TAMARIND MAN:
Agritainment Replaces Sugar Production at Old Plantations
At its height in the 19th century, the Cuban sugar industry boasted more than 50 sugar mills in the 225-kilometer-long Valle de los Ingenios. Its decline was long and gradual, influenced by the abolition of slavery in the late 1800s, the American trade embargo beginning in 1962, and a decade of economic collapse following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today, one former plantation offers tourists a view of the historic valley through a series of zip lines that crisscross a mountainside where sugarcane once grew. At the end of the adventure, a kind staff member provides tamarind pods as a sweet-tart snack from a nearby grove. At another plantation down the road, visitors crush sugarcane stalks into raw juice using a vintage grinding machine once powered by cattle.
