This map is part of the Atlas of Cuba, published in 1949 by the Cuban geographer Gerardo Canet, in collaboration with the cartographer Erwin Raisz.

The double-page spread focuses on agriculture on the island in the late 1940s. The map of Cuba is divided into a grid with different colours representing land use:

• Crops (21 %), shown in light green.
• Pastos (43 %), in yellow.
• Montes (14 %), in dark green.
• Other uses (18.2 %), shown in orange.

Below the island, another chart details the distribution of the various crops, notably sugar cane (52 %), maize (8.2 %), cassava (6.8 %) and coffee (4.5 %). The importance of sugarcane is also evident in the strip of pictorial illustrations depicting the twelve months of the year and the crops cultivated during each season: sugarcane appears in all of them, albeit alongside seasonal produce.

The text accompanying the plate, in Spanish and English, not only describes the situation but also clearly highlights the structural problems of the Cuban countryside in the mid-20th century. Less than a third of the cultivated land was worked directly by its owners, whilst the rest was in the hands of sugar companies, a situation which partially perpetuated the colonial system. This atlas was published ten years before the 1959 revolution, which lends some weight to its analysis.

Sources

• Agriculture – David Rumsey