British West Indian Migration to the Colombian Islands of San Andrés and Providence

New West Indian Guide Vol. 85, no. 1-2 (2011), pp. 31-52 URL: http://www.kitlv-journals.nl/index.php/nwig/index URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-101381 Copyright: content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License ISSN: 1382-2373 SHARIKA CRAWFORD A TRANSNATIONAL WORLD FRACTURED BUT NOT FORGOTTEN: BRITISH WEST INDIAN MIGRATION TO THE COLOMBIAN ISLANDS OF SAN ANDRÉS AND PROVIDENCE In the last decades of the nineteenth century, West Indians traveled up and down the North and South Atlantic in search of employment and favorable living conditions.1 By the middle of the following century, several hundred thousand Barbadians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Haitians, and others from smaller islands in the Leeward Isles had left their homes and found work in the expanding tropical export economies and the adjoining railway projects that had been designed to transport commodities in Central America. Others obtained service-related jobs in the newly discovered oil fields of Venezuela or the Canal Zone in Panama. This massive migration extended the scope of the Caribbean as laborers formed communities, introduced their folk cultures, and reconstituted families in these new host societies, which were often hostile to black and brown denizens. Opportunities abroad attracted industrious and erudite men and women seeking to utilize their professional skills and attain favorable living conditions by tapping into a long-established migratory network outside the confines of the agro-export boom in the Spanish-speaking circum-Caribbean. Academic interest in West Indian migration to Latin America has been extensive. While scholars have examined the economic impact of migration on migrants’ home societies, have analyzed the interplay between labor and national politics as Spanish American political elites initially encouraged Afro-Caribbean workers to and later restricted them from entering their coun- tries, and have explored the labor organization of North American corpora- tions such as the United Fruit Company, they have paid less attention to the 1. I thank George Reid Andrews, Lara Putnam, and Dawn Duke for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Writing was facilitated by the United States Naval Academy Junior NARC summer grant. I also thank Rosemarijn Hoefte, and the two anonymous reviewers of NWIG who helped me to clarify my ideas. Finally, I give thanks to my husband Kwesi for his critical eye and to my son Yoshua, for his patience. New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids vol. 85 no. 1 & 2 (2011):31-52 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 08:14:32AM via free access 32 SHARIKA CRAWFORD fact that many West Indian migrants settled into communities with an already established Anglophone Afro-Caribbean population.2 Locales like Bocas del Toro (Panama), Cahuita and Turtle Bogue (Costa Rica), Pearl Lagoon and Bluefields (Nicaragua), and the islands of San Andrés and Providence (Colombia) may have been known to West Indian newcomers due not only to nearby employment opportunities they offered, but also to longtime contact between these sites and the Eastern Caribbean, particularly Jamaica (Troy 1967:55-57). However, scholars of this migration to Central America have often conflated British West Indians and these Anglophone residents of full and partial African ancestry, treating them as a single group and leaving the impression that the English-speaking black population was relatively new to the area.3 On the contrary, these Anglophone communities with ties to the West Indies have existed since the eighteenth century, becoming the deposi- tory for additional emigrants from the Greater and Lesser Antilles from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. This paper focuses on one of these communities – the Archipelago of San Andrés and Providence – which is culturally and physically wedged between the Anglophone Caribbean and Spanish America. Lying less than one hundred miles from the Atlantic littoral of Central America, the islands are under the jurisdiction of the republic of Colombia nearly four hundred miles away. In an area settled largely by retired Anglo-Dutch buccaneers, itinerant farmers, and enslaved Africans in the late eighteenth century, residents conceded their loyalty first to the Spanish Crown and later to New Granada authorities in the aftermath of the Spanish American independence wars. Notwithstanding their political affiliation to Colombia, the social and economic development of the islands mirrored that of other places in the Greater Caribbean. Island planters sold their cotton, and fishermen peddled their turtle shells and meat mostly to a few Jamaican merchants en route to Central America in exchange for manufactured goods. They also educated their children in Jamaica and traveled throughout the region as seamen. By the 1870s, however, a steady trickle of mostly British West Indians began to relocate to the islands, scouting the area to acquire better livelihoods. By 1912, one census indicated that this group constituted nearly 5 percent of the total population4; however, the profile of these migrants differed from 2. Literature on West Indian migration in Spanish America is vast. For the most recent treatment on the topic, see Opie 2009 and Tinker Salas 2009:73-170. For other studies, see Putnam 2001, Chomsky 2000:415-62. Also, refer to the older works of Chomsky 1996, Newton 1984, Richardson 1985. 