Experimenting with the Market: Cuba’s Agrarian Policy in the 1980s and 1990s

Created by the Cuban government in 1980, the Free Peasant Markets (Mercados Libres Campesinos, MLC) were aimed at boosting food availability and stimulating agricultural production in the country. Their creation permitted the independent sale of surplus agricultural products through free markets—markets governed by market rules and often referred to as part of the “second economy.” These spaces quickly became popular sites of exchange that alleviated shortages and generated new incentives for producers. The success of this measure, however, exposed growing tensions within the revolutionary project. As agricultural surpluses increased and intermediaries accumulated wealth, Fidel Castro interpreted these developments as a threat to the Revolution’s moral and political foundations. By 1986, he reversed the very policy he had enacted six years earlier, and both the MLC and the associated freedoms regarding the buying and selling of property introduced in 1982 were abruptly suspended.

This paper examines the rise and fall of Cuba’s MLC in the 1980s alongside the island’s reconfiguration of agrarian policy and the sudden reintroduction of free markets in the mid-1990s as a strategy to survive the challenges posed by the so-called Special Period. I argue that the implementation of the Agromercados in 1994—like other policies adopted during the Special Period—did not represent a novel departure, but rather the result of earlier experimentation by the Cuban regime. I analyze how ordinary Cubans benefited from the Mercados Libres, how they perceived the ideological contradictions inherent in this policy, and how they reacted to its termination. Moreover, I examine citizens’ reactions to, and the state’s narrative about, the Agromercados.

Drawing on archival sources, press materials, and first-hand accounts, this paper highlights the policy shifts enacted by the regime, the contradictions they embodied, and the reactions of the population when state actions diverged from the official narrative.