Small - scale urban agriculture in Havana and the reproduction of the "new man" in contemporary Cuba

The phrase ‘Special Period in Times of Peace’ was introduced by the Cuban government in 1990 to refer to economic adjustments and related deprivations brought about by the break-up of the Soviet Bloc. This journal article investigates the processes involved in the social production of specific spaces associated with the post-1989 ‘privatization’ of agricultural land; namely, the “parcelas” or urban vegetable garden lots of the city of Havana. The first Agrarian reform (1959) gave land titles to 110,000 smallholders, while also transferring 44 per cent of agricultural land to the state. As of 1986, eighty percent was state controlled