Transnational Crossroads: Remapping the Americas and the Pacific

10. Multitasking Mediators: Intracolonial Leadership in Filipino and Puerto Rican Communities in Hawai‘i, 1900–1928

In 1901 Florentin Souza served as a labor liaison for Puerto Ricans at multiple sugar plantations on the east side of the Island of Hawai‘i. He also worked as a manager for the Hawaiian Business Agency in Hilo, where he handled real estate transactions, finance collection, accounting, and general commission projects in the region . During the 1924–25 labor strike in Hawai‘i, Flaviano M. Santa Ana spoke on behalf of Filipino laborers at the Ola‘a plantation on the east side of the Island of Hawai‘i. In addition to his role as a community representative, Santa Ana worked as a member of the plantation special police, a unit of armed men paid by the plantation to maintain order during strike times. His conflicting responsibilities as labor spokesperson and plantation security became further complicated by his position as a Protestant minister . How did these two people come to fill these multiple roles? The larger political-legal context of their regions of origin directly impacted the paths of both Santa Ana and Souza. After the War of 1898 and the subsequent Treaty of Paris, the U.S. government gained possession and authority over the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam.1 In 1904 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the people from these former Spanish colonies were not aliens of the United States, but the justices Chapter 10 Multitasking Mediators Intracolonial Leadership in Filipino and Puerto Rican Communities in Hawai‘i, 1900–1928 JoAnna Poblete joanna poblete 292 refused to rule on whether they were citizens of the United States, stating, “We are not required to discuss [whether] . . . the cession of Porto Rico accomplished the naturalization of its people; or . . . that a citizen of Porto Rico, under the act of 1900, is necessarily a citizen of the United States.”2 The Court’s unwillingness to determine the citizenship of these populations resulted in an ambiguous political-legal status. Unlike foreigners, Puerto Ricans and Filipinos were fully subject to U.S. rule. Yet unlike citizens, they did not have full constitutional protections.3 Neither citizens nor foreigners, Filipinos and Puerto Ricans also did not have independent government officials representing them.4 Foreign laborers in Hawai‘i had consuls general residing in Honolulu with official power and local influence to resolve their daily issues within a week or two. Citizens had locally elected government representatives to address their concerns. Puerto Ricans and Filipinos did not have local official leadership in the Hawaiian Islands due to their ambiguous status as wards of the United States.5 The absence of permanent government representatives made Puerto Ricans and Filipinos heavily reliant on community leaders, like Souza and Santa Ana, to deal with their everyday affairs. While foreign migrants also worked with neighborhood mediators, U.S. colonials were dependent on these unofficial community leaders for services that foreign consuls general usually handled.6 Souza and Santa Ana became two of the best options for local leadership in the Puerto Rican and Filipino labor community on the Island of Hawai‘i. Literate and fluent in both English and the workers’ dialect , these men were two of just a handful of individuals who could explain employer and government expectations to these non-English -speaking groups of migrant workers. These factors resulted in Souza and Santa Ana handling multiple, contradictory responsibilities in the Islands. Overall nongovernmental Filipino and Puerto Rican ethnic mediators played a greater role in the daily lives of intracolonials than in the lives of foreigners or citizens in the Territory of Hawai‘i. Although Lisa Rose Mar has demonstrated the importance of labor multitasking mediators 293 brokers for Chinese immigrants in Canada, scholars of immigration and labor often do not discuss the importance of community ethnic mediators in much detail.7 Instead recent scholarship on migrant labor has focused on issues of citizenship, state control, and transnationalism.8 This essay demonstrates how community ethnic mediators were among the few trusted leaders for Filipino and Puerto Rican intracolonials living thousands of miles away from their home regions. Despite their legally identical classification by the Treaty of Paris and the Supreme Court, Filipinos and Puerto Ricans have generally not been analyzed together in academic scholarship. The sociologists Julian Go and Lanny Thompson have conducted the most recent studies of both groups, focusing on the political impact of U.S. colonialism in each region.9...