This book is a major accomplishment in the field of Latin American environmental history. Reinaldo Funes focuses on institutional and organisational aspects of deforestation, stressing the conflicts among shipbuilding, sugarcane and conservation needs. Translated from the Spanish-language book published by Siglo XXI in 2004, it focuses on the debates that occurred between the late 1600s and the 1920s over whether the state or individuals should control access to forests. In uncovering these debates, Funes aims to recover the ‘silent importance’ of forests in Cuba's history (p. 5), concluding that deforestation created ‘a permanent mortgage on the island's future, not in simply environmental but also economic, social, and political terms’ (p. 6).
From Rainforest to Cane Field provides detailed accounts of state–private forest debates, with special attention given to three key moments. First, Cuban sugar interests received a strong stimulus after the Haitian Revolution. A lively debate ensued between the Spanish navy and sugar planters. Second, in the early nineteenth century, supporters of private control over access received royal support in the form of an edict issued in 1815. This edict rejected claims by the Spanish navy that its Cortes del Rey, or Royal Forest Reserves, had top priority in order for it to access timber to build ships in Havana. The early nineteenth-century debate is especially fascinating because it involved a fundamental issue: whether a collective or public good should be prioritised over individual rights and enrichment. Third, in the early twentieth century, a weak state was unable to slow the pace of forest conversion spurred by US investment in the sugar sector until the 1920s, when the Cuban president reversed the forest policy that had stood since 1815, imposing restrictions on private felling of forests. By the mid-1920s, less than 10 per cent of Cuba was covered in woodland, a dramatic decline from the 90 per cent forest cover estimated for the late 1400s.
This is a book sustained, to a large extent, by a close reading of these debates and lengthy quotation of key texts. Funes portrays the Spanish navy as offering ‘alternative conceptions of a Cuba not dominated by the limitless extension of commercial agriculture’ as a counter to the emerging power of sugar elites (p. 86). Fascinating historical figures emerge, such as Comandante General Juan de Araoz, who argued in 1802 that forest conservation required repression of ‘the abuses and freedom of men’. Araoz suspected that ‘not everyone maintains the prudence and moderation required by the common good and of men in particular’ (pp. 106–7). Similarly, Miguel Bosh y Juliá, who taught at Spain's School of Woodlands Engineers, described opponents of controls on deforestation in 1868 as ‘atrocious’ and ‘bloodthirsty’ (p. 207). A Spanish official, Ernesto Ruiz Melo, who was based in eastern Cuba, argued in 1876 that loggers in Cuba were ‘indifferent to the public interest’, and had become ‘elements of destruction instead of means of conservation and development that they should be’ (p. 209).
By contrast, sugar interests in the late eighteenth century argued that Cuba's forest cover was nearly complete, so additional sugarcane lands would represent a small impact on forests but would have a large impact on royal revenues and would be an important step towards furthering private freedoms. For example, a judge advocate-general in Havana who ruled in favour of sugar elites in the late 1790s argued that if transfers of royal timberlands to private landowners were ‘useful to individuals, they cannot be less so for the state’ (p. 99). Funes has little doubt over the ultimate consequence of this type of argument: the conveyance of property rights over Cuban forests to individuals ‘helped consolidate an attitude toward the environment as a means to individual economic benefit’ that marginalised ‘the common good’ and ‘foresighted ecological values’ (p. 133–4).
The commendable focus in From Rainforest to Cane Field on detailed aspects of the debates necessarily omits other aspects of the forest–sugarcane relationship. At times the argument follows the quotes and minutiae of the texts, at the expense of comparison to other forest debates in Latin America, or public–private debates in other economic sectors. In addition, the organisational and institutional route leads away from an exploration of how Cuba's population may have experienced the ‘mortgage’ caused by deforestation. The fate of lands abandoned when sugar planters sought forested lands is largely unexplored, and yet this issue is closely related to the ‘savannization’ process (p. 131) that Funes fails to describe fully. In addition, while Funes makes a strong case for formal rules of access to forests, he does not explore how other factors, such as access to labour, may have influenced forest access. In this book deforestation is an institutional process, not a labour process.
The temporal focus of the book is also noteworthy. Funes is too quick to draw the connection between the story he tells, ending in the mid-1920s, and ‘the problem of deteriorating soil that Cuba confronts today’ (p. 272). The 1920s serve as the logical endpoint of his study because that was when ‘cane plantations completed their occupation of most of the flat and gently rolling natural regions’ (p. 274). This may be true in terms of area, but the claim neglects the dramatic increase in farming intensity between 1960 and the late 1980s, a period of collectivisation, mechanisation and unrealistic sugarcane harvest targets.
From Rainforest to Cane Field is a fascinating, provocative and substantive addition to Latin American environmental history, adding the important Cuban case to a literature marked by Shawn Miller's Fruitless Trees (2000) and Warren Dean's Broadax and Firebrand (1995). Indeed, it will make for a very useful comparison between the Brazilian and Cuban cases; in addition, the narrative is a compelling hybrid between Dean and Miller. Funes displays the passion for forest conservation, disdain for avarice and ability to find long-lost voices that distinguish Dean's Broadax. He combines this passion with Miller's concern for shipbuilding and the development of complex and dynamic institutions that have linked people and forests in numerous complicated ways.
