| This dissertation examines the comparative histories of two Afro-Caribbean immigrant populations in Cuba during a time of profound economic, social, and political transformation. Between 1898 and 1929, approximately 300,000 workers migrated from Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados, and elsewhere in the British Caribbean to Cuba. They arrived as the newly-independent country fell increasingly under the sway of U.S. imperialism, and they provided labor for the massive expansion of the island's sugar economy in the early twentieth century. Although Haitian and British West Indian immigrants shared African ancestry and working-class identity, native Cubans came to distinguish between the two groups. Amidst economic decline in the 1930s, Cuban authorities forcibly deported at least 38,000 Haitians, but they did not repatriate any British West Indians.;This study employs a wide variety of primary sources located in Cuba, Great Britain, Jamaica, and the United States to examine the similar yet diverging experiences of Haitians and British West Indians in early republican Cuba. It combines analysis of their work experiences, social organizations, and cultural practices with an exploration of how they were perceived, represented, and treated by different groups in Cuban society. Afro-Caribbean workers adopted a number of strategies to deal with employers, including participation in labor unions and strike movements, yet relations with native workers remained ambivalent in the face of popular Cuban nationalism. British West Indian immigrants formed more branches of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association in Cuba than existed anywhere outside of the United States, but they attracted relatively few Cubans and Haitians into the organization. While British West Indians tended to affiliate with the Episcopal and other Protestant churches, Haitian immigrants retained traditional practices of vodou, prompting many white Cuban intellectuals and officials to portray them as practitioners of witchcraft. And while all black Caribbean immigrants were subject to quarantine upon entering Cuba, specialists in the emerging field of tropical medicine identified Haitians in particular as carriers of infectious disease.;In examining such topics, the dissertation not only explains why Haitians alone were expelled from Cuba in the 1930s, but also explores the impact that Afro-Caribbean immigration had on the course of modern Cuban history, particularly on the formation of national and racial identities. In so doing, it provides a new perspective on how race, class, and black ethnicity have interacted to structure identity and race relations in the broader African diaspora. |
