Authentic 1860s Colonial Chinese Death Certificate - Rare Slave Coolie Document For Sale

A VERY RARE CHINESE RELATED CUBAN DOCUMENT FROM THE 1860\'S , DURING TIMES OF COLONIAL SPAIN, IN FAIR SHAPE WITH INK BLEEDING (AND PREVIOUS DOCUMENT INK) OF A CHINESE IMMIGRANT TO CUBA DEATH CERTIFICATE MEASURING APPROXIMATELY 6 1/8 X 7 3/8 WHO WAS AT THE:
Havana at the Real Hospital de Caridad de San Felipe y Santiago ComisariaCHINESE COOLIE LABOR IN CUBAIN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:FREE LABOR OR NEOSLAVERY?
almost all male, were sent to Cuba. This is no small number, considering the timespan of just 27 years. Eighty percent or more were destined for the sugarplantations. The Chinese were imported while African slavery was still in effect thoughundergoing “gradual abolition,” and worked alongside this traditional form of plantationlabor. (During this same period, Peru also imported Chinese coolies — about 95,000 —for its sugar plantations. In the case of Peru, however, slavery was being abolished justwhen coolies were being introduced, essentially supplanting slave labor on the revivedcoastal plantations, although initially they did work with or under free blacks.)Was coolie labor another form of slavery, or was it a transition to free labor?This paper will examine Ja trata amarilla [the yellow trade] from its inception to itsdissolution in light of these apparently opposing propositions of free labor or neoslavery.
} YRom 1847 ro 1874, as many as 125,000 Chinese indentured or contract laborers,
THE INTERNATIONAL COOLIE TRADE
The British were the first to experiment with the exporting of first Chinese, thenEast Indian, laborers under contract to their overseas colonies. As early as 1806, atprecisely the time when the British ended the slave trade, 200 Chinese were sent toTrinidad. Although this experiment was a failure, British entrepreneurs continued topress for the export of Asian labor, turning from China to India by the 1830s. By 1838,some 25,000 East Indians had been exported to the new British East African colony ofMauritius and successfully adapted to the plantation system there. In 1845, the first cargoof East Indians was shipped to British Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica in the West Indies.They were under contract to the plantations for five years, a period known euphemisti-cally as “industrial residency,” after which they could presumably ask for passage home,or remain in the colonies as free men. During the same time, the French also acquiredIndians under indenture to their colonies in East Africa and the Caribbean.
Thus was initiated a forced international labor migration of immense propor-tions, the official, recorded count totaling over half a million between 1842 and 1870,Chinese Coolie Labor in Cuba 39to Mauritius, Demerara (British Guiana), Trinidad, Jamaica, Natal, Reunion and othersmall French colonies.” The British, who condemned slavery and pressured the French,Spanish and Portuguese to follow their lead in ending the African slave trade, also ledthe way to develop, sanction and profit from this new system of forced labor. The Spanishand Cubans, and the Peruvians, quickly followed their example, faced as they were withthe same dilemma of the end of slavery when the plantation economy continued toflourish.
This became the infamous coolie trade, referring specifically to Chinese andEast Indians bound under contract to provide service for a specified period of time —five years under the British system, eight in Cuba and Peru. The contract was a legaldocument between a free person and an employer, and spells out the precise obligationsof both parties. The coolie was to be paid during the period of contract, usually acombination of wages and in kind (food, clothing, lodging and medical attention). Aftercompleting the term of indenture, the coolies were to regain their total freedom.However, there was an immense gap from the very beginning between theory andpractice, which was probably unavoidable given the context in which the systemdeveloped.
British historian Hugh Tinker describes coolie labor as “the lowest layer of theindustrial labor force,” whose creation was directly linked “to the emergence ofWestern ... economic exploitation of the raw materials of the tropics.” The cooliesystem enabled the plantation industry “to draw upon a pool of cheap labour with theminimum of restrictions and the maximum of leverage against the workers.” It emergedin direct response to the end of the African slave trade and of slavery as the preferredsystem of labor on plantations, and at a time when plantations were becoming moremechanized and industrialized, so that one could speak of the plantation as “industrialagriculture,” or “factory in the field.”?
THE COOLIE TRADE TO CUBA
Between 1763, the year the British captured and occupied Havana for 10months and opened up this Spanish colony to international trade and the emerging NorthAmerican market, and 1838, when the Cuban industry mechanized significantly, Cubansociety was transformed from “the relatively mixed economy based on cattle-ranching,tobacco-growing, and the small-scale production of sugar” to the “dominance ofplantation agriculture based on the large-scale production of sugar and coffee.’ It hadsurpassed her British West Indian neighbors to become the preeminent sugar producerin the world. Along with new markets, improved technology, capital availability, aresponsive political climate, a modern, entrepreneurial spirit among the planters, andother factors, African slave labor was crucial to the success of the plantation economy.The slave population had grown from 38,879 (22.8% of the total population) in 1774,to 436,495 (43.3% of total population) by 1841. Despite British efforts already underwayto end the international slave trade, Cuba continued to import large numbers of Africansduring the early nineteenth century, reaching as high as 25,841 in 1817.5The transformation of Cuban society was not just an economic phenomenon;it was social as well, for the population became not only increasingly slave and colored,but the planter class — often hacendados [landowners], esclavistas [slave owners] andnegreros (slave traders] all in one (e.g. Zulueta and Aldama) — reigned supreme, withtheir interests driving most policy-making, and their authority, particularly on theirestates, largely unquestioned.
Planter interest was represented by the powerful Real Junta de Fomento y deColonizacién, presided by the eminent landowner and international businessman JulianZulueta. An agency of the Fomento was the Comisién de Poblacién Blanca, charged atfirst with promoting the immigration of free European workers to Cuba, as thesefarsighted planters were already preparing for the imminent end of Africa as their sourceof labor and the need to adjust to free white labor. But free men and women in Europewere not attracted to a plantation society with slave labor. So, in 1844, when the Britishcoolie trade was in full swing, the Junta sent an agent to China to study the possibilityof importing Chinese coolies. The Spanish Government was also familiar with Chineseagricultural labor in their Phillippines colony. An agreement was sealed sometime in1846 between Zulueta and Company in London and the British in Amoy, a treaty portin Fukien Province, South China. On June 3, 1847, the Spanish ship Oquendo dockedin Havana with 206 Chinese on board, after 131 days at sea. Six died at sea and another7 shortly after arrival. Nine days later, another British ship, the Duke of Argyle arrivedwith 365 on board, after 123 days at sea.® Thirty five had died at sea. Both human cargoeswere consigned to the Junta de momento, which proceeded to distribute the coolies inlots of 10 to a group which included the island’ s most prominent planters and one railroadcompany.
