Empire's Guestworkers

Academics who study Cuba, Haiti, and the Caribbean are aware of the importance of Haitian migration to Cuba. Yet with the notable exception of a few scholarly articles, our knowledge about Haitian migrants in Cuba has been both superficial and one-dimensional. Superficial because we knew very little about how and why Haitians went to Cuba; one-dimensional because most writing about Haitians in Cuba portrays them as a passive workforce under the complete control of US sugar companies. With the publication of Empire's Guestworkers, we now have a much more sophisticated, nuanced, and, above all, human account about who Haitian migrants were, why and how they left Haiti, and how they forged their own histories under very difficult circumstances. We also get a much clearer picture of how Haitian migration shaped state formation in Cuba and Haiti. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Cuban, Haitian, and Caribbean history. It makes a notable contribution to migration and diaspora studies, labor history, transnational history, and empire.Space does not permit a thorough rendering of the many important insights and new information in Empire's Guestworkers. But for this reviewer the book makes three major contributions. First, Matthew Casey sheds new light on how and why Haitians went to Cuba, as well as the regional origins of migrants. Between 1918 and 1923 a series of Haitian migration laws and regulations changed migration patterns to Cuba from localized and private initiatives into state-regulated policy. Haitian migration to Cuba predated US occupation in 1915 but increased markedly because of it. The US occupation fostered both the growth and centralization of the Haitian state. Rural Haitians experienced state formation and occupation through a combination of the loss of customary rights to land, disrupted subsistence and trading activities, high food prices, and the militarization of the countryside. One way to evade these challenges was to go to Cuba. Before the US occupation, migration to Cuba was from the southern coastal areas of Haiti and the region around Port-au-Prince; thereafter, people from the northern regions migrated in larger numbers, with the active encouragement of state officials and the sugar companies. As a consequence of these changes, Haitian migration policy was forced to mesh with Cuban immigration legislation. Casey does an admirable job discussing and analyzing the interconnected processes of state formation, US occupation, and labor migration.A second major contribution of the book is to counter the common portrayal of Haitians in Cuba as passive cheap labor whose sole function was to work as cane cutters. Casey shows that to the contrary, the occupational structures of sugar plantations were not as monolithic as the companies or Cuban officials claimed. Not all Haitians were cane cutters, and many worked in skilled occupations within the mills or in transportation and supply networks. Indeed, Empire's Guestworkers provides valuable insight and new evidence that shows both the limitations of company power over workers and how the racist stereotypes that portrayed some workers as more fit for certain kinds of labor had little to do with realities on the ground. Casey brings to the fore the lived experience and agency of Haitian guest workers who forged their own histories and found ways of surviving and thriving despite the power of the companies and the Cuban state. One such strategy was to leave the sugar zones and become coffee farmers. In the 1920s and 1930s Haitians made notable contributions to the Cuban coffee industry. Casey provides new information and analysis of Haitian religious life in eastern Cuba. He also discusses the contributions of Haitian journalists and writers in Cuba, especially on the topic of immigration and race. Haitians and their families carved out spaces of freedom that would not have been possible had they remained working for the sugar companies. One of the author's objectives was to show how the actions of individual people shaped the processes of migration, state formation, and imperial policy. Casey has succeeded admirably in fulfilling this objective.The third contribution of Empire's Guestworkers pertains to research. In the past, it was common for historians to muse that it was impossible to write a really good history of Haitian migration because the sources were simply not there. Casey has proven that notion mistaken. His extensive research in all the important Cuban regional and local archives is impressive, and he has uncovered new information that many scholars believed did not exist. His use of Haitian and US archival and secondary sources is equally impressive.Not only has Casey managed to write a book that fills a major gap in the scholarship in Cuban, Haitian, and Caribbean studies, but he has also provided fertile ground and wonderfully suggestive observations that should encourage graduate students and established scholars to write more about migration, state formation, and empire

Ancient history · Diaspora · Economic history · Empire · Ethnology · Latin Americans · Political science · State (computer science) · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law

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