Oscar Zanetti and Alejandro García introduce this English translation of Caminos para el azúcar as a “preliminary synthesis” (p. xxviii) of Cuban railroad history. After noting the limited number of previous studies on the subject, the authors use corporate and government data and interviews to provide the most complete survey and analysis available of the historic relationship between Cuban railroads and sugar.
Constructed to meet the needs of sugar producers, the railroads also attempted to meet colonial and neocolonial needs in the sugar export economy. As the authors demonstrate, from 1837 to 1959, these narrow objectives defined the value of this transferred technology. This value, as other studies of railroads have demonstrated, could potentially include promoting national economic integration, providing access to raw materials, and accumulating profits for investment in processing and marketing for diversified agriculture and industry. A number of studies in less-industrialized economies, with which the authors seem unfamiliar, have analyzed these issues, using rail development in parts of Europe and the United States as the “success story” of transportation technology and industrialization and demonstrating the limited value of this technology in other areas. In addition, as the authors demonstrate in this study, even from the perspective of those who promoted and facilitated railroad expansion for limited purposes, returns to investment fluctuated according to international market vagaries, managerial efficiency labor mobilization, costs and efficiency of rolling stock, and economic and political crises.
Zanetti and García’s chronological study of the construction and expansion of Cuban rails is rich in detail, not only about the railroads themselves, but about the men involved: owners, workers, and agents of government. By studying the roles of the government and the private sector in establishing, financing, and regulating the industry, the authors have contributed a valuable case study to the field of development issues. In addition, this book has expanded the scope of these studies by adding other dimensions. One is the analysis of the process of labor exploitation and of union failures and successes in both improving labor interests and expanding railroad profits; the second is the role of political actors, including parties, in prioritizing or repressing the interests of rail owners or rail workers. By incorporating land, labor, and capital factors in analysis from the 1830s through the 1950s, and placing the study in the context of internal and external wars, transition to United States economic and political domination, political party agendas, fluctuating sugar prices, as well as competition with other transportation sectors — particularly shipping and trucking—this work should appeal to a wide range of readers.
While Sugar and Railroads is also a study of competing capital—as Spanish, British, then United States financiers and corporations dominated the railroad sector to profit from sugar—two key factors deserve more attention. One involves exploring why limited domestic financing of both railroads and other ventures persisted in Cuba, an important issue in understanding the problem of reinvestment of sugar and railroad profits. Another omission is the lack of data on imports to Cuba that were carried by rail to the opening frontiers, and to what extent these imports might have competed unfavorably with existing or potential local production. Incorporating both issues would have contributed to a fuller understanding of the limits of agricultural and industrial diversification.
One other problem with this otherwise significant contribution to the study of industrialization and diversification under colonialism and neocolonialism is readily apparent. According to the authors, after 1959 “Cuba’s railroads entered a new stage . . . a new chapter . . . that was entirely different from their long history” (p. 400). The central thesis of the study—that transferred technology in Cuba’s colonial and neocolonial sugar export economy failed to contribute to industrialization and diversification—is effectively demonstrated. However, the authors would have enhanced their argument by analyzing the successes and failures since 1959 of attempts to reverse these historic trends. While commendable for its accomplishments alone, the study also provides an engaging framework for future research.