ABSTRACT
Early chroniclers told of travelling across all of Cuba in the shade of giant palms and through leafy forests abounding in mahogany, cedar and ebony. Cuba’s precious woods may still be admired ...in Madrid, but in Cuba the sugarcane invasion sent the best virgin forests up in smoke... The extensive plunder-culture of sugarcane meant not only the death of the forest but also, in the long run, the death of the island’s famous fertility. With forests surrendered to the flames, erosion soon did its work on the defenseless soil and thousands of streams dried up.
