G. B. Hagelberg (1925–2011)

Gerhard Hans Bernhard Hagelberg (1925-2011)

A long time analyst of Cuban agriculture and the sugar agro-industrial complex in the Caribbean.

Jerry Hagelberg was born on 7 September 1925 in Berlin, Germany and trained as an agronomist there. During the Second World War on the 20 Jun 1941 he left Berlin to became an American Citizen and lived in Suffolk, Massachusetts as a farm hand before having to join up with the FT Devens on 30th March 1944. He married his wife Jeanne after the Second World War and for a short while was the Managing Editor of a German language newspaper in New York, and at the time, published a 32 page pamphlet on "Germany: Hope or Peril?" (1952).

In 1960, the Hagelbergs moved to Cuba, attracted by the promise of a revolution with a human face. Whilst there Jerry worked in Havana with “El Che” as economic editor of the official government newspaper Granma until expelled in 1968 because of his open criticisms and his publication "The Economic Transformation of Cuba: A First-Hand Account".

Jerry was also a member of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy and in his 1974 wrote "The Caribbean Sugar Industries: Constraints and Opportunities" in which offered a bold frontal attack on a whole range of assumptions and conclusions held by historians, sociologists, economists, and anthropologists on the role of the sugar industry in pre-2000 Caribbean economical life.

He was a research fellow of the Academy of Sciences and the Institute for the Sugar Industry in Berlin and held appointments at Yale University and the University of Glasgow.

Through the first half of the eighties he served as the resident sugar adviser of the government of Barbados for which he was decorated for his services with an Honorary Silver Crown of Merit in the Order of Barbados (1980-1986).

He was the author of other numerous publications and his more recent works focused more on Cuban agriculture such as his collaborative work for each annual meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy with Jorge Pérez López and José Alvarez between 2005 and 2009.

His last analysis, originally entitled “Cuban Agriculture: Limping Reforms, Lame Results”, was re-labelled “Agriculture: Policy and Performance” and was presented at the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) Conference in August 2011.

He died on 2nd September 2011 at Canterbury in England and is survived by his wife of 64 years, Jeanne, and their three daughters.

Publications

with J. P. López & J. Alvarez, "Reinventing the Cuban Sugar Agroindustry", 2005
with J. Alvarez, "Historical Overview of Cuba’s Costs of Sugar Production: Implications for the Future", 2005
with J. Alvarez, "Cuba’s Dysfunctional Agriculture: The Challenge Facing the Government", 2007
with J. Alvarez, "Cuba’s Economic Culture and the Reform Process", 2008
with J. Alvarez, "Cuban Agriculture: The Return of the Campesinado", 2009

Sources

1. Monthly Review Volume 20, Number 5 (October 1968)
2. Committee on Un-American Activities, g 971, 7442; h 467-477 (testimony), 1356; hm 35, (1955-1960)