Martí Airport), Camagüey, Cienguegos, Holguín, Santa Clara, and Santiago de Cuba. Other centers served include Baracoa, Bayamo, Cayo Mambi, Guantánamo, Manzanillo, Moa, Nicaro, Nueva Gerona (on the Isle of Pines), and Varadero. The national enterprise also operates flights between Havana and Mexico City. In addition, there are direct flights by airlines of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia connecting Moscow and Prague with Havana. When air transport was nationalized, the government took over an assortment of United States- and British-made aircraft operated by domestic lines. Among those used for civil aviation in the 1960s were some ten C-47s, at least three C-46s, and four British Brittanias. The United States-made aircraft were kept running for a time with stopgap repairs, but most were gradually phased out; the Brittanias, however, were still operating in 1969. In addition, Soviet-made airplanes had been brought in to fill the gaps and to permit expansion of air transport services. The types involved include the IL-14, IL-18, AN-12, and An-24; a number of AN-2s have also been brought in and are being used in crop-dusting activities. Passenger transport dominates civil aircraft activities to such an extent that freight transport seems insignificant by comparison. In 1966, for example, about 3,000 metric-ton miles were reportedly flown; passenger-miles flown that year apparently totaled about 180 million. Ports and Shipping As of early 1970 the shipping trade was still adjusting to a drastic reorientation of freight patterns. Two principal changes were involved: construction of port facilities capable of handling large deep-draft vessels and expansion of the national merchant marine. When the United States was the country's major trading partner, most exports were carried on small freighters or oceangoing ferries that could take on cargo at minor ports. Most of these ports were not deep enough to accommodate large freighters and were unable to store sufficient goods to serve them effectively. Trade with Communist nations, however, required larger vessels efficient over long distances, and these created an urgent need for enlarged port facilities. As a result, many of the smaller harbors were deemphasized in favor of a few of the larger ones, whose piers were extended, and major loading and storage facilities were built. With sugar constituting the bulk of the nation's exports, it was natural that much of the new construction should be specifically designed to handle this product. Toward the end of the 1960s new terminals for loading and storing sugar for export were completed near Matanzas, Guayabal, and Cienfuegos (one of the largest sugarhandling facilities in the world). About two-thirds of all imports entered through the Port of Havana before the Revolution, so that the shift to imports from Communist states did not place as great a burden on harbors away from the capital as did the shift of exports. The Port of Havana did experience difficulties in handling the Soviet cargoes at the beginning, however, and efforts were made in the mid-1960s to redirect some of this traffic to less congested places. Most of these importrelated problems still had not been reduced to manageable proportions by early 1970. Some 10 million metric tons of goods per year were being transported to and from the island by ship toward the end of the 1960s. This was about the same amount that was carried in the years preceding the Revolution, although the distances involved were much greater. This international traffic carried about 98 percent of the total freight tonnage, with coastal shipping accounting for the rest. Even though the nation's merchant marine expanded rapidly during the 1960s, the tonnage shipped by Cuban vessels in 1969 was still less than 12 percent of the total. As of the middle of that year the merchant fleet consisted of forty-nine vessels with a total deadweight of over 370,000 metric tons. Oceangoing freighters acquired after 1959 accounted for over 80 percent of this tonnage. Coastal shipping has been a minor activity because of the island's well-developed road and rail systems. In places not served by these systems, notably parts of Oriente Province and the Isle of Pines, coastal shipping is more important. For example, the Oriente Province transport fleet, consisting of about twenty small schooners using a combination of steam and sail, was responsible for about one-third of all coastal shipping in 1967. The Isle of Pines, which is difficult to reach because of extremely shallow water between it and the mainland, is served by tugboats and a ferry service. COMMUNICATIONS AND POWER Electricity The Castro government has expressed strong interest in uniting the nation's power networks and has shown signs of trying to carry this out. By early 1970 powerlines linking a number of isolated powerplants in Pinar del Rio and Oriente provinces to larger grids had been completed, and work was underway on a 220-kilovolt