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CARIBBEAN QUILT 
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 
 

 73 

 

                                                                                  

 
 

                                                       

Socialism, Farming, and Resistance: 

How Cuban Socialism is Beating the Embargo 
 
Dmitri Gourianov  
Centre for Caribbean Studies 
Faculty of Arts & Science, University of Toronto 

 
Dmitri Gourianav is a fourth-year student studying Political Science at the University of Toronto. 

                                                                                  
 
KEYWORDS: 

Cuba 

Socialism 

United States 

Embargo 

Decolonization 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
ABSTRACT 

                                                                                        
Beginning as a minor assignment which ought to have taken two days, it soon ballooned into a three-month project 

looking at the Cuban political system and the farming sector's role in developing not only Socialist theory but Socialism 

in practice. As the collapse of Cuban Socialism has been expected for the past four decades by Western scholars and 

lawmakers, this same inevitability has perplexed its proponents as it continues not to occur. Cuba has been under em-

bargo by the United States for over sixty years, and the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricane Ian have exacerbated the 

tremendous pressure on the Socialist government. One ought to ask the question, then, how Cuba remains so resilient 

after the collapse of the USSR. Although not a conclusive reason as to why Socialism remains prevalent in Cuba, this 

essay looks at one aspect of this new Cuban Socialism and its successes: farming systems. By looking at the roles poly-

cultural cropping and alternative incentive schemes play in Cuba, I conclude that they both play a vital role in developing 

and reinforcing Socialism in the island nation.

 

 

For decades, the inevitable collapse of Cuban Socialism 
was hailed to be just over the horizon as economic stagna-
tion gripped the island nation through an embargo incre-
mentally intensified by the United States. This embargo, 
however, has yet to destroy the Castro regime, nor has it 
succeeded in breeding anti-government sentiments for the 
most part. Today we see the complete opposite, an interna-
tional community united in their opposition to the Ameri-
can embargo. Although the theory was simple, to breed re-
sentment by limiting luxuries and food supplies, the latter 

has remained stubbornly resilient, and not only that, but it 
also poses a threat to American Capitalism itself. Simply 
put, the farming techniques Cuba has developed and im-
plemented over the past decades have kept the island na-
tion afloat and become a form of resistance to American 
imperialism. This is through several ways, the most nota-
ble of which being the astonishing efficiency of polycul-
tural farming being used to circumvent the shortages 
caused by the embargo, how civil participation in growing 
local food has united people during this time of economic 

Caribbean Quilt 
Journal Homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index 
 
 



CARIBBEAN QUILT 
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 
 

 74 

stress, as well as how the persistence of Cuban Socialist 
political discourse has become the antithesis to American-
led Capitalism. However, this could not have been man-
aged without eliminating monocultural farming techniques. 
 
It must first be understood what the difference between 
monocultures and polycultures is. For one, monocultural 
cropping is farming a single crop in a given area, while 
polycultural cropping is farming several in a given area. 
Monocultural cropping is the most prevalent kind of farm-
ing in the West, as it is easy to keep track of usable products. 
In contrast, polycultural cropping inevitably comes across 
the difficulties associated with sifting through farmland for 
the primary product, secondary products, and crops 
planted for their service to the ecosystem. In essence, 
whether either farming style is better for the environment 
or more efficient long term does not matter in the case of 
most agriculture markets, as monocultural farming by 
Western empires was historically promoted across their co-
lonial holdings for the sake of cheap and easy production. 
However, Cuba has adopted polycultural cropping, which 
has brought high crop yields associated with the system. 
This can be seen in Akhsan et al.'s 2022 research paper on 
the relationship between farmers' income and the introduc-
tion of polycultural farming. By comparing the polycul-
tural and monocultural practices in Indonesian cocoa farms, 
they were able to study the impact of crop heterogeneity 
on the production of farmers' crop yields. Their results sug-
gest that using polycultural systems provides a higher in-
come than monocropping and reduces operational costs 
(Akhsen, 2022). Not only this, but polycultural cropping 
also reduces the risk of pest attacks and allows farmers to 
sell secondary crops alongside their primary crops. The ef-
ficiency of polycultures on a farmer's yields and reduced 
operational costs, although at the expense of having to seed 
and harvest secondary crops, ultimately has proven to have 
a net gain on farming efficiency, something which Cuba 
has wisely capitalized on, while America has historically 
promoted the direct opposite in their imperialist ventures.  
  