Initial response to the Chinese as workers in Cuba was not enthusiastic. Cubasuspended the trade after the first contract with Zulueta, and spent the next few yearspromoting other forms of immigrant labor, including Yucatecos (Mayan Indians) fromMexico, Gallegos, Catalans and Canary Islanders from Europe. While some came fromall these places, they failed to meet the ever growing labor demand. The trade wasofficially resumed in 1853. By then, in response to harsh international criticism of analready infamous human experiment, the British prohibited their subjects from partici-pating in the particularly notorious passage to Cuba and Peru, forcing the trade to thePortuguese colony of Macao off the China coast, wherePortuguese colonial authorities for the right price fully cooperated with the Europeancoolie traders until 1874, when even Portugal succumbed to international pressures toend it. By then, over 200,000 Chinese had been sent from Macao, although, of course,the actual origins of the Chinese remained in South China, in Canton and Fukienprovinces. The following table summarizes the figures for the duration of the trade toCuba and Peru, correlated with slave importation and sugar production.
Aclear correlation can be observed in these figures. As the African slave tradewound down and ended with the last shipments in 1865 and 1866 of just 145 and 1,443slaves, the size of the coolie imports rose markedly, reaching as high as 12,391 and14,263 in 1866 and 1867. From 1865 to the end of the coolie trade in 1874, 64,500 cooliesCoolie Imports to Cuba (1847-1874)Correlated with Slave Imports and Sugar Production
Year Slaves Coolies Sugar (m. tons)1847 571
1848
1853 12,500 4,307 391,2471854 11,400 1,711 397,7131855 6,408 2,985 4,6291856 7,304 4,968 416,1411857 10,436 8,547 436,0301858 19,992 13,385 426,2741859 30,473 7,204 469,2631860 24,895 6,193 428,7691861 23,964 6,973 533,8001862 11,254 344 454,7581863 7,507 952 445,6931864 6,807 2,153 $25,3721865 145 6,400 $47,3641866 1,443 12,391 535,6411867 14,263 $85,8141868 7,368 720,2501869 5,660 718,7451870 1,227 702,9741871 1,448 609,6601872 8,160 772,0681873 §,093 742,8431874 2,490 768,672
Total 124,813
1875 750,0621876 626,0821877 516,2681878 $53,3641879 775,3681880 618,6541881 §80,8941882 620,565
Sources: Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba, 10,36, 250; Pérez de la Riva, “Demografia,” 60 (Scottreproduced these figures on 29, and corrected an apparent mathematical mistake in the total, from124,793 in the original to the correct figure of 124,813.)
The Boletin de Colonizacion, in issues I-14 (15 August 1873), I:15 (30 August 1873), 1:16(15 September 1873), and I:17 (30 September 1873), contains a very detailed record of the entirecoolie trade from China and Macao, listing the following information: 1) date of departure; 2)name of ship: 3) flag of ship; 4) number of coolies disembarked in Cuba; 5) length of voyage; 6)Port of exit in China or Macao; 7) Consignatory (agent receiving the cargo in Havana).arrived, constituting over 50% of the total number imported. During this period, sugarproduction climbed steadily, reaching a high of 768,672 metric tons in 1874. Cooliesconstituted the source of labor replenishment, delaying the crisis that would have set inwith the end of the slave trade, and making it possible for the plantation economy tocontinue to prosper. It is also noteworthy that, after 1875, when both the slave and thecoolie trade had ended, sugar production displayed a pattern of general decline, a crisisbrought on certainly in large part by the shortage of available labor.
THE COOLIE CONTRACT AND COOLIE REGULATIONS
From the very beginning of the trade, Cubans rarely referred to the Chinese ascoolies, or even as workers, but as colonos asiaticos. Those who bought their contractswere referred to as patrén or patrono. (Significantly, however, the Chinese governmentitself preferred the term “employer,” which certainly was more appropriate given thecoolies’ legal status.) The contract [contrata] had the heading Emigracién China paraCuba, which probably explains the reference to the Chinese as “colonists.” In Chinese,however, the heading can be translated as “Labour Employment Contract” (Gu-kong-he-tong), making no allusion to immigration, but, rather, to work.’
All coolies were issued a contract before embarkation for Cuba. Cuban plantersemployed agents to handle the trade for them in Macao. The Portuguese authorities inMacao oversaw the loading process and legalized the documents. The contract was tobe read to the coolie in the appropriate Chinese dialect, so that he fully understood itsterms, and by signing signified conformity with these terms.
The contract was printed in both Chinese and Spanish, and issued in duplicate:one to the coolie to be kept on his person for the duration of his servitude, and one to thecontracting agency, which transferred it to the patrono upon selling it. Printed in cleartype in both the Spanish and Chinese versions, and usually on a fine blue paper, thecontract includes details such as the name, age and home village of the coolie, the nameof the on-site agent as well as the contracting agency in Havana, sometimes the name ofthe coolie ship, and signed by the Spanish consul and the local authorities (Portuguesein the case of Macao.)
Throughout the years of the trade, some of the basic terms remained constant:the eight years of servitude almost never varied; the pay of 1 peso a week, or 4 a month,also remained constant; in addition to salary, coolies were paid in food and clothing —usually some specified amount of rice, meat or fish, yams or vegetables, as well as twochanges of garment, one jacket and 1 blanket a year. Housing was also provided. Thecontract specified three days off during New Years, and usually Sundays as well,although this was rarely honored even when stipulated. Furthermore, the contractprovided for medical attention, although it also stipulated under what conditions thepatrono could withhold pay until recovery. The patrono was also assured of fully eightyears service, so that the coolie was obligated to make up for lost days by extending hisservice beyond the 8 calendar years. In addition, the coolie was advanced 8 to 14 pesosat time of departure (for passage and a new change of clothing), which constituted a debtto the patrono to be repaid by deduction from his salary at the rate of 1 pesos a month.
The initial contracts were reinforced by the first coolie regulations issued on 10April 10 1849, entitled “Government Regulations for the Handling and Treatment ofAsian and Indian Colonists.”* In issuing these rules, Governor-General Conde de Alcoybluntly stated the need — in addition to “protecting the rights of the colonists’ —forrulesthat also assured their “subordination and discipline, without which they could hurtinstead of benefit agriculture.” Since nowhere in the contract was corporal and otherforms of punishment mentioned, the 1849 Reglamentos clearly spelled out the condi-tions — insubordination and running away — under which corporal and other forms ofsevere punishment could be meted out, including floggings [cuerazos], leg chains orshackles [grillete], confinement in stocks [cepo]. Cuban historian Juan Pérez de la Riva,one of the severest critics of the coolie system, pointed out in his study of the legalcondition of the coolies in Cuba, that the rules regarding corporal punishment was liftedalmost verbatim from those designed to discipline and punish slaves.? On the other hand,the 1849 Regulations also contained two articles clearly implying distinctions betweenChinese coolies and slaves. Article 10 stipulated that whenever there were 10 coolies onany one estate, the planter must assign a white overseer [mayoral blanco] to superviseand care for them, and to help them with the work. Article 17 stipulated that only thewhite overseer could mete out corporal punishment, and never in the presence of slaves[negros].
When the trade was resumed in 1853, a new set of regulations were introducedin 1854, and the contract itself was modified. This was the “Regulations for theIntroduction and Control of Spanish, Chinese and Yucateco Colonists on the Island ofCuba.”!° Although the regulations included all colonists, it was clearly aimed primarilyat governing Chinese coolies. First of all, in view of the violent reaction of the first cooliearrivals to corporal punishment, it was specifically prohibited in the 1854 regulationsand all subsequent ones. There is no shortage of evidence to demonstrate that thisprohibition was largely ignored by the planters and their administrators.!!
