Cuba fieldcourse 2010
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UNIVERSITY OF HAVANAThe Universidad of Havana (or La Colina) was founded by Dominican monks in 1728 and, like many universities, it remained a religious institution until 1842 when it was secularised. Today, the university has approximately 30000 students (including 2000 overseas students) and employs about 1700 lecturers in social sciences, humanities, natural sciences and maths. Architecture: From the street (Calle L), the entrance to the university is clearly marked by a large central stairway and statue. Walk up these steps and into the campus where most of the buildings were constructed between 1908 and 1932 (like much of the rest of Vedado). The central square (Plaza Ignacio Agramonte) contains a number of statues and other monuments including a tank captured by the rebels in 1958. Off the central plaza are the library and a number of museums including the museum of natural history and an anthropological museum. As you walk out of the campus, towards Revolution Square, you will pass the university’s 10,000 seat stadium, Estadio Universitario Juan Abrahantes where students play football and baseball. Consider:
US MAINE This monument was dedicated to the American soldiers that were killed in the explosion of the USS Maine. The monument remains standing despite the increasing tensions between the US and Cuba although the eagle that sat on the top of the monument has been removed because it was seen as too overt a symbol of US imperialism (or, as the Americans suggest it was removed during a tropical storm). It is one of relatively few locations in Havana that you may see some graffiti. VEDADOH  istory: Vedado is one of Havana’s newer neighbourhoods. It developed when American influence on the island was at its peak, after, the Spanish-American War. At this time, the United States governed Cuba and many US businesses invested in Havana. Vedado was in its prime in the 1920s and 1930s when American tourists flocked to the island attracted by its relative proximity (it was easily accessible by ferry from Miami and no visa was required) and the availability of alcohol at a time when the US was enforcing prohibition. During the Batista era, American mafia bosses invested heavily in Vedado and capitalised on US restrictions to develop a thriving tourist industry based around alcohol, 24 hour gambling and prostitution.
From the 1920s to the 1940s, growth in the city accompanied by a boom in building ensured that Vedado became Havana’s prime commercial and (middle class) residential area. Many of Havana’s most famous landmarks (such as the University of Havana, the Hotel Nacional and the first skyscraper, the López Serrano building on Linea and 11) were built at this time and often in a new architectural style. Although many middle class families moved to Mirimar in the 1950s, Vedado remained the centre of commercial and social life with many cinemas, casinos, hotels and restaurants. It was in Vedado that the infamous influence of the mafia was strongest and associated with hotels Capri, Nacional and Riviera. The organisation of both streets and buildings in Vedado (and Mirimar to the west) was carefully planned. The influence of American occupants in the city was apparent. As in many US cities at the turn of the century, ‘unhealthy living’ (in both moral and social terms) was seen to be a product of overcrowded and industrial living conditions. As a result, when this area was developed, the wide streets were lined with trees and planning regulations made open spaces mandatory as part of the overall landscaping of the area. A minimum of one-third of each plot was required to be left unbuilt with fifteen feet of garden being retained between the building and the street. Many of these spaces and Vedado’s parks have since been built upon but you will notice that this area is more open than other parts of Havana. Things to see in Vedado:
Consider:
SATURDAY Outside Havana Our purpose today is to put the experiences of Havana into a broader context by travelling to a number of different locations outside of the capital. These locations will provide either an alternate perspective on Havana and its regional context, or a snapshot of non-urban landscapes and livelihoods, enabling you to think about the relations between the city, its suburbs and hinterlands. As we drive out of Havana, compare the different suburbs. Mirimar is the first suburb to the West of Havana and was built from the 1920s onwards. Consider the cultural and economic landscape of this area and compare it to Old Havana and Vedado. Over the course of the day, consider the following:
