Administrative Control, Supervision and Investment

Abstract

‘Crazy Horse’ was the name Ángel Arcos Bergnes earned himself as he raced between sugar mills in eastern Cuba, often in the middle of the night and always armed, to defend himself from bandits and counter-revolutionaries in the countryside. His task was to standardise the accounts of the newly nationalised sugar mills as part of a process of decentralising administrative control, so that workers would know the results their own production. But this meant transferring accountancy tasks to many mill administrators who lacked the necessary training to manage such accounts. While the US-owned mills on the island had advanced accounts, most of the Cuban and Spanish-owned mills ran basic systems — their balance of accounts being organised from Havana, with bookkeepers in the provinces sending receipts to the capital.¹ All the mills had to be converted from a capitalist to a socialist accounting system, grouped by size and audited: ‘90 per cent of our work involved standardising the accounting system everywhere. I would go to a mill at 2am and call another one to say that I would arrive at 5am.’ Arcos met with economic personnel and clarifi ed their doubts about the new socialist accounts. He directed a group of auditors in every province: ‘They weren’t very revolutionary — at the beginning they worked, but when they saw the Revolution was moving to the left, some went. A couple of auditors in Oriente were formidable, but they left because they didn’t agree with communism.’²