Haitians' Labor and Leisure on Cuban Sugar

New West Indian Guide Vol. 85, no. 1-2 (2011), pp. 5-30 URL: http://www.kitlv-journals.nl/index.php/nwig/index URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-101380 Copyright: content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License ISSN: 1382-2373 MATTHEW CASEY HAITIans’ LABOR AND LEISURE ON CUBAN SUGAR PLANTATIONS: ThE LIMITS OF COMPANY CONTROL Alejo Carpentier’s 1927 novel, ¡Écue-Yamba-Ó! (2002:18, 21, 52, 65-66), describes rural Cuba during World War I as a place in which “life is orga- nized according to [sugar’s] will.”1 One effect of sugar production was the “new plague” of “ragged Haitians” or “black mercenaries with straw hats and machetes at their belts.” When not cutting cane, these immigrants seques- tered themselves in their barracones (labor barracks), the “stone construc- tions, long like a hangar, with iron window panes” that were originally built for slaves to inhabit. Haitians and other immigrants were the targets of scorn from Carpentier’s protagonist, Menegildo Cue, an Afro-Cuban individual who drove oxen on the local sugar plantation. He “felt strange among so many blacks with other customs and languages. The Jamaicans were ‘snobby’ and animals! The Haitians were animals and savages!” Cue also complained that Cubans “were without work since the braceros from Haiti accepted incredibly low daily wages!” As Carpentier’s text emphasizes, the arrival of Haitian laborers in eastern Cuba in the first half of the twentieth century was part and parcel of massive rural transformations as a result of the rapid growth of sugar production on the island. In 1898, the United States intervened militarily in Cuba’s wars for independence, hastening the defeat of Spain and limiting the victory of the Cuban separatists. Rather than enjoying full independence from Spain, Cubans were now subject to a new colonial relationship with the United States. While some sectors of Cuban society questioned the role that sugar should play after independence, a rush of investors and politicians from both Cuba and the United 1. The author wishes to thank Alejandro de la Fuente, Oscar de la Torre, Yven Destin, and three anonymous reviewers from the New West Indian Guide for their helpful com- ments on previous versions of this essay. Research for this article was funded by a Tinker Grant from the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, a Carolyn Chambers Fellowship from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Library Travel Research Grant from the University of Florida. New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids vol. 85 no. 1 & 2 (2011):5-30 6 MATTHEW CASEY States sought to increase production. In 1898, Cuba produced 350,000 short tons of sugar. When U.S. troops left the island in 1902, production had more than doubled to 973,000 short tons. Cuban sugar production peaked in 1929, at 5,775,000 short tons (Ayala 1999:70, McGillivray 2009:36, 75, 86). This phase of sugar production was distinct from previous periods. At the end of the nineteenth century, new, modernized mills called centrales began replacing the older ingenios (Iglesias García 1999). These new mills had an increased capacity to grind cane, which they obtained either from cane fields owned by the company or more often by contract from farmers called colo- nos. Centrales were especially prevalent in the eastern provinces of Oriente and Camagüey, the new regions of production. Whereas in 1901, 15 percent of Cuba’s sugar was produced in these zones, by the 1920s and 1930s, they were responsible for over half of the sugar crop (Ayala 1999:220, Santamaría Garcia 2001:419). In Oriente and Camagüey, sugar expansion was paired with an influx of individuals from various parts of the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Sugar- producing areas attracted workers of all types from the United States, Spain, the Canary Islands, China, and various parts of the Caribbean and Latin America. During the first years of the twentieth century, planters requested governmental permission to bring in contract laborers from Haiti, the British West Indies, and other neighboring islands. Their petitions revived long- standing, racially charged debates throughout the island about Cuba’s labor needs and the ideal demographic makeup of the island (Naranjo Orovio & García Gonzalez 1996). Despite opposition from Cuban journalists and even individuals within the Cuban government, sugar companies, with the support of the U.S. government, exerted enough political pressure to have Caribbean immigration legalized by 1913 (McLeod 2000:22-42). As Carpentier’s text illustrates, one of the largest sources of labor power behind this sugar expansion came from almost half a million immigrants from other parts of the Caribbean, especially Haiti and the British West Indies. Haitian and British West Indian migrants were heavily concentrated in the provinces of Oriente and Camagüey. At the regional and local level, the effects of sugar production and migration were especially noticeable. From 1907 