Between 1910 and 1940, approximately 200,000 Haitian workers labored in Cuba on sugar and coffee plantations. They left rural Haiti for better wages that they would later take home. This excellent study reveals how companies tried to define every aspect of the daily lives of these “guest workers” and how Haitian immigrant laborers sought to maintain their identity and autonomy. Casey illuminates the methods and strategies individual Haitian workers employed to affect the processes of “state building, plantation agriculture, and race-making in the early twentieth century” (2).
Examining a variety of sources from court records to novels, Casey argues that Haitians resisted various sources of power and domination, including the labor regimes and policies of North American and Cuban sugar and coffee companies and the North American imperial influence in the Cuban and Haitian governments and economies, as well as the ideologies of race. Haitian men and women employed “collective actions that included informal economic activities, various acts of protest, religious rituals and subsistence strategies to strengthen their autonomy, increase their wages, serve their spirits or take advantage of their leisure time” to withstand those forces of exploitation and oppression (18). Their presence in Cuba influenced both nations’ politics, economic development, and racial ideologies.
Casey believes that Cuba's presidential decree of 1913 to permit Haitian migrant workers to enter Cuba reflected an important fact: although the Republic had banned black immigration as early as 1902, Cuban officials ignored the ban, so as to accommodate the commercial interests of the foreign-owned sugar companies. Haitian immigration to Cuba was nothing out of the ordinary, beginning during the early decades of the nineteenth century when it was propelled by the Haitian Revolution. After the 1917 US military occupation of Haiti, Haitian immigration to Cuba dramatically increased, transforming rural Haitians into “shattered people” in order to “build the state, expand the export economy, and centralize administration” (66). Many left for Cuba displaced by excessive taxation, high inflation, the war of resistance, and the Caco Rebellion. During the 1910s, they migrated from the southwest of Haiti. When the rebellion ended, Haitians from the northeast migrated. By the 1920s, Haitian women had also begun to arrive in noticeable numbers.
Sugar cane companies employed transnational networks to recruit Haitian workers. Returning migrants spread the news about the jobs and received payment for every worker they brought to Cuba. Sugar mills hired labor agents to recruit the majority of workers. Once Haitians arrived in Cuba, the mills sought to define every aspect of their lives. Central to this endeavor was the racial ideology applied to assess their intellectual capacity, manual skills, and culture. Most mill administrators tended to view their Haitian workers as uncivilized, but born to cut and haul sugar cane. They were placed at the bottom of a racialized plantation labor hierarchy, with British West Indians at the top. Workers from Jamaica, Barbados and the other British islands were privileged because of their perceived superior cultural attributes, including speaking English. They filled skilled occupations. Smaller numbers of Haitians became boilers, masons, domestics, and cooks (113).
Haitian workers succeeded in retaining their autonomy in the socioeconomic and cultural spheres. Many established small plots of land to grow food. After work, they socialized with other black Caribbean workers to sing, dance, and share food and stories. Where mills provided workers with female companionship, prostitution became another “economic activity in which Haitian-born men and women engaged outside the formal wage labor” (130).
The middle chapters examine experiences on the coffee plantations during the 1930s. Casey reveals how workers moved from sugar mills to coffee regions because of higher wages. Coffee was harvested using methods similar to those used in Haiti, and Cuban coffee farmers employed men, women, and children. Therefore, Haitian families could established stable households, permitting seasonal incomes to increase (165). Nonetheless, Cuban farmers exploited them, too, with very low wages and no pay for children. To mitigate exploitation, Haitian women and children usually picked additional coffee beans to sell before they started their workday for the farmers.
The last section explores how Haitian workers retained religion and identity. Described as brujería or witchcraft by the Cuban authorities and press, Haitian Vodou came to be feared among Cubans for its so-called primitivism. Nonetheless, the religious communities that Haitian immigrants established in eastern Cuba also served black Cubans. Cubans and Haitians shared similar religious beliefs and rituals, making this possible. Cuban officials, therefore, tried to repress Haitian religious productions.
Casey concludes with an analysis of Cuba's racial ideology. He believes that “the divisive discourses of class, color, and cultural superiority” became critical tenets of Cuban nationalism (206). Marked by nativism and xenophobia, that nationalism was, by the end of the 1920s, employed to ban black Caribbean immigration and deport thousands of Haitian workers.
On their return home, Haitians’ lives varied. Some who returned with savings improved their condition and status. Although the US military occupation ended in 1930, Haiti's government remained close to the United States during the first half of the 1930s, and the Haitian economy became dependent on the US market. Rural workers were encouraged to produce commodities for the purpose of assisting the country's agricultural development.
Casey's book is an excellent addition to others on black Caribbean immigration to Cuba during the first quarter of the twentieth century. By focusing on Haitian immigration to Cuba, Casey analyzes the other segment of black foreign workers in Cuba and highlights the fact that more white and black immigrants travelled to Cuba before 1930 than to any other Caribbean nation. He details the experiences of a large percentage of black migrants who contributed economically to Cuba's most important industries. The expansion of the sugar industry, and later coffee, drew them. Displacement and immiseration caused by the US military occupation of Haiti pushed them. Haitian immigrants also contributed to Cuba's culture, retaining and sharing their religious beliefs and practices with black Cubans. Their presence caused Cuban journalists and government officials to revise notions of Cuban nationalism, rejecting Haitians with cries of “Cuba is for Cubans.”
However, Casey's book does omit quantitative data that could have shown why Haitian labor proved so critical for sugar and coffee. How much sugar and coffee Haitian labor produced is never stated. Despite this omission, Casey's book ought to be read by immigration and economic historians of the Caribbean and Cuba.
