The Special Period: Cause and Effect

       When the Soviet Union fully collapsed in the 1991, the Cuban economy was dealt a devastating blow. Because the Soviets were the main source of their exports and imports, they no longer had a means of making profits, and food and medicine (among other things) became very scarce. It's GDP collapsed to 34% of its former self, and exports and imports were cut by 80%.

Source: The Havana Project

     Before the collapse of the USSR, the Russians exported large amounts of pertroleum to the Cubans in exchange for sugar. Fidel sold any surplus petroleum to other countries( which made petroleum the second largest export product before the 1990's) when the Russian Federation took power in Russia, they no longer supplied Cuba with one of its main exporting products and cut exportation of oil to Cuba by 10% of what the USSR had supplied. In retaliation, Fidel cut of all imports of oil from the Russian Federation, causing a massive need to drastically cut down on petroleum use. But because Cuba was so reliant on fossil fuels (from transportation, agriculture, and industry) this caused another massive problem. Production in industry was paralyzed, and food production declined even more than it did before. As a result, wide spread food shortages and malnutrition ran rampant throughout the country and power outages were frequent, lasting upwards to 16 hours.

Source: PBS International

   
       To combat this, the government mandated the use of organic agriculture because they could not use fertilizer (which used derivitive from oil) or heavy machinery to industrially work the fields. As a result many had rooftop gardens and worked raised terraces to produce the food necessary. They also diversified their agricultural products, producing a wider variety of fruits and vegetables and cutting back on sugar cane production. But since a lot of imports were cut of, embargoed, or used oil in the manufacturing of the products, many food items such as dairy and meat were either expensive or just not available. This caused a massive black market to emerge. But as the chart below shows, Cuba has been able to bounce back from this economic disaster, and although they have made great leaps, they are still it on the long road to recovery.

Source: The Economist

Sources of Information:
http://history.emory.edu/home/documents/endeavors/volume1/Brendans.pdf
http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/havana/lperez2.htm
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=102373