In nations such as Nicaragua, the US would intervene 
whenever their interests were threatened. In Gobat's work 
Central America and the United States, he describes the 
history of American intervention in Mesoamerica from 

1904 until the present (Gobat, 2022), wherein the direct 
military presence of America ensured the reinforcement of 
large plantation businesses in Nicaragua from 1909 - 1933, 
and systemic nepotism ensured that the US-created Nica-
raguan national guard would also leave General Anastasio 
Somoza Garcia and his sons in charge of the interventionist 
forces until 1979. Additionally, after the collapse of Gua-
temala’s dictatorship in 1945, the subsequent presidencies 
of Jose Arevalo (1945 - 1951) and Jacobo Arbenz (1951 - 
1954) (Gobat, 2022) saw the abolition of forced labour 
drafts in the country, as well as the legal validation of the 
invasion of expropriated banana plantations by peasant 
communities. This saw the centuries-old, imperialist-es-
tablished mono-crop farms occupied by their workers. Un-
fortunately, individuals such as John Foster Dulles and Al-
len Dulles, who had connections to the then-invaded 
United Fruit Company land and individuals in the CIA, en-
sured that a US-backed coup would depose the Guatema-
lan democracy and replace it with a military junta (Gobat, 
2022). After the Cuban revolution, the United States ex-
panded efforts to control Central American exports in fear 
of the revolution's spread. While Kennedy would invest 
heavily in developing the economies of Central American 
countries, Gabot also acknowledges that these reforms 
were targeted at prospering American investors at the ex-
pense of peasant communities and the environment (Gobat, 
2022). This leads us to Cuba today and how its switch to a 
polycultural crop farming system has ensured the state’s 
survival under near-impossible odds.  
 
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba saw 
its economy, specifically the farming sector, collapse. In 
the 90s, Cuba posted the worst growth in per-capita food 
production in all of the Caribbean and was forced to radi-
cally change its way of farming to be less dependent on 
imports (Miguel, 2012). As it decentralized its crop pro-
duction, dismantling inefficient state-owned farms favour-
ing urban and cooperatives, Cuba would replace its mono-
cultural system with polycultures. As mentioned before, in 
the case of Indonesian cocoa farmers, polycultural farming 
in Cuba also led to fewer pest attacks and protected the soil 
by increasing the equivalent land ratio of crop density 
(Sharma, 2021). From 1996 - 2005, this change in farming 
style would see an annual growth rate in food production 



CARIBBEAN QUILT 
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 
 

 75 

of 4.2%; this was also when the annual growth rate in the 
region averaged around 0% (Miguel, 2012). In Ingrid 
Hanon's critique of Moishe Postone’s interpretation of the 
Marxist theory, she touches on Cuba's adoption of polycul-
tures and how it led to a farming revolution. She argues 
that today, this shift to a more participatory farming system 
goes deeper than just producing more food. Instead, she 
argues that Cuban Socialism now has the opportunity to 
establish an alternative organizational and technological 
agricultural production system that is knowledge-intensive 
instead of capital-intensive, which opens the door to new 
grass-roots research-based farming methods (Hanon, 
2022). However, Cuba's ability to develop an economical 
alternative to the farming sector is also an ability to form 
an ideological alternative to American political hegemony.  
 