line between Santiago de Cuba and Nuevitas. Long-range plans reportedly call for this line to be extended in such a way as to eventually unite the Western Grid serving parts of Camagüey and all provinces to the west, with the Eastern Grid serving Oriente Province. According to a government report, 753 miles of 110-kilovolt line and 740 miles of 33-kilovolt line were functioning in early 1969. The campaign to consolidate power networks is designed to im prove the efficiency of power distribution in the face of serious power shortages, especially in the Western grid. The city of Havana and other areas within the Western Grid were subjected to frequent power blackouts toward the end of the 1960s. At that time the government was sponsoring publicity campaigns to reduce power consumption, and it had become evident that power demand was in danger of outrunning available supplies despite completion of several major thermoelectric generating plants (see ch. 19, Industry). Part of the reason for these shortages is that the increase in installed generating capacity during the decade failed to keep pace with population growth and the consequent increases in consumer demand. This was aggravated in the capital by migrations from the countryside and by the fact that most of the government's expansion and maintenance efforts were directed toward rural areas (see ch. 4, Population). Also, the actual generating capacity of the system was often far below its installed capacity because of routine maintenance stoppages and the frequent breakdown of aged equipment. Regardless of generating capacity, however, the growing scarcity of fuel needed for power generation made it very unlikely that these chronic power shortages would be eliminated in the foreseeable future. Communications As many as 2,000 pay telephones were installed in Havana after the Revolution; the number of automatic exchanges was apparently increased in some areas, and limited attempts were made toward the end of the 1960s to expand telephone service to isolated rural areas. These projects appear to have been limited in scope, however, and there is no evidence that they have done much more than keep up with maintenance problems and population growth. In early 1970 the total number of operating telephones on the island appeared to be around 200,000. International long-distance exchanges were maintained to the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Soviet Union, and a number of other countries. The national telegraph system has some 400 offices throughout the country, but service in the past has tended to be inefficient. Some modernization has been accomplished through installation of teletypewriters imported from East Germany (German Democratic Republic), and in 1969 a program was underway to expand service to rural areas of Oriente Province. CHAPTER 22 FOREIGN ECONOMIC RELATIONS In early 1970, as in the past, foreign trade was of critical importance to the economy. The key element was sugar, which was produced in large quantities, with only a small portion of the crop being absorbed by the domestic market. The economy's traditional pattern is one in which sugar exports are used to obtain a large variety of imports not produced domestically. Because of this dependence on imports, any attempt to drastically reduce the role of foreign trade would be very costly to the economy. The nation's capacity for any radical change in foreign trade had been reduced in early 1970 by extensive international debts and domestic economic weakness, but there were indications that a policy of self-sufficiency for some currently imported products was likely to receive growing attention in the years ahead. The Soviet Union has been the nation's leading trading partner and creditor. The total debt to the Soviet Union exceeded the equivalent of US$2 billion in 1970; this figure did not include military aid, indirect subsidies, or the economic cost of buying large quantities of sugar, a product in which the Soviet Union is self-sufficient. About half the island's total trade in that year was with the Soviet Union; other Communist trading partners took up about one-quarter, the balance going to non-Communist nations. Sugar still dominated exports in early 1970, but by then a growing role for nickel exports had emerged. Tobacco and a few other agricultural and mineral products played relatively minor parts. Imports were much harder to describe because of their diversity, but they included large amounts of foodstuffs, capital equipment, and fuel, as well as a variety of durable consumer goods and raw materials. Barter agreements formed the basis for most foreign economic relations with Communist bloc countries. BACKGROUND: ECONOMIC RELATIONS WITH For the first half of the twentieth century the island's dependence on foreign trade meant dependence on trade with the United States. This was because the United States' share of the market generally amounted to over two-thirds of Cuba's total foreign trade. The |