The itinerary may be subject to change. We expect, however, to see some or all of the following areas. MIRIMAR The influence of American wealth is clearly visible in the suburb of Mirimar, which was designed in a similar way to the American garden city. In the early years of the revolution, the wealthy white residents of this suburb were one of the first groups of people to leave Cuba. The large houses were mainly turned into multiple dwellings with many becoming home to students or being used as re-education centres intended to retrain locals (e.g. prostitutes) in certain professions. Some were reassigned to exemplary party workers. Today, while some of the houses are in a state of disrepair, this area still has a feeling of wealth compared with other areas of Havana. Some of the large houses are now embassies, while others are headquarters for mixed Cuban/foreign enterprises. This areas houses many of Cuba’s wealthier foreign workers (mainly to the West of the Almendares) and some services have developed to meet their needs including two private dollar hospitals (for foreigners only), international schools and shops including Le Select (Qunita Avenida) and a large supermaret on the corner of 70 and Tercera. Maquete de la Habana (Calle 28 between 1st and 3rd Avenue) is a simple, large-scale model of Havana at a scale of 1:1000. It covers 144m2 equivalent to 144km2 of the city. The Maquete has been created by photographing and measuring every building in Havana before one of the nine modellers then builds it and adds it to the model. The model is colour coded with colonial buildings (16th to 19th century) coloured in reddish-brown, buildings from 1900 to 1958 are coloured yellowish-brown and anything built post-revolution is coloured cream. Projects, monuments and cemeteries are coloured white. The model shows that most of Havana’s buildings were built in the 20th century with considerable building expected in the future (including projects (white buildings) such as hotels and commercial centres proposed by foreign investors). The model is housed in the building of the Centre for Integral Development of the City (see Havana: World Heritage Site). Their role is to monitor the conservation and urbanisation of Havana. Every time a new building is proposed, a model is built and inserted in the Maquete to assess its likely impact on the environment. The group has an advisory role only and has had some success in toning down offices and buildings that would dominate certain neighbourhoods but the power of hard currency means that some buildings are approved despite their concerns. REGLA Regla is one of Havana’s 15 municipalities. It is an industrial port town known as the centre for Afro-Cuban religions. 20th century installations surround the town including the 65ha Belot oil refinery that belonged to Esso, Shell and Texaco. PINAR DEL RIO This area is the third largest province in Cuba (population about 60,000) and lies to the West of Havana. This area is much less developed than the Eastern parts of Cuba and the standard of living in this area in generally quite low. Most of the population farm the land (plains of Eastern Pinar del Rio are planted in sugar cane, the Vinales Valley is a tobacco growing area, there are rice fields in the south and cattle ranching is common in the foothills of the mountains). This area is being developed as an area of Ecotourism. TOBACCO P  inar del Rio is the source of 80% of Cuba’s tobacco. The first tobacco factory opened in 1760 and since then it has remained as the region’s main industry. Today, private farms account for the majority of the crop and some technological advances have changed production methods (including irrigation). Nonetheless, harvesting is still largely done by hand. When the leaves have been harvested, they are left to dry in special huts (Vegas) which you will see as we drive around the area. Once dried, the leaves are transported to the cigar factories, many of which are now located in Havana (e.g. Real Fåbrica de Tabacos la Corona near the Capitolo in Centro Habana).
