A very timely contribution was represented today, 99 years ago, by the creation of the Association of Sugar Technicians of Cuba (ATAC), whose essential objectives were subsequently directed towards the scientific-technical development and professional advancement of its associates.
Our organisation promotes those purposes through specific actions, based on vanguard experiences, innovations and new technologies, both national and foreign, to elevate effectiveness and efficiency, and the prosperous and sustainable boom of the sugar cane sector, commented to the Cuban News Agency Eduardo Lamadrid Martínez, its president.
Shortly after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on the 1st of January 1959, there was full identification with the strategy to rescue technological discipline and to promote and manage projects that allow advancement in energy transformation, he recalled.
Successively, he added, the requirement to apply technical norms in each workplace for the good of the quality of sugar production and its derivatives, especially the preparations for the current harvest.
Furthermore, the convocation, organisation and co-sponsorship of conferences, courses, seminars, workshops, symposia and technical exchanges, national and international, in Cuba and abroad, in coordination with the Sugar Group AZCUBA, which it serves as specialised support to its entities and others of the Cuban State in matters related to the sugar agro-industry and other related fields.
ATAC reaches this Saturday the 99th anniversary of its constitution from that 3rd of January 1927, when shortly after the Provincial Government of Havana approved its Regulations, Public Order Section and Association Register on the 26th of February of the same year.
The antecedents of its formation date back to 1924, when in Honolulu, Hawaii, the First Pan-Pacific Conference for the Conservation of Food was held, which counted among its working sections one dedicated to the Sugar Industry.
There emerged the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists (ISSCT) and it also agreed to organise its First Congress.
Only three years later its second congress would be in Havana, at a time of privileged conditions enjoyed by manufacturers in Cuba and Puerto Rico to supply the burgeoning demand of the United States.
At that time, the Cuban territory lacked a national sugar association with similar characteristics to ensure the meeting, a fact that constituted the catalytic premise that prompted its emergence.
A group of 15 people linked to the sector met that 3rd of January 1927 at the Midday Club, in the Royal Bank of Canada building, located in Old Havana, and founded ATAC in a very original way: all its directors were foreigners and only one had Cuban citizenship.
The fact drew the attention of historians due to the US predominance: another of its members was Portuguese, one more Spanish and 12, 80 percent, were North American, whose interests dominated the sugar industry to such an extent that from its sugar exports to that market it obtained 80 percent of its income.
