• higher wages, coupled with opposition to methods for increasing productivity, endanger the competitive position of the basic sugar industry itself.44
The opposition to productivity measures was rooted in the island’s high levels of unemployment and underemployment, which explains the tenacity shown by Cuban workers in defending their jobs and the social clauses in the Cuban constitution that helped them to do so. The report recognizes that the high level of unemployment deeply affected the consciousness of those in work; job security was always an important concern of unionized workers.45 Truslow sums up the situation as follows: “In Cuba it is usually easier, quicker and cheaper to divorce a wife than to fire a worker. Under prevailing conditions of chronic seasonal unemployment, it may also be easier to find a new wife than to find a new job.”46
The report argued that increased productivity would attract investment, promote diversification, and thereby produce jobs, although it does recognize that the workers’ reluctance to cooperate was based on their doubt that the money saved would be invested productively.47 Underneath the call for greater cooperation between management and labor lay the concrete proposal to make dismissal of employees simpler, faster, and cheaper.48 In the particular case of the sugar industry, the report called for mechanization, not of the planting and cultivating, but of the harvesting, which was the most labor-intensive part of production and would result in the redundancy of a very large number of workers.49 The employers wished to extend the mechanization of the sugar industry beyond that recommended by Truslow to include modernization of the refining process in order to process the cane faster. This would not only save time and thereby reduce wages in the sugar refineries, it would also put pressure on the independent cane farmers, the colonos, to increase the pace of work of their harvesting crews to supply the same amount of cane in a shorter time. The sugar workers called this process intensivismo, replying with the demand that they be paid for superproducción; this expression meant that they wished to be paid the same total amount as they had been before the new machinery arrived.50 Clearly this was not what the employers had in mind when they considered investing in new machinery.51
The Truslow Report was not merely concerned with the production of sugar, but also examined transport, which was an equally important part of the export procedure. The railway industry was close to bankruptcy and port labor was considered to be in need of reform to reduce its potential to disrupt loading. The report bemoans “the strategic position occupied by men who load and unload ships, in view of the big investment tied up in ships and merchandise, and the ease with which shipping companies can be subjected to important losses by sudden stoppages or delays.”52
This “strategic position” has been used by dockers everywhere to enhance their wages, improve their working conditions, and maintain their manning levels. However, most employers would agree with Truslow in feeling that this obliged them to employ more workers than was strictly necessary, thereby reducing business efficiency. In particular, the report identified the main problem as the refusal to bulk-load sugar. The universal nature of maritime productivity disputes is underlined by the contacts established at this time between the dockworkers of Caibarién in northern Cuba, who were fighting bulk-loading and the workers in the port of Liverpool in England, who were in dispute over attempts to introduce the fork-lift truck.53 The report further believed that wage levels were excessive, a factor that also exacerbated the precarious financial state of the railway industry: “With labor still making wage demands, it is believed that in many cases they have reached the limit that employers will tolerate.”54
It should be noted that there is little mention of the question of inflation in the discussion of wage levels. In part this is as a result of the lack of reliable data. The U.S. embassy, noting that it was “impossible to do more than conjecture as to the actual expenditure of the working classes,” concludes from their own observations that there was a considerable increase in the cost of living as a result of food price inflation.55 This would have been another factor in stiffening labor resistance to wage cuts. Thus increased productivity was to be achieved by mechanization and longer hours of work, both policies that would reduce the need for the existing number of workers in circumstances of a chronically high level of unemployment and at a time when real wages were in any case falling as a result of food price inflation. To this was added the proposal for a cut or at least a freeze in money wages. There was therefore little prospect of workers voting for a party that intended to implement the Truslow Report.
In this context, the outlook for the 1952 general election looked unfavorable to the employers. Of the three candidates for president, Roberto Agramonte for the Ortodoxos, the recently founded anti-corruption party, was widely expected to beat rivals Fulgencio Batista, who had headed an earlier regime in the 1930s, and Carlos Hevia for the Auténticos, the current ruling party. The Ortodoxos were not a workers’ party, but were relying on working-class votes for their expected victory. The main plank of their election platform was opposition to corruption allied to a vaguely expressed economic nationalism, which called for recovery of national wealth and promised to implement measures of social equality. Such was the popular revulsion with the level of corruption of the Auténtico administration that it was widely expected that the Ortodoxos were going to win the election handsomely, and that Batista seemed to be heading for a crushing defeat.56 The Ortodoxos displayed no interest in implementing the Truslow Report and its concerns with productivity received no mention in their public statements. The Ortodoxos’ platform spoke of the “Cubanization” of the economy, emancipating Cuba from foreign imperialism, nationalization of foreign-owned service industries and monopolies, and redistribution of arable land.57 A study of U.S. diplomatic correspondence shows that this platform worried U.S. business interests and their allies among the Cuban bourgeoisie.58 Eduardo Chibas, leader of the Ortodoxos until his suicide in 1951, would certainly have worried the First National Bank of Boston, which led a syndicate that loaned the Cuban government $200 million to build such projects as the tunnel under Havana Bay.59 Chibas made it clear that if he was elected he would not repay the loan.60
When Batista and his associates in the armed forces staged a coup on March 10, 1952, it was quickly welcomed by the United States. There was in fact remarkably little internal opposition to the army takeover, such was the cynicism with politicians in general that developed over the first fifty years of the republic. The only social group to react strongly was the students.61 The ousted president went quietly, partly for fear that an Ortodoxo election victory might have investigated and punished his corruption. Indeed, at the time some saw the main target of the coup as being the Ortodoxos rather than Carlos Prío.62 There was then an unseemly scramble by the majority of professional politicians to reach an accommodation with the de facto government in the hope of retaining their lucrative privileges.63 There are a variety of explanations for the success of the coup: the restoration of order, the corruption and inefficiency of the Auténticos, the desire of U.S. economic interests to restructure the Cuban economy, and the Cold War anti-communism of the U.S. government.64 These factors all played a part, and it is not the intention here to propose a monocausal explanation. Nevertheless, given the lack of importance accorded elsewhere to the support given by business interests for the specifically anti-labor role played by the dictatorship, that particular aspect will be stressed, not with the intention of downplaying the importance of other factors, but of redressing the balance and bringing forward a neglected aspect of the history of the period.
The coup was, indeed, generally welcomed by capitalist interests, as it was felt that Batista would be more business-friendly than the alternatives. Within ten days of the coup, the major business associations had visited the presidential palace to offer their support: the Asociación de Hacendados, the Asociación de Bancos de Cuba, the Asociación Nacional de Comisionistas del Comercio Exterior, the Socios de la Bolsa de la Habana, the Asociación de Industriales de Cuba, and the Cámara de Comercio.65 Meanwhile, the main pro-business daily paper, Diario de la Marina, which had supported Batista’s election campaign enthusiastically,66
