Barely 90 kilometers east of Havana, Matanzas has excellent agricultural lands, abundant fresh water, an ample and deep bay, good transportation routes, numerous oil deposits and Cuba’s best-known tourist resort, Varadero.

One of the island’s most important ecological reserves, the Ciénaga de Zapata, covers over half of the land area of Matanzas. This huge marsh, by far the largest of its kind in the Caribbean, has freshwater swamps, saline marshes, hammocks and bogs, rare birds and the endangered Cuban crocodiles.

POPULATION

At the end of 2011, Matanzas had 696,528 inhabitants, or 6.2% of Cuba’s total population, down from 12.9% at the beginning of the 20th century. In the long term, its demographic growth has been rather modest compared to Cuba’s other provinces, although with net annual gain of 4.1 per 1,000 residents from 2006 to 2011, its growth exceeds the national average. Centuries of sugar farming and enly spread croplands have led to the rise of small towns and villages rather than large cities.

Nearly 19% of the province’s people live in the capital city, also called Matanzas, with 132,651 inhabitants in 2011 (up from 75,000 in 1959). The latest available Cuban census (2002) showed other leading cities’ populations as follows: Cárdenas, with 80,832 inhabitants, followed by Colón (44,520), Jagüey Grande (27,248); Jovellanos (26,726) and Pedro Betancourt (14,143).

Smaller towns are associated with sugar mills or important highway junctions, such as Perico (12,247), Los Arabos (10,000), Martí (9,161), Unión de Reyes (9,043) and Limonar (8,088). Varadero and Santa Marta, two small villages dependent on tourism and the oil industry, had 7,822 and 10,465 inhabitants respectively in 2002.

The effects of the economic crisis of the 1990s were somewhat milder in Matanzas than throughout the rest of Cuba. Between 1993 and 2000, the provincial population grew by 0.7% a year, slightly above the national rate but below the province’s 1.2% annual growth rate during the 1970s.

AGRICULTURE

Matanzas has 524,900 hectares (1.3 million acres) of agricultural land. Of that, 207,300 ha (512,250 acres) or 39.5% of it are croplands, and 100,400 ha (248,000 acres) are vacant. Natural pasture land, often infested with marabú and other invasive bushes, account for 41% of all agricultural lands.

For centuries, sugar cane was the backbone of the local economy but the collapse of that industry, along with the emergence of oil and tourism, radically changed the provincial economic base. The downsizing of Cuba’s sugar industry in 2002 left Matanzas with only six out of 21 mills still producing sugar.

After successive downsizings of the sugar industry, sugarcane currently accounts for around 80,800 ha (200,000 acres), down from 180,000 ha in the late 1980s.

Currently, there are only four active sugar mills in Matanzas out of 21 existing before 2002. The four are Mario Muñoz (built in 1986), Jesús Rabí (formerly Porfuerza), René Fraga (Santa Rita) and Mexico (Alava).

The España Republicana (España) and Juan Avila (Santo Domingo) mills might be mothballed until conditions improve. The status of another two mills, Cuba Libre (Cuba) and Esteban Hernández (Guipúzcoa) is not clear. They were scheduled to produce only molasses, but have remained silent for the past few years.

In recent harvests, Matanzas has produced 100,000 tons of raw sugar or less, valued at $44 million at prevailing world prices. That’s down from 288,000 tons of sugar in 2002 and a far cry from the nearly one million tons produced every year in the 1980s, when the crop was worth over $550 million, thanks to preferential prices by the Soviet Union.

As for the rest of Cuba’s sugar sector, poor agricultural yields and a lack of qualified personnel are to blame for Matanzas’ scanty results in the past few years. Recent reports indicate that the Mario Muñoz sugar mill one of the most reliable in Cuba, usually providing 40% of its sugar has been a major disappointment, yielding only 39,000 tons in 2012 compared to the normal 100,000 tons per season.

Ironically, for a country with centuries of sugar expertise, unskilled personnel in key positions are to blame for the “great disorder” or “debacle” to use Granma’s terms in this sugar mill.

Two sugar refineries located in Cárdenas José Smith and España Republicana can produce roughly 10% of Cuba’s refined sugar, though the José Smith refinery, formerly known as Progreso, is almost certain to be turned into a tourist attraction. In Cárdenas, alcohol is distilled and used to produce rum at the nearby Havana Club distillery.

