On Twitter, the president assured that “May 17 is a date of great significance for Cuba, for its farmers that owned the land from that day in 1959 and for all who dedicate their lives to the hard but essential work in the countryside”.
Then he expressed: “Happy day, Cuban farmers”.
On this date, the Farmers´s Day is celebrated, on the occasion of the signing, 63 years ago, of the First Agrarian Reform Law which vindicated the rights of agricultural workers and radically overturned land ownership in the country.
The law, signed by leader Fidel Castro a few months after the triumph of the Revolution, allowed the intervention of the large estates of local landowners and foreign companies in favor of thousands of rural workers.
The latter thus became owners of plots of land, and received other benefits previously denied to them, such as access to health care, education and housing.
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