20 Pesos 2013, Cuba
| in Krause book | Number: 122 |
| Years of issue: | 2013 |
| Edition: | -- |
| Signatures: | Presidente del Banco: Ernesto Medina Villaveiran |
| Serie: | 2004 Issue |
| Specimen of: | 2004 |
| Material: | Cotton fiber |
| Size (mm): | 150 х 70 |
| Printer: | Los Talleres de Grabado en Acero y Timbre del Estado de La Habana, STC-P |
* All pictures marked 
are increased partially by magnifying glass, the remaining open in full size by clicking on the image.
** The word "Specimen" is present only on some of electronic pictures, in accordance with banknote images publication rules of appropriate banks.
Description
Watermark:
Avers:
Text throughout the field of banknote: "Cuba - free territory of America, the homeland or death".
The engraving on banknote is made after this photo of Camilo Cienfuegos Gorriarán, 1959.
Camilo Cienfuegos Gorriarán (February 6, 1932 - October 28, 1959) was a Cuban revolutionary born in Lawton, Havana. Raised in an anarchist family that had left Spain before the Spanish Civil War, he became a key figure of the Cuban Revolution, along with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Juan Almeida Bosque, and Raúl Castro. In 1957 he became one of the top leaders of the revolutionary forces, appointed to the rank of "Comandante". In 1958, with the defeat of Operation Verano (Summer), Cienfuegos was put in command of one of three columns which headed west out of the mountains with the intention of capturing the provincial capital city of Santa Clara. Che Guevara was in command of another column and Jaime Vega was in command of the third. Jaime Vega's column was ambushed and defeated by Batista's forces.
Cienfuegos and Guevara's two columns reached the central provinces, where they joined efforts with several other groups. Cienfuegos's column fought the Battle of Yaguajay in December and, after a fight, forced the garrison to surrender on December 30, 1958. This earned him the nickname "The Hero of Yaguajay". With Yaguajay captured, Cienfuegos's column was able to advance against Santa Clara in conjunction with Guevara's forces, and the other non-Castro forces from the Escambray front. Together, the two columns captured Santa Clara on December 31, most of the defending soldiers gave up without shooting. Batista fled Cuba the next day, and the guerrillas were victorious.
Later, Cienfuegos would serve in the Cuban Army's high command, fight anti-Castro uprisings, and play a role in agrarian reforms.
Braille points are in top right corner for visually impaired.
Denominations are in lower left and top right corners, also centered.
Revers:
Agricultural scene - Cuban carries on his shoulder a bunch of bananas, farmers weed the land and the process of harvesting sugar cane.
Cienfuegos played a huge role in agrarian reforms, that is why agricultural scenes are on reverse.
Harvesting sugar cane in Cuba.
The Spanish conqueror of Cuba, Diego Velázquez is the one who introduced sugar cane brought from Santo Domingo, and since that time the settlers began to extract the juice to produce sugar, but at first by pressing the cane. The remains of this homemade sugar processing were used to negotiate with other settlers and with the pirates trading it for slaves. In the year 1543 due to population decline, Cuba was not taking off economically, as the settlers who came to America continued his way to the continent in search of gold, Hernando de Castro wrote to the King requesting permission to install a cane mill. At that time Santo Domingo was producing sugar with an industry driven by experts from Canary Islands. It wasn´t just until the end of the sixteenth century that the first commercial sugar mill was installed in the area of Havana.
In the seventeenth century, different types of mills were installed in Cuba, and by the end of 1600 there were about 60. At this time Cuba was the saga of the Spanish colonies in the production of sugar. The cultivation of sugarcane continued in the eighteenth century while the tobacco production was still prevailing, but then tobacco growers start moving to the sugar plantations. This is the beginning of what Cuban writer Fernando Ortiz called "the counterpoint of tobacco and sugar."
After several decades of the eighteenth century, Cuba continues behind Haiti in terms of production. When Havana was captured by the English in 1762, and the trade is opened to their colonies, the production started to rise. To this fact we must add that the following year when the Spanish crown took back the possession of Cuba, they passed laws that favored the sugar industry, and together with the armed uprising in Haiti, made that by the end of the century Cuba produced about 6000 tons with 600 mills. Since 1791, Cuba began to replace Haiti as a major exporter of sugar, until the end of the fourth decade of the nineteenth century Cuba was governed by a plantation economy, with no significant technical changes in production.
In the early nineteenth century with the introduction of the steam engine perfected by Richard Trevithick, which was called “maquina Cornualles”, Cuba enters the great era of sugar. By 1830 there was over a thousand mills that produced about 94 000 tons., in 1837 the steam locomotive comes to Cuba making further increases the production of sugar. Cuba was the seventh country in the world to have railways, and the first in Latin America. In the late nineteenth century with the modernization of the sugar mills, and thanks to the transportation of the cane by rail from distant farms, the number of mills is reduced from 2000 to about 500. In this period of modernization settlers are emerging, those who were the owners of small and outdated mills had to sell the cane to the mills. In the harvest of 1894 Cuba produced 1million tons of sugar.
In the twentieth century when Cuba gained its independence (May 20, 1902), with the introduction of new equipment the sugar mills were modernized, some were built with new technology, and thus their number was reduced. With less than 200 plants in 1925, the nascent Cuban nation produced more than 5 million tons of sugar. At that time most of the mills and the farms were owned by foreigners, but because of laws enacted by the subsequent democratic socialist government since the end of the 1950s, of the 161 work stations, 131 were owned by Cubans with 60% of total production. It is worth noting that the War of Independence left the Cuban economy almost destroyed.
