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6. Balancing Acts: The Shifting Dynamics of Race and Immigration
- University of Georgia Press
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6 / Balancing Acts: The Shifting Dynamics of Race and Immigration It is indispensable that the white population be expanded successively . . . . This expansion must always be bound to the political idea of sustaining an equilibrium of the castes in order to prevent the notion that the reduction of the black race might encourage those who wish to fuel and promote ideas of independence and complete separation from the Metropole. —leopoldo o’donnell In April 1844, Captain General O’Donnell urgently reminded officials in Spain of the political importance of “sustaining an equilibrium of the castes” in Cuba. In particular, he sought to undermine the positions of “black skilled craftsmen, maids, cooks, and coachmen” and replace them with white workers. He held the same attitude about the agricultural sector, although he conceded that “only Africans” could tolerate Cuba’s harsh, tropical climate. These sentiments, however, would change within a few years. Overall, O’Donnell asserted that augmenting the white population offered two solutions to the problems exacerbated by the Escalera rebellions. First, expanding Cuba’s white sector would help prevent “ideas of independence and complete separation from the Metropole” and bolster loyalty to the crown in Spain’s fractured nineteenth-century empire.1 Second, and more important, the presence of white workers would reduce the proportion of free people of color and slaves in Cuba and the island’s dependency on blacks for agricultural and urban labor. In other words, “equilibrium” meant reducing the proportion of blacks and increasing that of whites. Despite O’Donnell’s ambitions, several factors aggravated existing internal and external strains. Although the displacement of free black workers by whites in the cities had garnered some success, the recent reductions in this population created a void in the skilled crafts. Raising the number of libres de color in the countryside had also proven difficult . Furthermore, agricultural labor shortages threatened to disrupt planters’ economic stability and profits. To alleviate anxieties, officials balancing acts / 147 and plantation owners in the 1840s returned to the theme of white immigration fostered by prominent creoles such as Franciso de Arango y Parreño and Félix Varela in the 1830s. Noting the labor crisis ushered in by emancipation in the British Caribbean in 1834, planters in Cuba aimed to avoid the virtual collapse of sugar production experienced by their Anglo counterparts. Moreover, the renewed colonization schemes not only fostered European immigration but also tapped into the new stream of rhetorically “white” Asian indentured workers flowing into the Americas, as well as Mexican prisoners displaced by the Caste War in the Yucatán. Supplanting the African-descended population with Spaniards , Canary Islanders, Chinese, and Amerindians represented colonial Cuba’s attempt to suppress racial upheaval and political dissidence during the Escalera era. Spanish officials and creole businessmen in Cuba hoped the introduction of this array of colonists and contract workers, often to toil alongside slaves, would invigorate the plantation workforce, divide racial alliances among the slave and semi-free, supplant libres de color, and rebalance the colony so that whites tipped the scales as the majority. Officials had pursued several aspects of these goals with zeal. As discussed previously, between 1844 and 1845 colonial authorities blocked hundreds of free pardos and morenos from entering Cuba, expelled many of those born abroad, and used extralegal means to purge the native-born from the colony.2 The execution and overseas imprisonment of bondsmen also served to reduce the proportion of slaves in the workforce.3 The official, albeit contested, census figures of 1841 and 1846 revealed that the number of slaves had plunged by 112,736 (25%) and libres de color by a more modest but nonetheless significant 3,612 (2.3%).4 Using the Escalera era’s hallmarks—terror and retaliation—Spanish colonial authorities in Cuba sought to dramatically alter the former demographic and economic trajectory of free blacks, and by extension slaves. By the late 1860s, race-based immigration and contract labor programs complemented Escalera-era restrictions. These would significantly impact the economic, social, and political destiny of Cuba’s African -descended population, particularly free people of color. Preferential treatment for white colonists, conflicts between Chinese contract workers and slaves, tensions between “free” Chinese and libres de color, and overarching racist policies directed at free blacks revealed the multiple factors informing the transformation of race relations. In response to these dramatic shifts, free people of color used their shrinking influence and opportunities as rallying points for the community of African [3.90.242.249] Project...