Chinese Cubans

Chinese Cubans
Author: Kathleen M. López
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2013-06-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 146960714X

In the mid-nineteenth century, Cuba's infamous "coolie" trade brought well over 100,000 Chinese indentured laborers to its shores. Though subjected to abominable conditions, they were followed during subsequent decades by smaller numbers of merchants, craftsmen, and free migrants searching for better lives far from home. In a comprehensive, vibrant history that draws deeply on Chinese- and Spanish-language sources in both China and Cuba, Kathleen Lopez explores the transition of the Chinese from indentured to free migrants, the formation of transnational communities, and the eventual incorporation of the Chinese into the Cuban citizenry during the first half of the twentieth century. Chinese Cubans shows how Chinese migration, intermarriage, and assimilation are central to Cuban history and national identity during a key period of transition from slave to wage labor and from colony to nation. On a broader level, Lopez draws out implications for issues of race, national identity, and transnational migration, especially along the Pacific rim.

The Chinese in Cuba, 1847-now

The Chinese in Cuba, 1847-now
Author: Mauro García Triana
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780739133439

This book deals with Chinese immigrants' role in the struggle for Cuban liberation and in Cuba's twentieth-century revolutionary social movement; the history of the Chinese economy in Cuba; and the Chinese contribution to Cuban music, painting, food, sport, and language. The centerpiece of the book is a translation of a study by Mauro Garc a Triana and Pedro Eng Herrera on the history of the Chinese presence in Cuba. Over many years, Garc a and Eng have collaborated closely on scholarly research on the Chinese contribution to Cuban life and politics, although their work is not widely known. Both are well equipped for such an enterprise: Eng as a Cuban of Chinese descent and a participant in the ethnic-Chinese revolutionary movement in Cuba, starting in the 1950s; Garc a as a participant in the struggle against Batista and Cuban Ambassador to China during the period of the Cultural Revolution. The study is supplemented by an extensive collection of archival photographs and of paintings on Cuban-Chinese themes by Pedro Eng, who is not just a chronicler of the community but a well-known worker-artist who paints in a style described by commentators as "naive." The volume has three appendices: excerpts from the Cuba Commission's 1877 report on Chinese emigration to Cuba; the rebel leader Gonzalo de Quesada y Ar stegui's pamphlet "The Chinese and Cuban Independence," translated from his book Mi primera ofrenda (My first offering), first published in 1892; and the chapter on "Coolie Life in Cuba" from Duvon Clough Corbitt's Study of the Chinese in Cuba, 1847-1947 (Wilmore 1971).

Contested Community

Contested Community
Author: Miriam Herrera Jerez
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2017-02-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004339140

In Contested Community, the authors analyze the Chinese immigrant community in Cuba between the years 1900–1968. While popular literature of the era portrayed the diasporic group as a closed, inassimilable ethnic enclave, closer inspection instead reveals numerous economic, political, and ethnic divisions. As with all organizations, asymmetrical power relations permeated Havana’s Barrio Chino and the larger Chinese Cuban community. The authors of Contested Community use difficult-to-access materials from Cuba’s national archive to offer a unique and insightful interpretation of a little-understood immigrant group.

Chinese Cubans

Chinese Cubans
Author: Kathleen López
Publisher:
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781469607986

In the mid-nineteenth century, Cuba's infamous "coolie" trade brought well over 100,000 Chinese indentured laborers to its shores. Though subjected to abominable conditions, they were followed during subsequent decades by smaller numbers of merchants, craftsmen, and free migrants searching for better lives far from home. In a comprehensive, vibrant history that draws deeply on Chinese- and Spanish-language sources in both China and Cuba, Kathleen Lopez explores the transition of the Chinese from indentured to free migrants, the formation of transnational communities, and the eventual incorporation of the Chinese into the Cuban citizenry during the first half of the twentieth century. Chinese Cubans shows how Chinese migration, intermarriage, and assimilation are central to Cuban history and national identity during a key period of transition from slave to wage labor and from colony to nation. On a broader level, Lopez draws out implications for issues of race, national identity, and transnational migration, especially along the Pacific rim.