A new clause was inserted towards the end of the new contract, in which thecolono declared “I am in agreement with the stipulated salary, although I know that freeworkers and slaves make much more, because I feel that this difference has beencompensated by other benefits which the patrono has given me, and which are spelledout in this contract.” Just above this statement was another which clearly stipulated thatupon completion of the eight-year term of service, “I will be free to work as I wishwithout being forced to extend this contract, not even under the pretext of debt,obligations or promises that I might have made.” This rather peculiar juxtaposition, onthe one hand conforming to the international understanding of contract or indenturedlabour that frees the worker upon completion of the agreed upon term of service, whileon the other coercing the coolie to accept a lower than going salary rate, suggests anunresolved conflict in the minds of thase who designed the coolie system in Cuba.
This dilemna was eventually resolved against the coolie, in the 1860 “Regula-tions for the Introduction of Chinese Workers to the Island of Cuba.”!? The new lawrequired a change in the contract that required coolies who completed their original termof service to recontract with the same or another master. Otherwise, they were obligatedto leave Cuba within two months of termination.The 1854 regulations, a lengthy document containing 66 articles, made cleartwo things, which were in fact contradictory. On the one hand, it attributed a legalpersonality to the coolie, who was, after all, a free man. On the other hand, during theeight-year term of servitude, he was clearly the property of the master. Regarding hisrights as a free man, the colono could contract marriage; control his reproduction as wellas assume parental authority over his offsprings and preserve his marital relationship andfamiliar obligations (married colonos with children could not be forcibly separated);acquire and dispose of private property; bring charges against his patrono in court, andhad recourse to the colonial authorities in the event of abuse, which, when severe enoughcould result in the recision of his contract.
Most important of all, the regulations spelled out precisely his right to freedom.Upon reaching 25 years of age, or upon completing six years of service, the colono hadthe right to have his contract rescinded by providing a fair indemnization to the patrono.Furthermore, all colonos could buy out their contract under carefully spelled outconditions in Article 28. These included: the original purchase price of the contract; afair indemnization for the balance of the contract; the cost to the patrone for the servicesprovided the coolie (such as clothing, job training, tools); cost of inconvenience to thepatrono while looking for a replacement. One exclusionary clause was inserted: thecolono could not avail himself of what was essentially “coartation” during the zafra[cane harvest] or when other urgent tasks were needed.\"In other respects, the contract as well as the series of regulations made it clearthat during the eight-year servitude, the coolies were the property of the patronos,constituting moreover a fixed capital investment in his enterprise. Despite variousrecourses legally available to the coolie to complain against abuses, excesses andviolations of the contract, other stipulations made it clear that the daily life and work ofthe coolies were pretty much left to the discretion of those who bought their contracts.Various clauses also made clear that the contract — and by extension the rights and needsof the patrono — took precedence over rights and needs of the colono. Article 19 statedthat the colono, upon signing the contract, “renounces the exercise of all civil rightswhich are not compatible with the compliance of contract obligations.” He had very littlefreedom of mobility, for the colono was specifically prohibited from leaving his placeof work without the written permission of the patrono; otherwise he could be arrestedby the authority as a cimarrdn or runaway. Many of the personal rights accorded thecoolie, such as marriage and acquisition of property, had to have the approval of thepatrono. While coartation was permitted, the terms were so difficult that it was verydifficult, though not impossible (as discussed below). The selling and buying ofcontracts, as well as the renting out of contracts, in practice was very little different fromslave transactions. The laws, in effect, particularly on the plantations, were flagrantlydisregarded, the contract a mere piece of paper.
COOLIE CONDITIONS IN CUBAFrom the beginning, critics and cynics in Cuba noted and decried the hypocrisythey perceived in the use of the term colono. If “colonist” implied settling the land and
working it independently, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that such was far fromthe minds of those who acquired Chinese coolies and who viewed them simply as brazosor cheap, unskilled labor. Cuban planter Pedro Diago, owner of the Ingenio Santa Elena,remarked at the time of the first shipload in 1847, “creo que convendrd su inmigraciénpara sustituir la falta de brazos africanos,” to which the Junta de Fomento later added,“no solo conveniente, sino indispensable” and “el tinico recurso para proporcionarbrazos.’”* Although no more than 20% of the total imported went into domestic service,public works, and small industries, the vast majority, 80% or more, were sent directlyto the plantations.\'* In practice and in some of the laws, the Chinese were denied mostof their rights as free men under contract and after the contract period, and were hardlyregarded by other members of either society as immigrants or colonists. Most of all, thecritics of this system — both contemporary observers as well as historians examining itretroactively — have focused on the actual physical conditions of work and daily life onthe plantations for the Chinese coolies. There, of course, the Chinese were confrontedwith the tradition of slavery, their patronos seasoned slave owners. In Cuba, the Chineseworking alongside slaves, performing basically the same unskilled tasks, with somesmall number assigned to more skilled labor.
Coolie traders as well as the planters made little attempt to readjust the systemor even to change the terminology. In South China, hapless Chinese, mostly poor youngmen, were “recruited” by force and deception by their own countrymen commonlycalled by the Westerners crimps or runners [corredores] — just as their counterparts inAfrica were called. While waiting to be embarked in Macao, these recruits were housedin “barracoons.” Many of the same ships and captains used in the African slave trade nowtransported Chinese coolies, packing them on board in the same way as slaves, acrossa “Middle Passage” that was even longer in distance and more arduous. Mortality rateson these coolie ships — known also as “floating coffins” — were as high as 25 or 30%,and averaged 16% for Cuba.\'6
Upon their arrival in Havana, the coolies were locked up in the depdsitos untilthey (technically their contracts) were saleed off in lots in the same market used tosell slaves. In the plantations, the coolies were housed in the same quarters as slaves orformer slaves. The administrators resorted to the same methods of control and punish-ment — stocks and metal bars [cepo and barras], leg chains [grillete], whippings[azotes], jails and lockups, even executions. Notices appeared in the local newspapersregarding chinos cimarrones (cimarrones being a term that specifically applied torunaway slaves) or venta de chinos, although legally, of course, neither the contract norcertainly the person of the Chinese could be sold.!”
In the actual treatment of the coolies, itis clear that the patronos lived the legacyof slavery: “They thought only in terms of a slave system; they could not think beyondthat system, and they did not want to go beyond.” The coolie system was erected uponthe foundations laid by slavery. As with slaves, the planters enjoyed “absolute power”over the coolies.!8
The coolies, for their part, also responded to the harshness of the plantationregime much as slaves did. They rebelled, individually or collectively; they protested tothe authorities whenever possible though usually with little effect against the over-whelming power of the planters over the judicial system in spite of certain laws; they ranaway; they resorted to suicide. They even joined insurrections against Spain in Cuba’sTen Year War in order to bargain for their personal freedom.\'?
On the part of contemporary observers turned critics of the coolie system, aswell as of twentieth century historians examining the system, many viewed thistreatment of legally free men, albeit under contract for eight years, as no different fromchattel slaves, thus concluding that coolies were slaves or semiesclavos and the systemanother form of slavery. In many of the critics, an undertone of moral outrage is quiteaudible.
