Exploring Changes in Cuba’s Ports and Hinterlands:: Transition from US to Socialist Sugar Markets

Abstract

Referring to the concept of portals of globalization, I examine Cuban ports in relation to the development of Cuba’s economy and how they became integrated into various global networks. The aim of this article is to analyse the changes these ports underwent over time, starting from the early nineteenth century until today. While I focus on changes in the hinterland that took place in the nineteenth and early twentieth century – when Spanish and US investors dominated the Cuban sugar industry – in the irst section of the article, I analyse port changes linked to foreign investments during the Cold War and in more recent years in the following two sections. By relating the changes at the ports to those that occurred in the hinterlands, I argue that the economic development in Cuba’s hinterland during the nineteenth and early twentieth century caused the island’s port expansion, while the modernization of the ports that has taken place since the second half of the twentieth century allowed Cuba’s economic recovery.