Black British Migrants in Cuba: Race, Labor, and Empire in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean, 1898–1948 by Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres

Abstract

Reviewed by: Black British Migrants in Cuba: Race, Labor, and Empire in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean, 1898–1948 by Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres Aldo A. Lauria Santiago Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres, Black British Migrants in Cuba: Race, Labor, and Empire in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean, 1898–1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2018. 318 pp. Black British Migrants in Cuba is an impressive, in-depth history of the migration and experience of British Caribbean people, most of them Black, in Cuba during the first half of the twentieth century. Sugar mills that were US, Canadian, and locally owned required vast numbers of laborers for cane cutting and other kinds of manual labor. Under American tutelage, Cuban authorities allowed what was often privately controlled migration of workers from the rest of the Caribbean. Migrants were persistently seen as threatening aliens in racist terms. The book is framed by a fascinating idea: how could black colonial subjects consider their liberation from colonialism and racism from within their diasporic condition? A second persistent theme is the long tradition of antiblack racism and fear and the particular forms these took in nineteenth and early twentieth century Cuba. The book is based on extensive archival research in dozens of archives in nine countries. It is difficult to imagine a more thorough work of archival research, especially as it includes sources drawn from the diverse local origins of English Caribbean migrants as well as the places in Cuba that ended being permanent or temporary home for thousands. The author also carried out many oral histories and identified older ethnographic materials in various archival sites. The one persistent claim through the book is the weight of the (sometimes indistinguishable) complex multiple forms of subordination (and agency) of immigrant workers: as black, colonial, and migrant guest workers with few rights in Cuba subjected to exploitation, violence, and mistreatment, and as colonial subjects of the English crown, which essentially served as their own form of racially framed colonial citizenship. The most interesting dimension of this, which has been considered and debated by other authors working on the West Indian diaspora, is how well the crown and crown officials served to [End Page 329] protect and support their subjects while in Cuba (or any other country or area like the Panama Canal Zone, New York City, or Honduras). At just over three hundred pages, the book is organized into ten chapters, an introduction, and an epilogue. The introduction provides an important framing device for the book: a 1944 call for a pan-Caribbean workers' movement free from British rule, issued and supported in Cuba. Chapter 1 introduces the history of English-speaking Antillean workers in Cuba as part of larger movements of black bodies to and in the Caribbean. It also introduces readers to one of the principal contexts discussed throughout the book: the origin of the persistent fears by Cuban elites of blackness, black agency, and black bodies. This chapter reviews the history of antiblack fears, policies, and black resistance since the early nineteenth century. The book carefully traces the importance of the migrants to Cuba's sugar industry and their presence produced both mistreatment and resistance. Chapter 2 reviews the processes of departure and arrival of the migrants works through the 1940s. It covers demographics, policies, origins, and settlement through ethnographic and archival sources. The data on the diversity of people's origins and paths, and the United Fruit Company enclaves in Cuba and its pan-Caribbean networks, are especially important. The third chapter presents extensive evidence of violence against black migrants and generalized fear. Especially valuable here is the detailed discussion of the Jobabo massacre of 1917. Chapter 4 discusses the transnational networks of support claimed by English Caribbean migrants while in Cuba. Here the author provides a very nuanced discussion of how responsive British authorities, including consuls, were to the demands and claims of their subjects while in Cuba. It also considers the role of Afro-diasporic solidarities including the UNIA. The book also reviews how the migrants experienced the depression, repatriation, and the postdepression years? Next, chapter 5 considers the impact of economic crisis on migrants' work conditions, mobility, and status. It introduces evidence of the...