EXTENSION AND ADJUSTMENTS TO THE COOLIE SYSTEM
When the coolie trade was cut off in 1874, many of those already in Cuba stillhad to work off their terms of servitude. Moreover, mechanisms were put in place toextend the term of service, to force or otherwise entice the Chinese to continue workingunder some kind of contract primarily on the plantations, where demand for laborcontinued to be high.
In Cuba, forced recontracting began early, with the Reglamento of 1860discussed above, which obligated those coolies who had completed their first 8 years torecontract (for an unspecified period of time) or to leave Cuba at their own expense. Onlythose whose contracts expired before 1861 were exempt. To critics such as Pérez de laRiva, recontracting simply further confirmed his conclusion that the coolie system wasslavery, in that compulsory and successive recontracting perpetuated servitude indefi-nitely to the point that the legal distinction between indenture and slavery became trulyblurred by the practice.
There is no doubt that the Cubans issued the recontracting regulation in orderto keep as many as possible of this captive alien labor force on the plantations, knowingfull well that very few of the coolies could have saved enough from their meager wagesto pay for their passage home. Equally undeniable a factor was racism, for the questionof race definitely figured into this decision to keep the Chinese unfree. Cuban slavers andabolitionists alike had trouble dealing with a free nonwhite population, and concernedabout the further mongrelization of Cuban society with the admission of anotherundesirable coloured race (see below). Recontracting succeeded well as a devise to keepChinese labor in agriculture for as long as possible. The 1872 Cuban census noted 58,400Chinese, of whom 14,046 were “free,” i.e. men who had completed their originalcontracts. Nevertheless, of this number, 10,044 remained in agriculture.?? Recordsuncovered by historians in the People’s Republic of China, using Chinese records, revealthat from 1880 to 1885, a period when many of the coolies sent to Cuba and Peru duringthe height (also the last thrust) of the coolie trade in the first half of the 1870s would havecompleted their original contracts, only 1,887 of the Chinese managed to make their wayback home to China. This was an insignificant number, given the over 100,000 who leftChina in 1870-74 alone for Cuba and Peru.”!
Recontracting took a further, and significant new turn beginning as early as1870 in Cuba. While the original recontracts were signed between the individual coolie
whose contract had just expired, and the planter or his administrator, usually the sameones who held the original contracts, a new contracting system involved a free Chinese— operating as an enganchador (labor contractor or broker) — who engaged andorganized fellow free Chinese [chinos libres] into cuadrillas or gangs. This entire groupof cuadrilleros was then hired out to a plantation for a specified period of time or aspecific piece of work, such as the evaporating room [casa de calderas] in the ingenios{sugar factory on the estate] of Cuba.”
The Chinese enganchador negotiated all terms of work for his squad andhandled all aspects of employment for the workers, including obtaining the advancesfrom the planters to pay them, handing out tools, arranging for lodging and food,responsible for discipline, control, supervision. He also assumed the risks of all lossesand damages. He was likely once acoolie himself, now an independent merchant tradingin goods and men.
By the census of 1872, 14,064 coolies had completed their original contracts,become naturalized or registered as a “foreign resident.” Under contract were 34,408coolies; 7,036 were runaways still missing, 864 were captured runaways, and 684 weresentenced criminals. Awaiting recontracting in the depdsitos [holding cells] were only864.73 Thus, the planters welcomed the Chinese cuadrillas in 1870 as an innovativedevise to keep the Chinese working on their estates after their contracts expired. But theyalso realized that the presence of these chinos libres posed a severe problem of controlover slaves and especially coolies still under contract. An editorial in the Boletin deColonizacién, an official organ of the colonial government that represented sugarinterests, concerned about the high rate of marronismo or runaways, charged that thesecuadrillas were the principal cause of flight. The writer asserted that the runaways couldeasily hide among the other cuvadrilleros, and that their presence “demoralized theworkers.”*4 Thus, the colonial authorities banned the use of cuadrillas, choosing thenecessity of control over economic flexibility. But they were revived in 1879, at the endof the Ten Years’ War. The coolie trade as well as slave imports had been terminated forseveral years, and labor in short supply.°
For the Chinese, given the 1860 regulation forcing them to recontract or leavethe island, joining one of these cuadrillas was one way to stay in Cuba without resortingto the much hated individual contract with a patrono. And as in Peru, the Chinesecontractor accumulated capital for business through this process.”
As the decade of the eighties drew to a close, Cuba saw the end of dependenceon slave and coolie labor on the plantations. The old plantation system gave way to thecolonos or independent small farmers who cultivated and supplied the newly modern-ized mills with the raw canes. Many of these colonos were new immigrants from Europe(mostly Canary Islanders and Gallegos).
ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS
If one focuses strictly on the eight year term of servitude that the Chinesecoolies bound themselves to by signing the contracts — specifically the condition ofwork; the actual physical treatment they received at the hands of planters, administrators,
overseers; the denial of personal freedom; the spatial proximity to slavery — there is noescaping the conclusion that the coolie system very closely resembled plantationslavery. Such was the strong indictment issued by critics such as Cuban historians JuanPérez de la Riva and Juan Jiménez Pastrana, both of whom have written extensively onaspects of the coolie trade and coolie life. Pérez dela Riva accused the Cuban planters,the Spanish slave and coolie traders [negreros] and their allies — who had profitedimmensely from the coolie trade — of wanting to convert the coolie into a “permanentslave“ [esclavo permanente]. In studying the legal status of the coolie, he detected astrong “slave mentality” [espiritu esclavista] underlying the legislation, and denouncedthe hypocrisy of a system that brazenly flaunted the law in order to protect the interestsof the elite2? In all his writings on this controversial, complicated subject, Pérez la deRiva remained firm in his conviction that the coolie system was more properly speakingesclavitud china.”
Jiménez Pastrana, the other Cuban historian most associated with the study ofthe coolie system, also concluded that in their practice the Cuban planters and coolietraders reduced the system to “a disguised slavery,” and that “colono” was a euphemismfor a labor force that was cheaper than slaves. However, he also agreed with anothercolleague, Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Cuba’s most eminent historian of the sugarindustry, that the coolie “theoretically was nota slave, because he was salaried. And, assuch, he represented an early step in the rise of our working class. The Chinese colonowas really an agricultural worker, with a miserable salary, whose socioeconomicsituation must be included in the history of the Cuban labor movement.’”””? Or, in MorenoFraginals’ words: “The Chinese constituted the first step in solving the labor problemwhich permitted the beginning of industrialization of sugar: to effect the transition frommanufacturing to industrial production.”?° In other words, Moreno Fraginals andJiménez Pastrana recognized that the Chinese, in spite of their abject condition on theplantation, constituted a transition to free labor, which they considered essential toindustrialization — meaning mechanization and modernization with a skilled, free laborforce.