Although this paper is on Cuban resistance to American 
imperialism through alternative farming techniques, poly-
cultural farming has been the sole focus of the discussion 
thus far. Although the ability to feed one's people ensures 
the stability of your regime, ideology is just as important, 
and the participatory nature of Cuban farms is the second 
half of Cuba's farming successes. Cuban urban farms have 
shown that farmers require more than profit to incentivize 
production, with the most straightforward and notable al-
ternative incentive models being based on social recogni-
tion and pride. In her work Cuban Urban Agriculture and 
the Challenge to Orthodox Western Economic Discourse, 
Sharma outlines one of these incentive systems being used 
by the Cuban government, the Referencia system. She 
states: "In this system, agricultural units seek designations 
of municipal, provincial, or national reference, to be refer-
enced as exemplary model units for others to work towards 
and replicate" (Sharma, 2021). Agricultural units achieve 
these designations by reaching their respective criteria. 
One such referenced agricultural unit Sharma describes is 
UBPC Organoponico Vivero Alamar, which produces 15 
different fruits and vegetables and eggs and their seedlings 
for future sewing seasons (Sharma, 2021). By recognizing 
and giving pride to such agricultural units, the Referencia 
system ensures that the primary production driver is civil 
participation in the Cuban farming sector. Not only this, 
but by giving communities pride and giving other commu-
nities a goal to strive for, urban farming plays an additional 

role in indoctrinating citizens into striving for more than 
just a profit motive. 
Additionally, by putting food production in the hands of 
the community, the work is visibly and emotionally tied to 
the people who consume it, ensuring that the community is 
not alienated from the state but an active participant in the 
state's survival. Whether it be described as nationalism or 
patriotism, this phenomenon which grows from urban 
farms, shields the government from protests concerning 
food production, as people know that they are responsible 
for their well-being, with or without the US embargo. By 
doing so, the state has turned something as mundane as 
grocery shopping into a prevalent ideological tool that op-
poses American Capitalism.  
 
In a purely Hegelian sense, Cuban Socialism’s persistence 
into the 21st century poses itself as the primary antithesis 
to American Capitalism, even if it may not seem that way. 
Although Russia and China continue to be at the forefront 
of the news cycle, with both antagonists shaking their fists 
at the heroic West, what must be noted is that what is not 
said can be as powerful as what is said. Although Russia 
and China reflect modes of Capitalism as opposed to that 
of America, they are still modes of Capitalism, authoritar-
ian or not. Cuba's place as an alien to Western conceptions 
of organization makes it so that the success of Cuban pol-
ycultural farming has been downplayed, if not rendered 
non-existent in orthodox economic discourse, as was dis-
cussed by Sharma. Instead, it is easier to see the adoption 
of polycultures when accompanied by a profit motive, as 
Akhsen et al.'s research show that diminishing cocoa pro-
duction has driven farmers to find other avenues of income. 
Not only this, but by succeeding where the West expected 
Cuba to fail, its experiments with polycultural and partici-
patory farming bolsters, develops, and spreads Socialist 
theory by promoting a palatable and eco-friendly version 
of Socialism through the works of Western scholars and 
media. This can be seen through the coverage of Cuba by 
popular Western outlets.  
 
 
The Australian Institute of International Affairs published 
an analysis by Antony Murrell on the embargo, wherein he 
concludes, "Australia can do its part by continuing to join 



CARIBBEAN QUILT 
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 
 

 76 

in the chorus of states opposing the embargo. Safety in 
numbers means that doing so carries little risk of diplo-
matic blowback" (Murrel, 2022). Similarly, The Guardi-
an's David Adler asked the question, "If communism is a 
failed system, then why not let it fail on its terms and let 
Cubans see for themselves the true face of their revolution? 
What is Marco Rubio so afraid of?" (Adler, 2022). These 
are just some of the most recent articles against the em-
bargo, and the world continues to condemn its maintenance 
unanimously. Public sentiments toward the Cuban em-
bargo globally continue to favour Cuba, and the truth is 
that Rubio (and America as a whole) have something to 
fear. By lifting the embargo, the US would recognize its 
failure and legitimize Cuba's successful resistance, becom-
ing another foreign policy blow like Afghanistan or Vi-
etnam. Cuba's development of urban farm systems into a 
burgeoning system of collective action has become fertile 
ground for the Socialist experiment. Apart from the initia-
tives discussed thus far, another is the usufruct of land for 
public use. In her work Cuba’s Informal Gardens, Clouse 
describes these usufruct leases as allowing Cuban growers 
easy access to state-owned land parcels free of rent, allow-
ing a claim of tenancy rights for 10 - 25 years, as well as 
on the crops produced on the land (Clouse, 2022). What 
usufruct offers land, including unused and underperform-
ing parcels in urban environments, including vacant lots, 
land by roads and river corridors, and those protected for 
alternative development projects. By allowing the alloca-
tion of such land, usufruct allows agricultural entrepre-
neurs to innovate and develop upon existing farming tech-
niques to increase the efficiency and value of the common 
land. This form of innovation, separated from the long-
term monetization of a suitable public, forms the founda-
tion of an ever-developing system of anti-capitalist incen-
tives. 
 