3. Notable exceptions are Putnam 2010:278-79, Chambers 2010:74-96, and Gordon 1998:45-50. 4. The census taker reported 3,123 inhabitants on San Andrés and 208 of them foreigners, mostly of West Indian extraction. On Providence, the total population was 1,930 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 08:14:32AM via free access BRITISH WEST INDIAN MIGRATION TO SAN ANDRÉS AND PROVIDENCE 33 that of their counterparts elsewhere due to their professions and educational comportment. In this essay, I answer three interrelated questions. Who were these migrants, what attracted them to the Colombian islands, and what is revealed about West Indian migration as well as the scope of the Greater Caribbean in studying this lesser-known case? Drawing on travel accounts, newspapers, port records, and published and unpublished interviews, I examine the migratory circuit between the British Caribbean and the Archipelago of San Andrés and Providence. In so doing, I put forth a three-part argument. First, British West Indian migration was an organic result of long-term contact between the inhabitants of these Colombian islands and those of the Greater Antilles, in particular Jamaica. Second, although the migrants to the islands were mostly professionals such as attorneys, pharmacists, teachers, and ministers, there were also a few semi-skilled workers among them. Third and finally, their presence on the islands was less hostile, as local notables actively recruited and encouraged migrants to start businesses or provide services deemed desir- able to the entire community. As such, their experiences represent a departure from the master narrative involving racist white American company officers, resentful local Hispanic laborers, and Spanish American political elites con- cerned about the economic and social future of their nations. BETWEEN THE ANGLOPHONE CARIBBEAN AND SPANISH AMERICA: A CARIBBEAN BORDERLAND Territorial competition between England and Spain birthed borderlands in the western Caribbean. Although the Spanish claimed San Andrés and Providence islands in 1510, the Spanish empire later abandoned these lands in favor of colonization of the western and Pacific highlands of Central America. A deep desire for gold pushed conquistadores to search for areas rich in resources and human capital, but imperial Spain found colonization difficult along the Caribbean lowlands of Central America due to the area’s tricky terrain of swamps, jungles, and mountains as well as the hostile indig- enous populations that resided there. By the seventeenth century, European competition for American colonies soared as first Anglo-Dutch buccaneers and then English Puritans came to Providence Island, establishing a settle- ment in 1631. Although the colonists initially recruited European indentured servants to grow tobacco, they later turned to enslaved Africans to cultivate cotton when conflicts erupted over land ownership and tobacco prices fell. with 63 foreigners identified. See Santiago Guerrero to María Pedro Carreño, July 8, 1912, Ministerio de Gobierno, Sección Primera, Tomo 698, Folio 468, Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter AGN), Bogotá, Colombia. Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 08:14:32AM via free access 34 SHARIKA CRAWFORD Despite changes in labor and production, the Puritan colony was doomed. In addition to insufficient security that left settlers vulnerable to outside inter- lopers, slave uprisings, and slave escapes, the Puritans faced competition from the Spanish, who finally succeeded in driving the settlers off the island a decade after their arrival (Kupperman 1995:338). Spain had little interest in colonizing these islands, and Spanish official policy in this area was aimed at warding off further foreign incursion from Anglo-Dutch pirates. As the islands offered few enticing resources, Spanish royal officials found it difficult to populate the islands with loyal subjects and eventually relied on itinerant foreigners. While they attempted to settle some twenty Canary Island families to deter further migration of English woodcutters to San Andrés Island, reports continued to note the presence of

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