Coffee is an integral part of life in Cuba. Made thick and rich, it is served at breakfast, after lunch and dinner, and during business meetings and social events.Although coffee is so closely associated with Cuba today, the Spanish custom of drinking chocolate dominated the island in its early days. Coffee was not introduced to Cuba until 1748, when traders brought it from Santo Domingo. Not long afterward, French families fleeing the Haitian slave revolt (1789-1804) settled in Cuba and established coffee plantations.By 1827, Cuba had more than 2,000 coffee plantations. Most were in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra, a lush mountain range in southeastern Cuba. The French emigres had to carve their estates from the overgrown slopes, but their persistence paid off. Coffee production boomed. And for a time, investments in coffee estates equaled investments in sugar plantations.
However, higher returns from sugar and competition in the coffee market from Brazil, Venezuela and Costa Rica caused Cuba’s coffee production to decline. Then the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878), Cuba’s first real battle for independence from Spain, left the eastern end of the island in ruins, devastating the local coffee industry. Plantations were abandoned to be reclaimed by the jungle.
In 2000, UNESCO recognized the remains of these 19th century coffee plantations as “unique evidence of a pioneer form of agriculture in a difficult terrain,” casting “considerable light on the economic, social and technological history of the Caribbean and Latin American region.” The organization designated the Archaeological Landscape of the First Coffee Plantations in the Southeast of Cuba as a World Heritage Site.
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