Rebecca Scott took issue with Moreno Fraginals’ assertion that modernizationrequired a free and skilled labor force. In her study of Cuban slavery during its last stageof “gradual abolition,” which was also the period of the coolie trade, she concluded thatthe plantations survived and thrived with a mixture of different labor systems — slave,indentured and free — and involving several racial groups — blacks, Asians, whites,American Indians and mixed-bloods — “without repudiating slavery itself.\"\' Far fromincompatible, the slave plantation regime was maintained under capitalist industrializa-tion. And far from destroying slavery, the undeniable importance of Chinese labor in thesurvival and developing of the Cuban sugar industry also ensured the perpetuation ofslavery for several more decades. She found that most coolies performed the same typeof unskilled, backbreaking agricultural tasks as slaves, that sugar mills mechanizedheavily in the 1860s and 70s using both slave and coolie labor interchangeably, and thattechnology did not render the slave undesirable. If coolies were not substantiallydifferent from slaves, Scott argued, then one cannot assume that they were essential tomechanization. The fact that coolie contracts were bought and sold, and that coolies had
to be housed, clothed and fed at all times even when their labor was not needed, meantthat economically for the planter, they constituted a form of fixed capital just like theslaves, not variable capital as wage laborers would have been. Moreover, she observed,most planters and administrators treated coolies as “virtual slaves.” At best, then, “theywere debt peons of a sort, but debt peons always at risk of being reduced to the status ofthose alongside whom they worked: slaves.’2?
French Canadian ethnologist Denise Helly, who also studied the Chinesecoolies in Cuba and thus confronted with the question of whether they were slave or free,tends to support Moreno Fraginals’ contention that the Chinese were employed in largernumbers in the more skilled work —”’les installations modernisees des usines centrales.”She cites Ramon de la Sagra’s description of the work force of the ingenio La Ponina in1860, where 430 Chinese worked in the casa de calderas (evaporating room), comparedto 252 blacks, and 252 Chinese compared to only 28 blacks in the casa de purga (purgingroom). Both these tasks were mechanized and hence required the most skills. Bycontrast, on this plantation blacks vastly outnumbered Chinese, 189 to 35, in the lessskilled task of transporting cane from the field to the factory.3
Although the technicians in the boiling and purging houses were usually whitemen from Europe and the U.S., the coolies were often assigned to them as aides. Theirwages, however, at 4 pesos per month, were considerably lower than that earned by thewhite technicians, usually 30 pesos per month. Nevertheless, “the organization ofproduction integrates the coolie at the side of the salaried group on the plantation, placingthem in an inferior echelon to that occupied by whites.’*4 Moreover, Helly asserts, theirsalaried status gave them a framework for voluntary association (regroupement
voluontaire) leading to collective action and protests. By contrast, planters preferred to.
keep the black slaves in agricultural work, because they were able to cut 400 arrobas ofcane per day compared to the average 200 arrobas cut by the frailer Chinese.*5 Contraryto Scott, who argued that a varied labor force helped keep slavery alive, Helly maintainsthat “the simultaneous utilization of slave and contract labor demonstrated the transfor-mation of a slave society to a capitalist society.”*° It was Chinese labor that in part madepossible this capitalist transformation to industrial technology and free labor in theproduction of sugar. While acknowledging that the “Chinese immigrants” were “cruellyexploited, physically maltreated and their rights as free men often denied by the bosses,”their material condition resembling that of slaves, Helly concluded that the Chinese“should be classified at the bottom of the hierarchy of free workers according to thewages received and tasks performed.”?7
~~ But even for Scott, the question of Chinese labor was more complex thanequating it to slavery. Regardless of how they were actually treated, legally, theindentured laborers occupied an intermediate position in the labor hierarchy, “a thirdcategory between slave and free,” and were occasionally perceived as especially suitedfor working with machinery.** She also conceded that the cuadrilla system of laborcontracting, described above, exhibited some clear signs of free labor, as the Chinese inthis system were free men who remained free, and who collected a wage (often withoutany additional payment in kind) for only the work performed. Sometimes, the cuadrillas
sought work by advertising in local newspapers.” Although technically no longercoolies when they formed the cuadrillas under a Chinese broker, they were for the mostpart coolies at one time. Coolies with expired contracts, and some runaway coolies, fedthe cuadrilla system as recruits.
Although recontracting was coercive and abusive, an examination of therecontracting agreements reveals some variation in the terms. A batch of recontracts in1868 indicates that the terms were short, generally 6 months or 1 year. The pay variedgreatly, from a low of 4 pesos 2 reales per month for 1 year, to 13 pesos per month for1 year. Others were paid 8-1/2 pesos, 12 pesos, 12-3/4 pesos. Some were given food,clothing and medical attention in addition to cash. Two workers who recontracted withthe same patrono were offered quite different wages of 8-1/2 pesos and 12 pesosrespectively.“ Unfortunately, no other information was provided in these agreements tohelp explain the wide differential in pay during the same year, and sometimes on thesame estate. Presumably factors such as age and skills played a part. These recontractsalso suggest that the planters were not able to dictate uniform terms, and that, moreimportantly, the coolies appeared to have had some leverage in negotiating the terms. Ifthis were true, then some labor market forces seemed to be at work here.
The other side of recontracting revealed its extremely coercive and abusivenature, Among 1,176 Chinese whose depositions were taken by the Chinese Commis-sion which visited Cuba in 1874, many of whom were serving out a recontract, manytestified that they were forced into successive recontracting. Cuban authorities andplanters were determined to keep the Chinese in the labor market by denying them thecédula, or certificate of completion of contract, which would have permitted themfreedom of mobility and occupation. When freed from the plantation, the Chinesepreferred to move to the cities and enter petty commerce. Between contracts, thoseunable to meet the demands of local authorities — who, instead of issuing the cédulasfree of charge, as provided by law, extorted illegal payments of 17 to 140 pesos for theprecious document — were sent to the municipal depdsitos [holding cells]. There theyawaited to be recontracted, or were put to work on public works construction at no paywhatsoever. In this sense, the depdsitos served a function of holding a labor reserve forthe planters or anyone else in need of temporary help at low cost.”
But regardless of how they were treated at work, the Chinese were keenly awarethat they werefree men under contract, very distinct from the slaves who were chattelfor life. The National Archives of Cuba contain numerous protests and complaints filedby coolies against patronos and local authorities whom they felt had violated thecontracts or some regulations, for example, those forofferding corporal punishment. Ofthe 1,176 depositions taken from coolies by the Chinese Commission in 1874, mostdemonstrated an awareness and deep frustration that, while legally free and protectedfrom abuses, they were in fact not properly treated, neither by the patronos or by theauthorities charged with protecting them.”