The government is keen to increase tobacco production and has encouraged growth in the industry by turning state farms into co-operatives and by giving land to farming families. SUGAR Sugar is one of the continuities of Cuban culture and society: sugar cane was introduced to the island by the Spanish and has been grown continuously since 1511. In the details of its organisation and production, however, sugar captures many of the political and economic changes that characterise Cuban history. Cuba is one of several Caribbean ‘sugar islands’ – other significant ones are Barbados, Jamaica, Santo Domingo and the Dominican Republic – where sugar has been cultivated to feed demand from temperate regions. Other significant sugar growing areas in the western hemisphere include Florida and Brazil. Sugar cane is a tropical plantation crop. Its origins lie in SE Asia, although it was already being cultivated in the Mediterranean by the 8th century AD, from where it crossed the Atlantic to the New World with Spanish and Portuguese exploration. The fast-growing plant harnesses sunlight, moisture and soil nutrients to produce a carbohydrate (sucrose) that can be extracted by cutting the plant and crushing the stems in a sugar mill (you will find this cane juice available to drink in some markets where it is known as guarapo: it can be a health hazard, however, because of the conditions under which it is hand-squeezed). To make sugar, the cane juice is heated to drive off the water, leaving a crystalline residue. Sugar is a classic weight-loss industry, in that the volume of the finished product is much smaller – and the value much greater – than the raw sugar cane that enters the mill: the valuable part attains a remarkable geographical mobility (it crosses oceans, enters human bodies) while the waste component takes a much shorter, more mundane journey (it is dumped, or becomes local animal feed). In some parts of the world, however, the crushed stems and leaves of the sugar cane (known as bagasse) take on a new life as they are used to produce ethanol/biofuel or are burned as fuel in power stations. The value-per-unit weight of sugar can be further enhanced by upgrading it into alcohol: the rum industry in Cuba and other parts of the Caribbean, for example, is an example of downstream diversification that effectively makes Cuban sugar travel more easily across space (into supermarkets in Asia, for example). Getting Cuban sugar to travel – i.e. making it competitive as an export crop - has been one of the enduring challenges for the island. For the first 200 years of Spanish rule the sugar produced in Cuba was used primarily for domestic consumption: although efforts were made at the end of the 16th century to export sugar to Spain, investment in Cuban sugar mills lagged those by the French and British in other parts of the Caribbean. The brief period of British rule in Havana (1762) transformed the island’s sugar industry, however: by loosening Spanish control over the trade in sugar and expanding markets beyond Spain, by introducing the island to new technologies (that increased the quality and productivity of sugar milling, some via French plantation owners fleeing slave revolts in Santo Domingo), and by linking Cuba to the British-controlled slave trade, the area of land in sugar plantations grew rapidly after 1762. Cuba became one of the world’s largest sugar exporters in the 19th century as a result of major transformations inside and outside Cuba. Beyond the island’s shores, soaring demand for sugar in Europe buoyed demand. Average sugar intake in Europe rose strikingly from the late 19th century onwards, as demonstrated by Sidney Mintz in his remarkable book ‘Sweetness and Power’: an essential fuel for industrialisation, sugar maintained the productivity of the urban proletariat (where do you think the British passion for a tea-break and a biscuit comes from?). Within Cuba, the demography and culture of the island was transformed by the importation of hundreds of thousands of African slaves. It was in this period that much of the island’s deforestation occurred, as land was cleared for new plantations and cattle and tobacco farms were converted to sugar. The application of steam power – to haul sugar cane and to power the mills – further intensified sugar production and deforestation: the first railways in Latin America and the Caribbean were installed on Cuban plantations in the 1830s. The geography of mechanisation during the 19th century sugar boom was uneven: much of the growth was concentrated on large plantations in the west of the country (owned and controlled by the peninsulares – whites born in Spain), while smaller plantations in the East (owned by criollos – locally born whites) still had to rely on relatively expensive slave imports. The simultaneous growth and crisis of these two components of the Cuban sugar industry gave rise to Wars of Independence in 1868 and 1895, and led to US intervention in 1898. By the end of the 19th century, American interests had become dominant in the capital-intensive sugar mills and plantations. Further mechanisation and centralisation followed, often in association with large American food manufacturers - like the chocolate-maker Hershey and the rum-maker Bacardi – who had backwardly-integrated into sugar production. High levels of American investment and control was enabled by the Platt Amendment (1902) and the Reciprocity Treaty (1903) which formalised Cuba’s status as a neo-colony of the US: the Reciprocity Treaty, for example, established Cuba as a supplier of raw sugar to the US in exchange for American manufactured goods. On the eve of the revolution over half the sugar mills in Cuba were foreign-owned. Despite the revolution’s critique of sugar dependency and the neglect of other components of the economy, sugar quickly became a mainstay and symbol of the revolution: mills were nationalised, sugar was promoted, and boosting the annual sugar harvest – known as zafra – became a primary economic goal and a yardstick of economic success. Soviet patronage – and the relatively high prices it paid for Cuban sugar – in this period masked falling productivity and the exhaustion of soil conditions. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, significant problems in the sugar sector were exposed. Although the last fifteen years have seen a number of efforts to improve productivity and efficiency in the sugar sector, the area under sugar has shrunk considerably. Diversification away from sugar is seen in both agriculture and the economy more generally, with a significant increase in tourist revenue since the mid-1990s. RUM The Ministry of Sugar Industries (MINAZ) runs all sugar and related operations in Cuba. The agricultural segment of the sugar industry is composed of private and state farms while the industrial segment consists of 156 mills, 16 sugar refineries and 13 distilleries producing rum. 
