de Batabanó on August 25, 1515, but quickly abandoned it in favor of the north coast. Looking around the decrepit town today, with its ugly apartment blocks and grubby beach-less seafront, it’s not difficult to see why. The only reason you’re likely to visit this fly-blown port is to catch the daily boat to the Isla de la Juventud. Should there be an unforeseen delay, the patchy Museo Municipal (Calle 64 No 7502; 9am-5pm Tue-Sun, closed Mon) will kill 15 minutes. If the wait continues, wander over to La Playita (Small Beach) 2km east of the dock, where there’s a selection of little eateries selling fried fish by a tiny beach.
If desperation strikes and you need to overnight, your options are limited to the four-story unlisted Hotel Dos Hermanos (Calle 68 No 315), an old 29-room peso hotel looming near the port and train station with bad plumbing and the odd bug.
Fidel Castro and the other Moncada prisoners disembarked here on May 15, 1955, after Fulgencio Batista granted them amnesty.
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SUGAR – A BITTER-SWEET HISTORY
As synonymous with Cuba as Che Guevara or Havana Club rum, sugarcane was first introduced onto the island by the Spanish in the early 1500s. With its flat rolling plains and fertile limestone soil, the colony quickly provided ideal growing conditions for the new crop and within decades sugar had become Cuba’s leading export.
During the 17th and 18th centuries Cuba played second fiddle to French Haiti as a world sugar producer. But, following Toussaint L’Ouverture’s 1791 slave rebellion, the pendulum swung inexorably west as thousands of exiled French planters arrived on the island, bringing with them their advanced business know-how and pioneering agro-industrial techniques.
In the two centuries that followed, Cuba metamorphosed from nascent regional sugar economy into the world’s biggest exporter with a huge influx of African slaves pushing production through the roof and making vast fortunes for a new class of wealthy landowners.
But the sonic boom wasn’t to last. Devastated by the two independence wars in the late 19th century, when huge swathes of cane fields were summarily razed, the industry faced ruin as production fell into a seemingly terminal decline.
Fatefully, it was only a temporary blip. Pulled out of the mire in the early 1900s by profit-hungry American businessmen who bought up struggling Cuban mills and land on the cheap, sugar’s unlikely comeback was as dramatic as it was sweet.
Cuba’s second big sugar high took place between 1915 and 1920 when the world sugar price hit $0.22 per pound and annual production peaked out at over four million tonnes. Enormous amounts of money were made almost overnight in an era that became known as the ‘Dance of the Millions.’ Havana reaped the economic benefits with a lavish public works program that saw the construction of such landmark buildings as the US$17 million Capitolio Nacional.
But Cuba’s over-reliance on its sweet-tasting mono-crop would come back to haunt it time and again. Following the 1959 Revolution, one of the first retaliatory acts of the US government was to cancel Cuba’s preferential sugar quota in response to Castro’s radical nationalization campaign. But the ‘punishment’ soon backfired. The next day the Soviet Union stepped in and bought up the US quota lock, stock and barrel, and a new 30-year Soviet-Cuban alliance was sealed in infamy right under Washington’s nose.
Sugar production in Cuba peaked in 1970 when a bumper all-or-nothing harvest hit nearly 10 million tonnes; but thanks to foreign competition, antiquated production techniques and the massive growth of the tourist economy, it’s been declining ever since.
In 2002, the government faced the music