The Land of the Skinny Cow

Beef looms large in Cuban history. Today, it is one of the most coveted food items, and so scarce that most ordinary Cubans cannot hope to consume it without a doctor's prescription. In this book, Bonnie A. Lucero challenges popular narratives that attribute beef scarcity to the failures of the Cuban Revolution. Analyzing Cuba's expansive print culture and original manuscripts from archives in five countries, Lucero exposes the complex array of factors, both natural and artificial, that plagued Cuba's cattle industry from the onset of protectionism in 1927 through the implementation of the 1959 Agrarian Reform. In doing so, she traces the political reverberations of Cuba's cultural taste for beef, and offers a new lens on the logics of freedom, prosperity, and democracy.

Lucero reveals that Cuba's beef and cattle industries were mired in deep conflict for decades preceding the Cuban Revolution. Beginning in the 1920s, she shows how power struggles between ranchers, industrialists, workers, retailers, and government magnified environmental limitations to provoke a series of crises in these industries, resulting in recurring beef shortages. Simultaneously, she examines how beef politics during the republican period contributed to grassroots militancy: political elites courted popular support by positioning themselves as guarantors of access to beef, but repeated failures to deliver on this promise ultimately alienated their constituencies. Revising the misconceptions surrounding beef scarcity and exposing surprising continuities before and after the Revolution, this book offers a transformative contribution to Cuban economic, political, and agricultural history, as well as wider histories of food, meat, and their politics.