How Cuban Charcoal Was Diverted from Export to Local Use
By Amado Viera
HAVANA TIMES – The roads that once led to the schools of the Sierra de Cubitas plan and surrounding agricultural fields now wind through marabú thickets, from which much of the charcoal produced in the province of Camagüey now comes.
At their peak in the late 1980s, 19 large boarding schools scattered across that plain of red soil housed nearly 10,000 students in secondary, technical, and pre-university education. This was part of the “school in the countryside” plan—one of the many projects born of Fidel Castro’s willful imagination that ultimately ended in failure.
Its guiding principle was the so-called “study-work” model, in which students alternated between classroom lessons and farm labor—supposedly to aid in their development. At the same time, the government secured a steady supply of youthful labor to tend crops like citrus, which were exported with lucrative returns to countries in the Eastern Bloc.
The fertilizer once used in those orange and grapefruit fields now enriches the expansive marabú forests where men like Michel make a living producing charcoal. Before taking on that grueling work, Michel made a living salvaging wooden window frames and rebar from the old school buildings, most of which were abandoned in the early 2010s. But eventually, that activity became neither profitable nor safe—“some of those schools are falling apart, and it was even dangerous to go inside,” he says—so Michel traded his sledgehammer for a machete and axe and teamed up with his father-in-law and a couple of acquaintances to open a “pit” for charcoal production.
In the Imías area where they work, they’ve found true marabú forests, “with trees taller than a two-story house,” Michel says. The hard fight to fell one of these giants—the “heartwood” of marabú is like a kind of vegetal steel—is offset by the value of the wood, which produces the highest-quality charcoal in Cuba. Buyers don’t hesitate to pay 600 or even 700 pesos per sack at wholesale prices (around $2 USD at the current 370 x 1 informal exchange rate).
A kiln holding 150 sacks typically yields between 90,000 and 105,000 pesos, which, when split among Michel and his coworkers, brings in up to 25,000 pesos each ($68 USD). That’s the result of about fifteen days of work—the time it takes to cut the necessary wood, build and fire the kiln, and finally bag the charcoal. This cycle repeats continuously between November and May, during the so-called dry season, when the lack of rain makes the work easier. However, the growing demand for the fuel for cooking has gradually extended the “charcoal harvest” through most of the year.
“Eating Up” the Profits
Until 2022, nearly all of the charcoal produced by the Cubitas workers was bought by state companies that would “process” it and ship it to Mariel for export.
Back then, Michel’s father-in-law worked at a processing center in the nearby town of Saimí, which, operating at full capacity, could sort up to five tons of export-quality charcoal daily. That was the grade the citrus company Sola paid top price for, while smaller pieces and charcoal dust were sold to state buyers or the general population. A week of full-capacity work brought in up to 750 pesos for each of the center’s eight workers—a decent salary before the 2021 Currency Overhaul with its large scale devaluation.
The Saimí processing center, along with others in Lombillo and Senado, in the neighboring municipalities of Esmeralda and Minas, were among the first to shut down when the energy crisis began to devastate Cuba. The mechanical sieves used to clean and sort the charcoal, the sack-sewing machines, and the lighting—essential amid the constant soot-induced haze—all relied on electricity, which was rarely available in these rural northern Camaguey towns.
State-run charcoal commerce depended on these processing centers, where small private producers and some resellers delivered raw material. From there, the charcoal—bagged and loaded into containers—headed for the port. The closure of these centers due to the electricity crisis and the shortage of essentials like sacks disrupted the entire supply chain of the companies.
In a “normal” country, companies reinvest part of their revenue to sustain their operations. But in Cuba, that basic principle of business logic is routinely ignored. The money earned in 2019, 2020, or 2021 was never reinvested in purchasing tools for producers, fuel and spare parts for the trucks that collected the charcoal in the countryside, or solar panels and generators that could have enabled the processing centers to operate independently of the electrical grid. By the time authorities took action, charcoal exports had already collapsed, and the state companies had “eaten up” the resources that could have been used to revive them.
In provinces like Camagüey, alarm bells didn’t sound until as late as July 2024. Around that time, the local office of the Ministry of Foreign Trade warned that nearly half of the lost export revenue was due to charcoal not being shipped abroad. The crisis had specific figures: of the 930 tons projected by mid-year, only 37 tons had been collected. Reporting on the situation, the newspaper Granma stated the obvious: “As has been the case for some years now, these results are still being affected by the exodus of personnel and production to the privatre sector; since, due to the exchange rate, private buyers pay more and often in cash.”
As expected, little or nothing was done to reverse the situation. In February of this year, the provincial director of Foreign Trade, Foreign Investment, and International Cooperation, Juan Ricardo Poll Gean, told the Cuban News Agency that not only had the export shortfall grown, but the outlook for products like charcoal and honey was even bleaker due to a lack of fuel—even to transport the finished goods.
Unable to provide foreign currency or supplies, some state companies have begun partnering with private enterprises and other “new forms of management,” as Osmín Gutierrez Maseira, director of the Noel Fernandez agricultural company in Minas, recently told provincial radio. But the impact of such collaboration may be limited by the restrictions on foreign and wholesale trade that the government insists on enforcing. Reviving charcoal production for export requires sacks, chainsaws, and a host of other imported supplies that, for now, only some private businesses seem capable of providing.
Amid all these twists and turns, charcoal producers like Michel have been left with only one option: sell to private intermediaries who, once or twice a month, drive their trucks down rural roads and trails in search of the charcoal they later sell in cities. “In the past, selling to the State wasn’t a bad deal,” Michel says, “but now you’d have to see how much they’re willing to pay and under what conditions” (in rural areas, there’s strong resistance to the banking mandates the government keeps trying to enforce). “However you look at it, we’re doing something good, because with the crisis we have, Cubans need this charcoal more than any foreigner does.”