In addition to occupying an intermediate position between slave and free on thelabor hierarchy, as neither slave nor free, the Chinese also occupied an intermediateposition on the color scale, between black and white. Tension developed between blacks
and Asians, and was quickly understood and manipulated by the whites. Such antipathywas exemplified by the sentiments of Esteban Montejo, the runaway slave immortalizedby Cuban writer Miguel Barnet. Montejo characterized the Chinese as aloof andseparatists.*? Chinese testimonies and criminal records show numerous conflicts,including assaults and assassinations, between Chinese and blacks on the plantations.“
According to Helly, who studied the issue of ethnicity in depth, the introductionof an Asian race into Cuban slave society really upset the creole ideological code, whichdivided society into black and white, slave and free. Throughout the entire coolie period,Cuban society never quite decided how to deal with the Chinese race — as white and free,or colored and unfree. For example, in the official censuses the free Chinese were lumpedinto the white category, distinct from blacks, which included both free and slave. In therare instances when coolies became baptized and married free Cuban women, they wereregistered in the matrimonial books as “whites.’“° A judge in the Consejo deAdministraci6n in 1868 ruled that it was undesirable for blacks to own coolies (i.e., buytheir contracts), as that would upset the social order, noting that the Chinese “considershis race superior’ to the black.*”
Concluding this discussion on the Chinese in Cuba, a lack of agreement on thequestion of whether they were slave or free, and whether and how they contributed to thetransition from a slave mode of production to a capitalist mode, only points up theambiguity of the coolie situation: indentured labor implanted in the midst of veryentrenched slavery. The coolie system coexisted with slavery during the latter’s lasttwenty-five years, both dying out at the same time. Whether coolie labor reinforcedslavery during its last gasp for life, or whether it facilitated the process of gradualabolition and the transition to freedom, is still subject to further research and analysis.
To be sure, very little evidence can be found to mitigate the generally harshpicture of the lot of the Chinese coolies. Nevertheless, even while recognizing that lawswere ignored or openly flaunted, it is important to separate actual physical treatmentfrom legal status. A well treated slave was still achattel for life by law. By the same token,the horrendous conditions of the British working class in the early days of the industrialrevolution, as immortalized by Charles Dickens and other critics of the time, does notdetract from the fact that this was a wage-earning labor force of freemen and women witha greater capacity to change and improve their condition than slaves ever enjoyed. In thestudy of coolie labor as a form of indentured servitude defined by law and a contract thatcoexisted with or succeeded slavery, regardless of the actual treatment they received,their legal status cannot be ignored. While this status might have had little amelioratingeffect on their day-to-day existence on the plantation, the fact that this intermediate statusbetween slave and free was formulated at all could have represented a significantideological shift on the part of the planters towards imagining a free labor force. Finally,much work still needs to be done to examine in greater detail the coolies’ relationshipto production, both while under the original contract and especially during the recontractingand outside contracting (cuadrilla or enganche) periods.
NOTES
\' During this period, about 1.5 million Chinese went overseas, to Southeast Asia, North America,as well as South America and the Caribbean, and other parts of the world. See Amold JosephMeagher, “The Introduction of Chinese laborers to Latin America and the “Coolie Trade’ , 1847-1874.” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (U.C. Davis, 1975), 55. (This is an excellent piece of
research that should have been published as an important contribution to an aspect of the
international migration of labor in the 19th century.)
The approximately 225,000 Chinese who went to Cuba and Peru were almost exclusively male.
So few women went under contract that they were statistically insignificant. A few women went
as prostitutes (possibly sent from California by enterprising California Chinese businessmen)
or free women. The Cuban census of 1872 noted 58,400 Chinese, of whom only 32 werefemales, 2 under contract and 30 free. Of the 34,650 noted in the 1862 census, 25 were females.
Of the 24,068 in the 1877 census, 58 were females (some possibly born in Cuba and Peru). These
figures taken from C. M. Morales papers, vol. 3, #19, Biblioteca Nacional Jose Marti, Havana:
Vidal Morales y Morales, “Inmigracion de chinosen laIslade Cuba. Datos queha proporcionado
el que suscrita a Mr. Sanger, Inspector General del Censo.” (Collection of clippings, n.d.)
Hugh Tinker, A New System of Slavery. The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830-1920.
London: Oxford University Press, 1974, 113. If Ceylon, Malaysia, the trade before 1842 and
after 1870, and illegal exports were all included, Tinker estimates the number of East Indians
taken overseas to be at least 1 million, possibly as high as 2 million; 114-5.
The Chinese legacy in Cuba exists in a dual state, at once both a fundamental aspectof the Cuban people and the Cuban nationality while also an oft-overlooked strand in thefabric of Cuban society and culture. While today the official number of Chinese-bornCubans in Cuba has decreased to just below 150, the number of Chinese-descendants inCuba may well number in the hundreds of thousands given the presence of large numbersof Chinese in early periods of Cuban history.! This duality merits exploration, as it shedslight on the unique experiences of Chinese Cubans and Chinese-descendants throughseveral eras of Cuban history. Most interestingly, the role and presence of Chinese Cubansin the Cuban Revolution provides unique insight on the impact of the Cuban CommunistRevolution on the island’s race relations—as this movement and its policies served as awatershed moment for the integration of visible and cultural Chinese into greater Cubansociety. As a transnational group, “colonos asiaticos” existed neither inside of the black-white racial binary standard in Cuban culture nor within the niche this paradigm providedto “mulatto” Cubans or other “mixed” Cubans of African-descent. While assimilation andvarious racial re-classifications offered some degree of integration, Chinese Cubans oftenappeared as wholly foreign to Cuban society up until their extensive participation in theCommunist Revolution before Revolutionary racial policies finally legitimized and
normalized the Cuban peoplehood and nationhood of Chinese Cubans.
Understanding the pivotal role of the Revolution and post-Revolution concepts ofCuban national identity, and thus the inclusion of Chinese Cubans into greater Cubansociety, requires an overview of the common themes in the Chinese Cuban experience upuntil the Revolution. The beginning of the Chinese presence in Cuba, as well as the nature oftheir arrival, shaped a lasting perception of Chinese in Cuba that would persist for nearlythe next two centuries. While a small community of Chinese had been present in Cuba sincearound 1830, the arrival of significant numbers of Chinese only began in the mid-19%century.’ Abolition policies in the British Empire initiated a decline in the worldwide tradeof African chattel slaves—a necessary component of the labor force for Cuba’s dominantand globally important sugar industry. After unsuccessful attempts to recruit and retainEuropeans and indigenous people of the Yucatan as exploitable labor for the sugar fields,the Cuban planters learned they needed to find a source of labor that would remain boundto their work.? Essentially, this meant that sugar planters needed a labor force with all thecharacteristics of slavery, namely “no legal protection by a Western power; a large sourceof supply; and significant cultural differences.”* Cuban planters needed a people group thatwould not be able to leave the cane fields and assimilate themselves into Cuban society,
thus escaping the control of the planters.
The Spanish duly began following the precedent of the British, French, Dutch, andPortuguese Empires by importing Indian and East Asian workers to address laborshortages. The first recorded arrival in Cuba of these “coolies,” as these workers wouldcome to be called, involved the arrival of 206 Chinese on June 3, 1847 and an additional365 Chinese nine days later.5 The Cuban “coolie trade” soon proved itself to be enormouslyprofitable, as Chinese coolies were cheaper to obtain and could be “purchased asindentured servants but used as slaves.” By 1874, over 125,000 Chinese had been broughtto Cuba, mostly Hakka and Cantonese from the province of Guangdong.$ The inception ofthe Chinese community in Cuba, grounded in the economic need for an exploitable “other”in the Cuban society and economy, would have long-term ramifications for the ChineseCuban experience.