to 1919, the populations of Oriente and Camagüey increased by 60.6 percent and 93.6 percent respectively, making them the fastest-growing regions in a country whose overall population increased by 33 percent in the period. By 1919, Oriente’s population had surpassed that of the province of Havana. The influence of migration from other parts of the Caribbean is especially appar- ent in this process. In 1919, individuals who were not born in Cuba, Spain, the United States, China, or Africa represented 5.86 percent of the population of Oriente province and 4.75 percent in Camagüey. These immigrants were even more heavily concentrated in areas with large sugar mills. They represented 8.14 percent of the inhabitants of Banes, the site of the United Fruit Company HAITIANS’ LABOR AND LEISURE ON CUBAN SUGAR PLANTATIONS 7 plantation in Oriente. In Las Tunas, the site of the Chaparra sugar mill, they made up 11 percent of the population (Cuba 1920:286, 290, 434). The last legal arrival of Caribbean immigrants into Cuba occurred in 1931. In the decade that followed, tens of thousands of Afro-Caribbean immigrants were deported from Cuban soil, including 38,000 Haitians. Although diminished by repatriations, Haitians’ presence remained significant in eastern Cuba (McLeod 2000:2). In 1970, there were still 22,579 Haitians living there (Espronceda Amor 2001:20-21). Carpentier’s assertions about the omnipotence of Cuban sugar companies and their ability to maintain a segregated workforce in which Haitians remained at the bottom reflect commonly held beliefs in 1920s Cuba that have strongly influenced present-day historical accounts. As a result, the experiences of Haitian migrants are often described in terms of alienation and isolation, victims of a “monolithic wall of rejection” (Lucassen & Lucassen 1997:21), which obscures their humanity and agency. Haitians’ integration into Cuban society is either left unexplored as a result of the repatriations or inscribed into contemporary nationalists’ narratives of Cuban multiculturalism.2 This article seeks to provide an analysis of Haitian migrants’ working and leisure experiences in Cuba that does not assume the complete domination of company and state. I begin by exploring the images that sugar company administrators and Cuban newspapers projected about the labor and social hierarchies in Cuban society in which Haitians were said to inhabit the lowest positions. I will then reconstruct Haitians’ working lives to show the variety of labor activities they performed in cane fields and sugar centrales as well as the frequency with which they worked alongside people of other nationalities. Building on recent scholarship on labor history and the Cuban sugar industry, the article traces Haitians’ strategies to improve the conditions in which they lived and labored outside of formal labor unions. Their use of what James C. Scott famously called the “weapons of the weak” entailed negotiations and confrontations with company managers on worksites over better conditions and wages (Scott 1985:29). Strategies of resistance and adaptation also included participation in social and commercial networks on sugar plantations with individuals of other nationalities. The existence of cross-national networks and communities before, during, and after the decade of deportations suggest that these exchanges are fundamental to understand- ing the experiences of Haitian migrants in the island. Furthermore, the existence of these communities and the initiatives of Haitian migrants need to be taken into account in any serious discussion about their integration into Cuban society. 2. For an exception to this trend see Espronceda Amor 2001. 8 MATTHEW CASEY HAITIAN WORKERS: NARRATIVES OF COmpANY AND STATE DOMINATION During the first decades of the twentieth century, the Cuban press depicted Caribbean migrant workers as impoverished cane cutters who drove down wages for native workers. In 1916, La Política Cómica published a satirical column about the “tourists of color” who were arriving regularly from Haiti and Jamaica. They reportedly came to Cuba “to enjoy themselves cutting cane, accepting for sport a lower daily wage than what is paid” to Cubans.3 Santiago’s Diario de Cuba used a combination of racial and economic logic to explain why Haitians were particularly apt for cane cutting. “The cane needs Haitian arms,” argued the newspaper, since cane cutting “is a work to which races of a superior civilization do not adapt ... Sugar cannot be produced in Cuba by paying a higher salary than the one for which Haitians work.”4 In 1928, during a brief emigration ban from Haiti, the Cuban commercial press wondered “Who would take the place of the Haitians in the cane fields, since it is well known that Cubans will not cut cane?” “Cuban sugar growers,” they added, “could not afford to pay [the] higher wages” Cubans would inevitably demand.5 The belief that Haitians were ideal only for cutting cane was shared by sugar companies who attempted to segregate their workers.

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