INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE LA REFORMA AGRARIA (INRA)

The National Institute for Agrarian Reform was established May 17, 1959, to carry out the provisions of the 1959 agrarian reform law.  It was given sweeping authority to organize the collective cultivation of land and to regulate all matters related to agricultural output, landholding, credit, and trade.  Cuba was divided into 28 agrarian development zones, each to be governed by an INRA appointee.  Except for several thousand small farms, all private land was confiscated and placed under INRA’s control.  After experimenting with different forms of socialist agriculture, including state-managed cooperatives, INRA eventually imposed identically organized state farms (granjas del pueblo), whose work force received wages rather than a share of profits.  Several farms in the same region were made part of an agrupación, administered by a director and six-member advisory council.  These directors reported to regional directors, subordinate to INRA organs in Havana.  Such state farms remain the principal organizational structures in the agrarian sector.  The agrarian reform law of 1963 restructured the INRA as a government ministry, which in 1974 was absorbed by the ministry of agriculture.