The demographics of these successive waves of Chinese coolies, as well as their EastAsian origin, also served as important factors in shaping the perspectives of the ChineseCubans held by other Cuban communities before the Communist Revolution. Men made upthe majority of Chinese coolies brought to Cuba, with many successive shipments ofChinese almost exclusively male. Attempts to recruit Chinese women or at the very least toset a minimum ratio of women to men brought by the coolie trade were unsuccessful; only
100 Chinese women arrived in China as coolies.’? The presence of the Chinese in Cuba as a
single gender demographic contrasted with Cuban social and cultural norms of community,further distancing them from “Cuban-ness.” As one mid-19* century observer of the sale ofChinese coolie labor noted:
The importation [of Chinese coolies] has not yet existed eight years. So the question,
what will become of these men, exotics, without women or children, taking no root
in the land, has not yet come to a solution. The constant question in, will they remain
and mix with the other races? Will they permitted to remain? Will they be able to go
back?®This sentiment speaks to a larger phenomenon in Cuban society, in which the many Cubansperceived the Chinese as physically present on the island but not to be counted as a part ofthe Cuban people. This statement indicates that the intersection of “exotic” and “bachelor”created a stronger degree of separation of the Chinese from Cuban culture than eithercharacteristic would have alone. Even after Chinese women began to arrive in significantnumbers, this formative perception of Chinese Cubans as a vagrant group that movedthroughout Cuban society without necessarily being a part of it would continue.
This paradigm of coolies, and ultimately Chinese Cubans, as separate and “other”from the Cuban people was not solely held by the white Cuban community. If anything, theimpact of the sugar trade—which depended on the continued subservience of exploitedlabor in harsh working conditions—engendered antagonism between African slaves and
Chinese coolies and prevented attempts at cooperative rebellion. The clashing racial and
social statuses between these communities created effective distance between the Chineseand other Cubans of Color.? In the memoirs of Esteban Montejo, an African-descended slaveon a sugar plantation, both black and white Cubans saw the Chinese as existing on thesocial margin. In recounting one specific memory, he states, “There were some blackcoopers who made the sticks in the shape of bottles and the wooden balls for playing. Itwas an open game, and everyone could join in. Except for the Chinese, who were prettystandoffish.”!° The perceived failure of the Chinese to engage in interaction with the Afro-Cuban people can be interpreted as a wider perception of displacement, or a lack ofbelonging, directed at the coolies.
When describing a memory of a community dance, in which both the whiteoverseers and the black slaves participated, Montejo mentions that he “noticed the oneswho were the least involved were the Chinese. Those bastards didn’t have an ear for drums.They were standoffish. It was that they thought a lot. In my opinion they thought more thanblacks. Nobody paid them any mind.”!! These allegations of the inability of the Chinese toparticipate in the dance reinforces a view of the “outsider status” of Chinese in Cubanculture. Furthermore, Montejo describes the Chinese as not merely choosing to participatebut as decisively unable to engage in Cuban culture—thus literally and figurativelyconsigned to “standing off’ at a distance. This significant distinction can be read as a
perception of Chinese not marginalized necessarily by their own choosing, but unable tointegrate into Cuban culture due to their fundamental “otherness” and incompatibility withCuban culture.
While divisions between coolies and other Cubans of Color certainly continued toimpact the experiences of later generations of Chinese Cubans, the Chinese in Cubameanwhile made strategic alliances with other Cuban communities—especially with Cubanwomen. These relationships, most often with Afro-Cuban women, offered one of the fewchances for Chinese coolies and Chinese Cubans to put down roots in Cuba and begin theprocess of building a new life with greater autonomy.!4 Following the end of their oft-extended indentured servitude, many ecclesiastical records beginning in the 1880s indicatethat several Chinese coolies sought and formed marriages with Afro-Cuban women.!5 LisaYun holds that these official marriages in fact represented only a small portion of the Afro-Chinese-Cuban conjugal and marital-style relationships, as the ambiguous racial status ofthe Chinese in Cuban culture made marriage licenses hard for Chinese to obtain. Yun statesthat common-law marriages were thus easier for these mixed-race couples to pursue.Marriages to white Cuban women were much less frequent, as the nature of the coolies’grunt labor alongside slaves and exotic view of their culture and physical appearances
placed them in a class lower than whites.14 Consequently, the legacy of arriving as coolieworkers facilitated the Chinese into more numerous relationships with Afro-Cuban womengiven their typical associations with non-whiteness and foreignness.
Yun continues, however, that these relationships—and the children borne out ofthem—usually came at the sacrifice of the Chinese cultural identity.15 Records of theseAfro-Chinese-Cuban children indicate that they were often classified as mestizo, pardo, oridentified as a libres de color, or free people of color, all of which often denoted only Africanheritage.16 Additionally, the Chinese fathers rarely transmitted the Chinese language totheir mixed-race children, and these children resultantly often did not retain a significantdegree of Chinese cultural or spiritual practices. Instead, the children of these Afro-Chineseunions typically espoused the Afro-creole culture of their mothers, who frequently took thelead in child-rearing.!” Yun’s examination of Cuban court and notary documents in the1890s, when many of these children began coming of age, indicates that only those Afro-Chinese Cubans with obvious East Asian features were described with the additional termsasiatico or achinado.1® Thus unlike the Communist Revolution, these interracial allianceslargely offered a path of assimilation into the Afro-Cuban community rather than theintegration of the Chinese cultural and ethnic identity into Cuban society.
The participation of many Chinese Cubans in Cuba’s Communist Revolution in 1959,which included Chinese Cubans in high positions of leadership in the rebellion,
dramatically changed the dynamic of Chinese isolation and Chinese “otherness.” The
Chinese community in Cuba by this time was nearly twelve thousand and included therecent Chinese merchant immigrants as well as the coolie-descendants who had retainedChinese identities.1? For the waves of Chinese that had arrived in the 1940s, the CubanCommunist Revolution was understood through the lens of their experiences with theChinese Communist Revolution, which had also received support from some ChineseCubans. Members of the Chinese merchant immigrant community, however, became someof the first Cubans to leave the island during the early days of the Cuban Revolution as theCuban Communist Revolution represented yet another attack on their economic agencyand capitalist pursuits. For the same reasons, the large Chinese Cuban grocer communityalso organized resistance to the Cuban Revolution.?° 21 For the Chinese who stayed in Cubainstead of joining the wave of remigration to other parts of Latin America and the UnitedStates, the Communist Revolution and the implementation of Revolutionary policies onrace and nationality catalyzed an entirely new national identity for Chinese Cubans that didnot marginalize them due to their Chinese ethnicity or heritage.
