From invasive species to biofuel of the future: Marabú’s transformation into Cuba’s new hope

This paper examines how Cuba is (re)negotiating its relationship to the environment—and its past—through the commodification of an invasive and thorny plant called Marabú. Rising out of the ruined soils of the past and into the present, Marabú stands as a ghostly reminder of what is left over from colonial sugar production. While the 1990s and 2000s were dominated by state-led eradication programs deploying prison labor to remove this latest scourge, Marabú’s fate has recently taken a remarkable turn. Transformed from invasive weed to sustainable biofuel, Marabú is quickly becoming a burgeoning international commodity—a prospect the Cuban government is pursuing in earnest as it seeks an alternative to oil fuel and reentry into the global market. Marabú has consequently become a symbol of a Cuba in transition—at .once evoking the country’s colonial sugar past and heralding a possibly ‘post-socialist’ future. Marabú’s resurrection complicates simplistic definitions of the native/invasive binary and may offer new ways of understanding the ways species move between and beyond these loaded distinctions. Challenging historical, scientific, and cultural definitions of what it means to be ‘native,’ the case of Marabú puts forward a thorny, but pertinent question for living in the Anthropocene: will embracing invasive species help create livable futures for both humans and non? Furthermore, what are the environmental and ethical implications of utilizing invasive species as new forms of plant-based biofuels and the unfree labor used to extract these energies? As the work of Cubans transforming Marabú to new ends makes clear, negotiating the social and environmental demands of the present day may require an innovative rethinking of our relationship with the things and species among us—and perhaps too with the past, no matter how troubling