In the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, Fidel Castro created (and personally managed) a national crossbreeding and insemination program that most scholarly observers credit with the destruction of Cuba’s vast herds of beef and dairy cattle. Confiscated from their owners—both wealthy, middle-income, and poor alike between 1960-1962—Cuba’s cattle died or failed to produce enough milk to cover national needs as early as 1964. From that year to the present, access to dairy milk has been permanently rationed and available to only very small children. Yet, in the 1970s and 80s, when the failure of Fidel’s cattle experiments reached a head, and Soviet imports of canned and powdered milk began to flow, government publicity agents portrayed the opposite reality: stamps depicted an array of healthy, diverse breeds. Later, the Ministry of Agriculture would erect a monument to F1, a cow named Ubre Blanca [White Teat], which produced almost 29 gallons a day! Eduardo “Guayo” Hernández Collection, Smathers Libraries, University of Florida
