Tobacco on the Periphery

This unique study of a sector of the Cuban working class links its history to that of the tobacco industry in the wider national and international context. Dr Stubbs, who has lived and worked in Cuba for fifteen years, tells the story of the agricultural and industrial development of the industry from its nineteenth-century beginnings to the establishment of the communist regime. She traces the growth of a strong tobacco oligarchy, peasant grower class and urban salaried work force alongside slave and indentured labour, and examines how a prestigious manufacturing country was transformed into an exporter of leaf. The study penetrates the finer socio-political aspects of the changing nature and composition of peasantry and proletariat, including the peculiar interlacing of race, gender and skill, to take a closer look at hitherto obscure areas of class action and national and class consciousness, be it reformism, anarcho-syndicalism, revolutionary nationalism, socialism or communism.