SUNDAY Project Time You have time to develop your projects and spend time visiting areas that may be important for your research. REMEMBER: 6pm meeting with Staff Places you may want to visit:
MONDAY US Special Interests Section and Playas del Este You may want to get up early and do some tour preparation today. Later in the morning we will be given a talk and a chance for Q&A at the US Special Interests section (on the Malecon in Vedado). Form up in the lobby at 10am with your passport. Think about the questions you may want to ask during the briefing, In the afternoon we will go to Playas del Este, where we will examine the role of international tourism as an economic development strategy. PLAYAS DEL ESTE Playas del Este are the nearest beaches to Havana and, unlike some of the larger tourist resorts like Varadero (the large tourist resort to the East of Havana), are used by Cubans as well as tourists. This stretch of coastline is made up to two main beaches that are divided into five sections: to the west of the River Itabo (nearest to Havana) are Tarará3, El Mégano and Santa María del Mar and to the Eastern side are Boca Ciega and Guanabo. On route to the beaches, you will pass by a number of sites including:
TOURISM
History of Tourism to Cuba: Prior to 1959, tourism was a major industry within Cuba providing numerous jobs as well as hard currency. In the early years of the Revolution, international tourism largely disappeared from the island as a result of the US Embargo and a sense that tourism was too closely associated with the evils of capitalism – most notably, prostitution, organised crime, gambling and drugs. At this time, much of the pre-1959 tourist infrastructure was left for Cuban citizens (and some socialist visitors) but there was no additional investment within the sector. As a result, there were few foreign tourists arriving in Cuba and those who did come were largely sympathisers who came on working trips. Cubans were encouraged to be wary of visitors and were largely unaware of the world beyond their shores. 
From the mid-1970s onwards, as the number of tourists worldwide increased, so Cuba once again began to see the arrival of some foreign visitors. In 1974, just 8400 tourists came to Cuba from capitalist countries. By 1987, this figure had risen to 217 900 and in 1990 was 340 300. In 1976, the Cuban government began to recognise the potential economic benefits of increased tourism and established INTUR (Instituto Nacional de Turismo) to develop national and international tourism. Today, visitors mainly come from Canada (approximately 75000 visitors pa), Germany (60000), Mexico (35000) and Spain (34000). Despite these figures, the growth of the tourist industry is restricted by the continued US embargo. Increasingly, the Cuban tourist industry has achieved some success in attracting foreign investment from countries other than the US – particularly Spain and Germany. Under laws introduced in 1982, joint ventures in tourism can be set up so long as foreign ownership does not exceed 49%. Joint ventures are encouraged by the development favourable terms to the investor rumoured to include:
Tourism has some direct benefits for the host country including:
Other Canada Germany Italy
Spain France
United States
(Source: Scarpaci et al, 2002: 294) In 1990, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba had to explore new ways of attracting foreign currency into its stagnant economy. In 1993, the legalisation of the US dollar resulted in a significant growth in tourism and an informal service sector developed to cater to the needs of tourists. TUESDAY
Tours & Assessment Tours will begin at 9am and 2pm. You will be required to lead one tour (in your group) and to participate in and peer assess another. Directory: humanities humanities -> Unit IV text: Types of Oil, Types of Prices Grammar: that/those of, with revision humanities -> Module specification humanities -> There's a Certain Slant of Light By Emily Dickinson humanities -> University of kent humanities -> 0 humanities -> Proposal of the Curriculum Sub-Committee of the Humanities Project I. Broad goals humanities -> Month Date Understandings/Skills Big Idea Learning Targets humanities -> Phonological Rules Iman Mingher Obied humanities -> Comma Splice & Fused Sentence Exercises Download 431.09 Kb. Share with your friends:
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