ABSTRACT
The nationalization campaign kept the oil companies tied down until 1963, but it scored its only permanent success in the Barco Concession. The labor unions eagerly backed the nationalization campaign, and their support turned to wild enthusiasm in 1960 when Cuba, by a somewhat convoluted process, expropriated the oil refineries on the island. The campaign for the nationalization of oil had managed to take up the issue of the Barco Concession in 1962. The workers had been urging the government since 1961 to call for reversion of the concession before 1981, and they had become the most enthusiastic backers of the nationalization campaign. The revelation that oil output from the Barco Concession would soon start a rapid decline caused another shock, and no less sensational was the discovery that the government inspectors at the Barco Concession had been on company payrolls for decades.