In 1958, exports to the United States (mainly sugar) accounted for two thirds of Cuba's exports. United States gave preferential treatment to Cuban production but this commercial bond had political implications. Another characteristic of the sugar that had political effects was the tendency to generate strong fluctuations in the labor market, sugar production provided work for many people, but only for about three months a year. This gave rise to a rural proletariat more concerned about wages and working conditions for purchasing land and labor. That is very much connected with workers in the cities and played an important role during the uprising against Batista.
With the triumph of the communist revolution, the new government began to intervene not only the sugar mills of foreigners, but also those that belonged to Cubans, as well as small an large farms, resulting in that the incentives of private enterprise were reduced to zero. The sugar was present at the breaking with the United States and association with the Soviet Union. The land reform of 1959 included the expropriation of large estates, most of which were in American hands. Compensation measures were deemed insufficient by the U.S. government. In July 1960, the United States reduced by 700 000 tons the sugar quota purchased from Cuba. The Soviet Union immediately proposed buy at higher prices. Thanks to the sugar, Cuba entered the socialist bloc and led to dependence even stronger than the one with the United States.
In the first decades of communism in Cuba, the government continued to produce an average of 5 million tons, this was done by planting more cane, lengthening the harvest up to nine months and using more than one million machetes, where most were “volunteers" with the results that the cost of production based on labor was practically insignificant. The cane became an emblem of economic growth promised by the revolution. More ambitious targets were set and major operations were organized to harvest time. The aim was to reach 10 million tons in 1970, but never achieved. Since then, the industry lived a long decline.
Sugar production contracted by 57.4 percent between 1989 and 2000, and continued falling since then. The area planted was reduced by 23 percent between 1989 and 2000. Lands now are devoted to other crops, or have been abandoned. But the drop in production is not only related to the smaller areas of plantation, but also a sharp drop in performance: in the 90s , productivity in Cuba was 35 metric tons per hectare, when the global average according to FAO exceeds 60. In 2001 there were 3.5 million tons (13 per cent less than last year). In 2002 it was 3.6 million, but in 2003 there was only 1.3 million, which meant a reversal of a century. In 2004 there was a slight recovery, but the 2005 harvest was again at 1.3 million. In 2000, Cuba began to import sugar from Brazil. The drop in production had an impact on employment. In the 2006 harvest, only 42 mills processed sugar cane. A few years earlier, there were 156. In the eighties, the activity mobilized 400,000 workers.
In 2002, the final closure of 71 plants left without employment some 100 000 people. The Cuban authorities appealed to natural disasters and the fall in international prices, but experts do not believe that is sufficient. Adverse weather conditions actually existed, but also affected other countries in the region. As for the drop in international prices, this is a long-announced phenomenon, the increase in supply generated by the emergence of new producers (Brazil, India, Thailand, Australia) and falling demand due to changes in habits (including consumption of sweeteners) were evident processes . The real explanation is that the Cuban regime never took measures to defend their industry, no investment were made to remain technologically up to date, no attempt to diversify, an irrational use of land to exhaustion, and no incentives to the emergence of competitors. (Cuba agriculture)
On banknote depicted the reversing tractor YuMZ-6R (this modification were created by the group of Soviet engineers under the guidance of A.A. Soshnikov to work in the unit with loader sugarcane in Cuba).
Initially, Southern Machine-Building Plant was conceived as a car factory - Dnepropetrovsk Automobile Plant (DAZ). Still at II world war, on the southern outskirts of Dnepropetrovsk, began its construction.
After state test truck DAZ-150 "Ukrainian" and amphibious vehicle DAZ-485 (Stalin Prize in 1951) have been recommended for serial production. Before the start of the first stage of DAZ (300 thousand Lorries a year) remained a matter of days, but in the spring of 1951 the military authorities managed to take away from motorists is practically built giant and wrapping it in a high fence and barbed wire, turn the plant into invisibility. In great secrecy at the plant began to build rockets.
Then plant released also peacetime production: space vehicles, unique spacecraft, tractors, exported to 40 countries, but in the history of the "cold war" the plant entered as world's largest missile factory.
Tractors have always served as a "cover" of missile production.
In the early 60-ies plant started production of MTZ-5LS, produced by Minsk Tractor Plant. However, the tractor has changed its label on the YuMZ, as well as continued to be issued under the name of MTZ "Belarus". Even when the site was created, "yuzhmashevskaya" tractor model, it produced and exported under the name "Belarus". Only in the late 70s tractors acquired trademarks "YuMZ".
Tractor "YuMZ" was the best in the USSR. It was first assigned to the State Quality Mark among tractors, was recognized as the best car of the year and had the highest service life, as was made entirely on the defense enterprises. (Сайт о механических экскаваторах, старой строительной, авто- и железнодорожной технике rus.)
Together with the tractor on banknote is the Harvester KTP-1, made for mechanized harvesting of sugar cane developed in the "Lyubertsy Agricultural Machinery Plant named after A.V. Ukhtomskiy" in USSR, in the second half of the 1970s. Designed to operate in Cuba and, in consequence, produced under license in Holguín city, Cuba.
Denominations in numerals are in lower right and top left corners.
Comments:
On the front side of the banknote, the right of the portrait, placed security features for people with impaired vision. Security strip with a repeating microprinted "Patria o Muerte" passes to the left of center.
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