Cuba's Economic Crisis

One of the most important part of the history of Cuba is the disintegration of Soviet Union, which eventually led to many contributing factors to Cuba’s economy crisis in the post-Cold War. As the country was heavily dependent on Soviet Union for support ever since the 16th century, which they were under the colonial rule from Spain and the United States. Thus, the country grew more dependent on Soviet Union due to favorable trade relationship back in the 1960 that would facilitate first 30 years of success (Bas, 2005). However, it became a devastating blow due to their overly reliance over Soviet. Cuba was noted to be overreliance on subsidies provided, trading to Soviet and its accomplices, and their heavy dependency on Soviet’s oil import. …show more content…
It is noted by Peters (2002) Soviet provided subsidies to Cuba’s economy which constitute one quarter of the country’s national income. And all of these subsidies by the Soviet vanished during the collapse of the USSR in 1989. Which led to the drastic fall of Cuba’s gross domestic product (GDP) at the percentage of thirty-five between the year 1989 to 1993 (Peters, 2002). The vanished subsidies on heavily mechanized and chemical input for agricultural production of Cuba, eventually contribute to economic crisis that led to drastic food shortage. As the country was heavily dependent on chemical input such as pesticides and chemical fertilizer for their agriculture production, especially on producing sugar for the purpose of