Chinese Cubans involved themselves in the earliest inceptions of the CubanRevolution. Several Chinese Cubans took part in the 1959 raiding force on the MacadaArmy Barracks in Santiago de Cuba in 1553, an effort led by Fidel Castro.22 Luis Li and Juan
Mok featured among these Chinese Cuban rebels, and their participation in the rebelmovement and in the famous battle on the 26 of July—arguably one of the most importantand defining moments in the Cuban Revolution—demonstrate how the intersection of theirethnic identities and their Revolutionary involvement created and legitimized an entirelynew nationality for Chinese Cubans. Li, from Havana, used his family connections in theChinese Chamber of Commerce to recruit more Chinese Cuban revolutionaries. An activemember in the Partido Socialista Popular, he also routinely used Chinese spaces in Cuba topromote and further the aims of the Revolution. His actions included holding clandestineCommunist Rebel meetings in the Chinese grocery store on Washington Street in Havana.2?Mok, similarly to Li, was arrested several times by the Cuban government for hisRevolutionary involvement. He also turned to Chinese cultural spaces in Cuba to advocatefor the Revolution in Cuba, writing supportive pieces in the Chinese-language Cubannewspaper, Kwong Wah Po.** Chinese Cubans involved in the Revolution war effort made aname for themselves amongst the other rebels for their singular reputation as highlydedicated to the Revolutionary cause. These revolucionarios cubanos of Chinese descentdrew on the reputation of the Chinese Cuban independence fighters during the 1895 CubanWar for Independence about whom they frequently recalled, “there was not a singleChinese Cuban deserter; there was not a single Chinese Cuban traitor!”25 For these Chinese
Cubans, largely composed of youth of varying backgrounds and generations of Cubanresidency, the Revolution offered a chance to validate their presence and the legitimacy oftheir Cuban nationality through a demonstration of loyalty to the Cuban people.
Chinese Cubans also served as famous leaders in the Revolutionary effort, fightingand strategizing alongside the famed Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. In their memoir,former Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces Generals Armando Choy Rodriguez, GustavoChui Beltran, and Moises Sio Wong recounted their experiences as fighters in the 26 ofJuly Movement and as Cubans of Chinese descent. Their stories relate how theirinvolvement in the Revolutionary effort intersected with their Chinese identity to form aRevolutionary Cuban national identity. When asked about how his ethnic Chinesebackground influenced the development of his Cuban Revolutionary consciousness, MoisesSio Wong replied, “I joined the movement as a Cuban. | thought like a Cuban, not likesomeone from China.”26 While this adoption of a validated Revolutionary identity appearsto have subsumed his Chinese ethnic identity, it is noteworthy to realize that Wongdetermined and assumed this status for himself. In a sharp departure from the experiencesof former generations of immigrants and coolies, externally consigned to “outsider status”with the hope that their mixed-heritage children could fully assimilate, Wong achievedinclusion into Cuban nationality even though he exhibited an East Asian physiognomy andwas of pure Chinese descent. His statement proves that he was not precluded from Cubannationality based on his “racial deviation” from the previous Cuban black, white and pardo
racial triad norms, but that he used his rebel involvement to catalyze the Revolutionary
In other ways, however, Chinese Cubans participating in the Cuban Revolutionproudly leveraged their Chinese heritage when contributing to the Revolutionary effort andexpressing solidarity—both actions that further served to affirm their belonging to Cubannationhood. Fidel Castro and the 26% of July Movement received vocal support in theJanuary 1959 issue of the bilingual Chinese retailer magazine Fraternidad.2’ In 1960,Chinese Cubans hosted a banquet in Barrio Chino—Havana’s Chinatown—in celebration ofthe Castro brothers’ assumption of political office.2® In 1959, a variety of left-wing Chineseorganizations in Havana re-organized into the Alianza Neuva Democracia China in Cuba, orthe Chinese New Democracy Alliance in Cuba. This organization participated with manyCuban demonstrations of solidarity with Castro and the 26\" of July Movement. Whenvoicing support at a rally to oppose U.S. attempts to align Latin American countries inopposition to Cuba, the Alianza organization famously carried a sign that read “ResidentChinese Support the Cuban Revolution And It’s Leader Fidel Castro.”2? Rather than animpediment to inclusion in Cuban society, these activists proudly centered their Chineseethnicity and heritage as the platform for the Cuban revolutionary consciousness and
identity.
In February of 1960, several second-generation Chinese Cubans such as Luis Liu andPedro Eng Herrera organized militias to support the Revolution, which included the MiliciaPopular China (Chinese Popular Militia). They also organized the Brigada Jose Wong (JoseWong Brigade)—recalling a Chinese Cuban victim of the Batista regime in the 1930s. Evenafter these all-Chinese forces merged into the Cuban National Militia, they continued to usetheir Chinese heritage to inform their understanding and expression of the Revolutionaryeffort. The most notable example of this occurred when they fortified the Isla de Pinos justoff the Southern Cuban coast in the name of “preventing it from becoming anotherTaiwan.”2° These very visible mergers of Chinese ethnic identities with political andmilitary support for the Revolution served as an important signal to greater Cuban societythat the Chinese people formed a vital component of the Cuban people as well.
The Revolutionary government’s policies concerning race, status, and nationalityalso contributed heavily to the integration of Chinese Cubans into greater Cuban society. Ina speech given on January 23, 1960, Castro stated:
We feel that our Revolution will help eliminate those prejudices and injustices that
remain latent. For the time being, we have given proof in our revolutionary struggle
in the absolute identification and brotherhood of men with all skin colors.#1In this statement, Castro dedicates the Revolutionary regime to equal inclusion of allCubans who wanted to partake in the Revolutionary national effort—which included the
country’s ethnic minorities. Wong later confirms this transformation in social status for
Chinese Cubans when he states, “What is the difference in the experience of the Chinese inCuba versus other countries of the diaspora? The difference is that here a socialistrevolution took place. The revolution eliminated discrimination based on the color of one’sskin.”32 The Revolution’s aim to implement ubiquitous non-discrimination meant thatChinese Cubans loyal to the state would no longer need to feel foreign or rejected fromCuban nationality by the Cuban government due to their ethnic Chinese origin andappearance.
The impact of the Revolutionary government’s receptiveness to Cubans of Chineseorigin contributed in fundamental ways to how later scholarship, both within Cuba and inother countries, would perceive and define the transcultural national character of theCuban people, whose origins would be recorded to include “even the Yellow Mongoloid.”3?Images dating to post-Revolutionary society show continued acknowledgement of Chineseor mixed Chinese heritage without inferred preclusion from Cuban culture.** 35 36 Theimages provide evidence of Chinese Cubans of a variety of backgrounds proudly engagingin Chinese cultural activities within the Cuban national and social context. These images
also demonstrate that Chinese ethnic consciousness persisted in the post-RevolutionaryCuban society that, while officially “post-racial,” allowed for Chinese Cubans to participatein Cuban society as fully Cuban and proudly Chinese.
As evidenced by the dynamics of Chinese Cuban involvement in the CubanCommunist Revolution and the experiences of Chinese Cubans in the post-RevolutionaryCuban society, the integration of Chinese Cubans in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary period of Cuban history actualized and progressed on an unprecedentedscale due to the Cuban Revolution. Reviewing the historical experiences and perspectivesof Chinese Cubans and the descendants of Chinese coolies, as well as the very origins of thiscommunity, indicates that the Cuban Revolution brought about societal inclusivity forChinese Cubans that contrasted sharply with previous circumstances of Chinesemarginalization and invisibility in Cuban society. More so than any other moment in Cubanhistory, the Communist Revolution ultimately established the essential and acknowledged