In the mid-nineteenth century, Cuba's infamous "coolie" trade brought well over 100,000 Chinese indentured laborers to its shores. Though subjected to abominable conditions, they were followed during subsequent decades by smaller numbers of merchants, craftsmen, and free migrants searching for better lives far from home. In a comprehensive, vibrant history that draws deeply on Chinese- and Spanish-language sources in both China and Cuba, Kathleen Lopez explores the transition of the Chinese from indentured to free migrants, the formation of transnational communities, and the eventual incorporation of the Chinese into the Cuban citizenry during the first half of the twentieth century. Chinese Cubans shows how Chinese migration, intermarriage, and assimilation are central to Cuban history and national identity during a key period of transition from slave to wage labor and from colony to nation. On a broader level, Lopez draws out implications for issues of race, national identity, and transnational migration, especially along the Pacific rim.

This book deals with Chinese immigrants' role in the struggle for Cuban liberation and in Cuba's twentieth-century revolutionary social movement; the history of the Chinese economy in Cuba; and the Chinese contribution to Cuban music, painting, food, sport, and language. The centerpiece of the book is a translation of a study by Mauro Garc'a Triana and Pedro Eng Herrera on the history of the Chinese presence in Cuba. Over many years, Garc'a and Eng have collaborated closely on scholarly research on the Chinese contribution to Cuban life and politics, although their work is not widely known. Both are well equipped for such an enterprise: Eng as a Cuban of Chinese descent and a participant in the ethnic-Chinese revolutionary movement in Cuba, starting in the 1950s; Garc'a as a participant in the struggle against Batista and Cuban Ambassador to China during the period of the Cultural Revolution. The study is supplemented by an extensive collection of archival photographs and of paintings on Cuban-Chinese themes by Pedro Eng, who is not just a chronicler of the community but a well-known worker-artist who paints in a style described by commentators as 'naive.' The volume has three appendices: excerpts from the Cuba Commission's 1877 report on Chinese emigration to Cuba; the rebel leader Gonzalo de Quesada y Ar-stegui's pamphlet 'The Chinese and Cuban Independence,' translated from his book Mi primera ofrenda (My first offering), first published in 1892; and the chapter on 'Coolie Life in Cuba' from Duvon Clough Corbitt's Study of the Chinese in Cuba, 1847-1947 (Wilmore 1971).

A chapter in the chronicle of the Cuban Revolution, as told by those on the front lines of that ongoing epic. Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moisés Sío Wong-three young rebels of Chinese-Cuban ancestry-threw themselves into the great proletarian battle that defined their generation. They became combatants in the clandestine struggle and 1956-58 revolutionary war that brought down a U.S.-backed dictatorship and opened the door to the socialist revolution in the Americas. Each became a general in Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces. Here they talk about the historic place of Chinese immigration to Cuba, as well as more than five decades of revolutionary action and internationalism, from Cuba to Angola, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela).

In Diaspora and Trust Adrian H. Hearn proposes that a new paradigm of socio-economic development is gaining importance for Cuba and Mexico. Despite their contrasting political ideologies, both countries must build new forms of trust among the state, society, and resident Chinese diaspora communities if they are to harness the potentials of China’s rise. Combining political and economic analysis with ethnographic fieldwork, Hearn analyzes Cuba's and Mexico's historical relations with China, and highlights how Chinese diaspora communities are now deepening these ties. Theorizing trust as an alternative to existing models of exchange—which are failing to navigate the world's shifting economic currents—Hearn shows how Cuba and Mexico can reformulate the balance of power between state, market, and society. A new paradigm of domestic development and foreign engagement based on trust is becoming critical for Cuba, Mexico, and other countries seeking to benefit from China’s growing economic power and social influence.

"Provides background information and establishes the context for this episode in the international history of labor as well as in the histories of Cuba, Caribbean plantations, and the overseas Chinese."--Journal of Economic Literature. In 1873, prompted by reports of such abuse in the Spanish colony of Cuba, the government of China sent an Imperial Mission to investigate the living and working conditions of Chinese laborers on the island's sugar plantations. The result was The Cuba Commission Report, a gruesome record of the experience of Chinese workers in Cuba, corroborated by hundreds of depositions taken from the laborers themselves. This softcover edition reproduces the English-language text that was part of the original report of 1876. In a special note to the reader, Rebecca Scott and Sidney Mintz describe the kinds of information contained in this remarkable document. "This is, indeed, labor history and migration history," writes Helly, "but of a sort rarely narrated in so terrifying a manner."

In Contested Community, the authors analyze the Chinese immigrant community in Cuba between the years 1900–1968. While popular literature of the era portrayed the diasporic group as a closed, inassimilable ethnic enclave, closer inspection instead reveals numerous economic, political, and ethnic divisions. As with all organizations, asymmetrical power relations permeated Havana’s Barrio Chino and the larger Chinese Cuban community. The authors of Contested Community use difficult-to-access materials from Cuba’s national archive to offer a unique and insightful interpretation of a little-understood immigrant group.

More than 150 years ago, over 150,000 Chinese people emigrated to Cuba. This book examines the representations of these immigrants in Cuban culture, from food to books to painting.