Chinese Cubans

Chinese Cubans
Author: Kathleen López
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1469607123

In the mid-nineteenth century, Cuba's infamous "coolie" trade brought well over 100,000 Chinese indentured laborers to its shores. Though subjected to abominable conditions, they were followed during subsequent decades by smaller numbers of merchants, craftsmen, and free migrants searching for better lives far from home. In a comprehensive, vibrant history that draws deeply on Chinese- and Spanish-language sources in both China and Cuba, Kathleen Lopez explores the transition of the Chinese from indentured to free migrants, the formation of transnational communities, and the eventual incorporation of the Chinese into the Cuban citizenry during the first half of the twentieth century. Chinese Cubans shows how Chinese migration, intermarriage, and assimilation are central to Cuban history and national identity during a key period of transition from slave to wage labor and from colony to nation. On a broader level, Lopez draws out implications for issues of race, national identity, and transnational migration, especially along the Pacific rim.

Imaging the Chinese in Cuban Literature and Culture

Imaging the Chinese in Cuban Literature and Culture
Author: Ignacio López-Calvo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN:

More than 150 years ago, over 150,000 Chinese people emigrated to Cuba. This book examines the representations of these immigrants in Cuban culture, from food to books to painting.

Diaspora and Trust

Diaspora and Trust
Author: Adrian H. Hearn
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2016-03-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0822374587

In Diaspora and Trust Adrian H. Hearn proposes that a new paradigm of socio-economic development is gaining importance for Cuba and Mexico. Despite their contrasting political ideologies, both countries must build new forms of trust among the state, society, and resident Chinese diaspora communities if they are to harness the potentials of China’s rise. Combining political and economic analysis with ethnographic fieldwork, Hearn analyzes Cuba's and Mexico's historical relations with China, and highlights how Chinese diaspora communities are now deepening these ties. Theorizing trust as an alternative to existing models of exchange—which are failing to navigate the world's shifting economic currents—Hearn shows how Cuba and Mexico can reformulate the balance of power between state, market, and society. A new paradigm of domestic development and foreign engagement based on trust is becoming critical for Cuba, Mexico, and other countries seeking to benefit from China’s growing economic power and social influence.

Our History is Still Being Written

Our History is Still Being Written
Author: Armando Choy
Publisher: Pathfinder Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN:

A chapter in the chronicle of the Cuban Revolution, as told by those on the front lines of that ongoing epic. Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moisés Sío Wong-three young rebels of Chinese-Cuban ancestry-threw themselves into the great proletarian battle that defined their generation. They became combatants in the clandestine struggle and 1956-58 revolutionary war that brought down a U.S.-backed dictatorship and opened the door to the socialist revolution in the Americas. Each became a general in Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces. Here they talk about the historic place of Chinese immigration to Cuba, as well as more than five decades of revolutionary action and internationalism, from Cuba to Angola, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela).

Chinese Emigration

Chinese Emigration
Author: China. Commissison to ascertain the condition of Chinese coolies in Cuba
Publisher:
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1876
Genre:
ISBN:

The Coolie Speaks

The Coolie Speaks
Author: Lisa Yun
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2008-04-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1592135838

Introducing radical counter-visions of race and slavery, and probing the legal and philosophical questions raised by indenture, The Coolie Speaks offers the first critical reading of a massive testimony case from Cuba in 1874. From this case, Yun traces the emergence of a "coolie narrative" that forms a counterpart to the "slave narrative." The written and oral testimonies of nearly 3,000 Chinese laborers in Cuba, who toiled alongside African slaves, offer a rare glimpse into the nature of bondage and the tortuous transition to freedom. Trapped in one of the last standing systems of slavery in the Americas, the Chinese described their hopes and struggles, and their unrelenting quest for freedom. Yun argues that the testimonies from this case suggest radical critiques of the "contract" institution, the basis for free modern society. The example of Cuba, she suggests, constitutes the early experiment and forerunner of new contract slavery, in which the contract itself, taken to its extreme, was wielded as a most potent form of enslavement and complicity. Yun further considers the communal biography of a next-generation Afro-Chinese Cuban author and raises timely theoretical questions regarding race, diaspora, transnationalism, and globalization.