Inmigrantes hispanocubanos en México durante el Porfiriato

María del Socorro Herrera Barreda uses this work to broaden the discussion of immigration in Latin America to include migration of persons within the Americas, complementing the extant studies of immigration to Latin America from overseas. Citing the well-known works of Herbert Klein, Jordi Maluquer de Motes, José C. Moya, and Moíses Gonzalez Navarro, Herrera Barreda notes that very little attention has been paid to intra-American migratory practices and patterns, despite their very real importance in establishing social, political, and economic linkages and creating points of conflict. The book focuses on two groups (sometimes distinct, sometimes overlapping) of immigrants from Cuba to Mexico who were classified as “Spanish.”The first part of the work explores the characteristics of this immigration, based primarily on a detailed analysis of parish records and naturalization petitions between 1875 and 1904. Through painstaking research, the author traces the professions of Spanish Cubans and their places of origin. The data she uncovered shows that Spanish Cubans — that is, those that who show up in naturalization records — were persons of some means: professionals such doctors and lawyers, as well as merchants who left urban areas and settled primarily in Veracruz, the Gulf Coast, or other urban areas. These people had the education and the means to file the paperwork and pay the fees associated with naturalization.According to the statements in the naturalization files, the applicants generally left Cuba to avoid unrest associated with the independence struggle; their sympathies generally rested with Spain. Their naturalization petitions were not motivated by disgust with their government of origin, but rather were a means to facilitate commerce in Mexico and to acquire the protection of a foreign passport if they needed to return to Cuba to look after their holdings. Herrera Barreda also works to reconstruct social networks both of Cubans loyal to Spain and those who used Mexico as a base of insurgent operations. These social networks then led to further chain-style migration. Not surprisingly, much more is known about the first group, as they were more willing to expose themselves to Mexican bureaucratic procedures.The second part of the work explores the economic and political life of Cuban immigrants in Mexico. This section focuses on more ephemeral groups of immigrants: laborers and revolutionaries. Persons in these groups were much less likely have either the means or the desire to petition for citizenship or to even appear at all in the public record. Herrera Barreda devotes a chapter to discussing the inflow and outflow of Cuban labor in Mexico, but since immigrant laborers did not generally seek naturalization, there is simply very little documentation available beyond labor contracts and contemporary notations of the expansion and improvement of Mexican tobacco production due to Cuban expertise. The final two chapters of this section focus on Cuban separatist activities in Mexico. The author analyzes diplomatic, intelligence, and police records from Mexico and Spain, noting that although the Porfirian government was officially pledged to a neutral stance vis-à-vis Cuban independence, it did little more than monitor separatist activities on Mexican soil. Nonetheless, relations between Mexico and Spain did not suffer greatly, despite occasional protests from Spain that the Mexican government was often aware of the separatists’ plans yet did nothing to stop them or warn the Spanish authorities.Inmigrantes hispanocubanos fits well into the small but growing discussion of immigration in Latin America and challenges the scholarly community to also take intra-American immigration into consideration. Within the two main themes of the book, the author engages six separate hypotheses, and for this reason it is structured into six discrete case studies of Cuban immigrants in Mexico. As a result, the reader is left with a great deal of data about various types of Cuban immigration to Mexico and some analysis of each category. However, the work neglects the opportunity to make a broader argument on the trends noted and to tie them into the broader historiography. Still, the impressive amount of archival research, including the reconstruction of data and extrapolation from limited sources, will make Herrera Barreda’s work useful to immigration scholars and those interested in ties between Mexico and Cuba as part of the Carribean-basin community

Art · Catalan · Citizenship · Ethnology · Extant taxon · Geography · Humanities · Immigration · Immigration law · Independence (probability theory) · Latin Americans · Naturalization · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Unrest · Cuban History and Society · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law

• El periodismo español en la Ciudad de México al servicio de la pax porfiriana (1884-1892)

  Open Access•María Del Mar Gutiérrez Domínguez, Marcelo Hugo Garabedian•Revista Complutense de Historia…•2022

  Add to list