Matanzas is also noted for citrus, with its orchards producing one-third of Cuba’s citrus crops with the help of Israeli technology and investment. These orchards are concentrated north of Jagüey Grande; 24,800 ha are in production, down from 48,800 ha in 198

Plagues, loss of markets and poor management have hit the citrus industry badly, with output falling to 155,000 tons in 2011, down from 418,000 tons in 1988. Oranges account for 62% of total output and grapefruit another 24%. Jagüey Grande is also the site of a fruit-juice concentrate processing plant.

INDUSTRY

The discovery of important hydrocarbon deposits in Matanzas has been a windfall for Cuba’s energy-starved economy.

The Cárdenas-Varadero, Rangel and Seboruco-Yumurí oil fields have a combined yield exceeding 27,000 barrels per day. That’s equivalent to 44% of Cuba’s national output and nearly a fifth of its total consumption. This “black gold” a heavy, dense oil containing 6% sulfur is used in specially adapted thermal power plants and cement plants.

The province produces 13.8 billion cubic feet per year of natural gas, or 75% of Cuba’s total; the gas is currently used to generate electricity.

The 330-megawatt Antonio Guiteras thermal power plant is reportedly the most efficient in Cuba, consuming 10,000 barrels of fuel oil a day. The government invested $33 million so that the plant can produce 90% of its power with domestic crude oil.

Natural gas is used to generate power at the 173-megawatt Energas plant near Varadero, which was built and is operated in association with Toronto-based Sherritt International.

A Cuban-Venezuelan joint venture built the future Matanzas oil refinery, a $4.3 billion investment scheduled to open in 2015, with the capacity to process 150,000 barrels per day.
However, failure to hit deepwater oil in four exploratory wells in the Gulf of Mexico which would have fed the future refinery might put this ambitious project on hold.

Finally, the Bellotex mill near Matanzas is the main supplier of special fabrics for Cuba’s tobacco industry, producing 19.6 million yards of textiles a year.

And the old Rayonitro chemical plant is an important supplier of fertilizers and sulfuric acid for Cuba’s agriculture sector.

TOURISM

Tourism is by far the most lucrative sector of the provincial economy.

Varadero, with over 20 kilometers of white-sand beaches, is the No. 2 tourist destination in Cuba after Havana. Thanks to new hotel construction, as of 2011 Varadero had 23,614 rooms up from 8,000 rooms in 1994.

In 2011, tourism to Varadero generated revenues of $773 million, down from $970.6 million in 2008 and only slightly higher than the $760 million reported in 1999.
Yet tourism revenues in 2011 for Varadero alone were nearly double the earnings of Cuba’s entire sugar exports for that year.

Also in 2011, Varadero received just over one million hotel guests, or around 40% of all visitors to Cuba. Even so, vast spaces of vacant lands and unexploited beaches are available near Varadero for future development. Nearly 18,500 people in Matanzas work in tourism.

In 2012, Cuba received nearly 2.9 million tourists, up 4.9% from 2011, Cuban Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero announced on Dec. 27, with 3 million visitors expected in 2013.
Canada remains the top source of tourism, with Britain the leading European source.

INFRASTRUCTURE

The six-lane National Highway, the narrow old Central Highway and the Central Railroad link Matanzas to the rest of the island, while a network of secondary roads and railroad branches reaches all settlements and economic hubs.

The Via Blanca highway connects Matanzas with Havana to the west; an electric train, built in 1916, still runs between Havana and Matanzas. Roads serving tourism areas are in fair shape, while others are in poor condition.

One of the last engineering projects completed with Soviet assistance is the petroleum storage and transporting facilities of the port of Matanzas.

Originally designed for receiving, storing and distributing nearly all fuel imports for Cuba, the facility was finished just as the Soviet Union was collapsing, and has never been used to its fullest extent.

The petroleum facility can receive tankers of up to 150,000 tons and warehouse half a million cubic meters of crude, to be shipped later to the port and oil refinery at Cienfuegos through a 186 km-long pipeline capable of moving 134,000 barrels per day.

The port of Matanzas used to be one of the countries busiest. At its heyday in the 1980s, more than 300 ships called there annually. In addition, 16% of Cuba’s sugar production was exported through the port  making it second only to Cienfuegos.

The bulk sugar terminal has a nominal capacity of 10,000 tons a day, though traffic is way down these days. The downsizing of the sugar industry has put a further damper on port activities.

Six miles northeast of Matanzas is Juan Gualberto Gómez International Airport, now Cuba’s second-busiest airport after Havana’s José Martí. Completed in the 1990s to replace the aging, inadequate Varadero airport, it can handle up to two million passengers a year.