Cambios y ajustes tecnológicos en la agro-manufactura azucarera cubana, 1898-1913

Abstract

After the war of independence (1898), the Cuban sugar industry, in addition to recovering from the conflict, continued to adjust to the deep technological changes experienced since the late nineteenth-century. The reason for this change was international competition, but the specific explanatory factors included the relative supply of inputs, the abolition of slavery, the accelerator effect that the war of independence had on industry and a trade agreement with the United States, which had occupied the island in 1898. These events explain how the sugar factories incorporated unusualIy high manufacturing capabilities to support the growth of supply to U. S. markets, thus maximizing efficiency. As modern sugar milIs involve a continuous process technology in which any change leads to organizational problems, adjustments turned out to be extremely significant, since the efficiency of innovations depended on their capacity to fit within the production process. The largely unknown details are analysed here to fill in the gaps in the welI-researched understanding of its successful final results.