“Constructing Legitimacy: Opposition and Acquiescence to the 1959 Cuban Agrarian Reform”

• In Event: Agrarian Horizons: Rethinking the Politics of Land Reform

Abstract

Following the May 17th promulgation of the 1959 Cuban Agrarian Reform law, certain sectors representing the landholding classes immediately reacted against the law’s transformative changes. Within weeks, however, their opposition had turned into a generalized acquiescence to and acceptance of the law, albeit with some technical grievances. This paper will try to advance arguments about the nature and context of the law and the debates surrounding it that may help understand this change. I argue that the initial phases of agrarian reform during the Cuban Revolution constituted a struggle that was primarily played out discursively, as both the revolutionary government and the opposition to the reform framed and re-framed their contentions in an effort to win legitimacy by appealing to the moral high ground. Analyzing this particular aspect of the agrarian reform –still new terrain for historians— allows for insight into how the Cuban Revolution took hold, claimed legitimacy and constructed itself as the only viable trajectory moving forward. Additionally, I argue, as the site of revolutionary state-building, agrarian reform was also the path that would lead to the consolidation of the Revolution, helping to construct and legitimate the monopoly of power held by the Revolutionary government.

Author

• Sara J Kozameh, New York University