Cuba's sugar mills fall silent.(South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

CIENFUEGOS, Cuba _ For as long as Alejandro Sarria can remember, his family has measured life by the whistle of the hulking sugar mill called Soledad.

His father was a machinist at the century-old mill like his father before him and Sarria grew up playing on the soot-covered, Philadelphia steam engines that delivered cane from vast fields nearby. Years later, he would be in charge of repairing those same engines at the mill, by then renamed for the fallen revolutionary hero, Pepito Tey.

Sarria learned to tell time by the mill's hooting whistle, which marked shift changes, and was heartened when it announced workers had reached their milling quota for the day.

But now the mill has gone silent for good. Rock-bottom sugar prices, disappointing harvests and fuel shortages are forcing the cash-strapped Cuban government to close almost half the island's aging sugar mills. Pepito Tey, is among 71 of 156 mills scattered throughout the island that will close, devastating news for the villages that blossomed around them.

The most inefficient facilities already have been shuttered temporarily and industry analysts abroad anticipated a wide-scale restructuring. However, the move comes as a shock to hundreds of thousands of mill workers and farmers whose families have been inextricably linked to Cuba's cane fields for generations.

With $2 billion in annual revenues, tourism has replaced Cuba's king crop as the island's top moneymaker. Sugar produces about $550 million a year.

Sarria's beloved engine No. 1337, which he says never let him down as it delivered cane to the mill for a century, may become a tourist attraction.