Clouse goes on to touch on Cuba's public land use policies, 
saying, "urban design interventions enable people to take 
control over spaces that they care about, have a measure of 
input on the shape and form of their cities, protest domi-
nant paradigms, create something fresh, or communicate 
an idea" (Clouse, 2022). By channelling public discontent 
into these constructive projects, the government can cir-
cumvent addressing protesters in the streets by allowing 

them to make the changes they wish to see. Space hijack-
ing, the process by which individuals seize land, is driven 
by campaigns to transform unused spaces into more ap-
pealing community areas, which grows a community's at-
tachment to its geography and gives residents a place they 
perceive as theirs. Although such spaces do not necessarily 
have to be for growing food, Clouse notes that efforts to 
grow food happened organically (pun intended), perhaps 
representing a form of constructive rebellion (Clouse, 
2022). Having the Cuban government embrace this coun-
ter-cultural movement as its own, and it could capitalize on 
a dissatisfied public and turn it into a suitable apparatus by 
which societal development came both from top-down and 
bottom-up forces. 
 
Moreover, Clouse suggests that Cuba's adoption of these 
policies shows a more significant desire globally for simi-
lar systems. She states, "like defiant gardening, this form 
of agricultural engagement is both under-represented in the 
literature on urban farming and also perceived to be a 
fringe form of landscape design engagement, even though 
worldwide interest demonstrated through visible evidence 
of participation" (Clouse, 2022). Such a desire for public 
engagement in the community, separate from the monetary 
incentive, shows the power Cuba's Socialism could wield 
if the embargo were lifted. The effectiveness of these poli-
cies shows its antithesis to American Capitalism. To that 
end, it can be seen how the farming techniques Cuba has 
developed in tandem with public land use not only ensured 
the stability of the Castro regime but also posed a unique 
threat to America through its ideological resistance.  
 
Cuban Socialism's resilience under the pressures of the 
American embargo has led to several successes during a 
time of strife. By developing and implementing over 60 
years an alternative to Western farming techniques, it con-
tinues to weather out the American storm and threaten 
Western Capitalist hegemony. Research into the feasibility 
of polycultural farming techniques compared to the tradi-
tional monocultural system has shown its efficiency and 
promise in studies such as those done with Indonesian co-
coa farmers and their incomes. Historically, although many 
cultures have used polycultural farming techniques before 
Cuba, Western imperialism's standardization of 



CARIBBEAN QUILT 
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 
 

 77 

monocultural farming ensured the hegemony of such ex-
traordinary powers, including America's intervention in 
Central American markets like Nicaragua and Guatemala. 
Cuba's ability to reform itself after the collapse of the So-
viet Union saw the island nation become a more participa-
tory and successful example of Socialism under extreme 
pressure. However, its successes did not purely stem from 
adopting polycultures but also through grass-roots and co-
operative efforts to maintain a dialogue between the gov-
ernment and the people. Economically, this saved the na-
tion and, ideologically, united it. By successfully synthe-
sizing a non-monetary incentive which united the individ-
ual's goals with the government's, Cuba has made itself the 
ideological antithesis of America. Although the embargo 
still stands, the global community remains behind the is-
land nation, and the desire to adopt similar participatory 
and eco-friendly systems continues to grow worldwide. 
For these reasons, America cannot lift the embargo, for it 
may mistakenly do the right thing and stop the suffering of 
countless people for the sake of a bygone ideal. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 
 

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