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117 There was not a single Chinese Cuban deserter; there was not a single Chinese Cuban traitor! —Gonzalo de Quesada, Mi primera ofrenda (1892) Once they had achieved their goal, they peacefully and silently retired to their homes, without great displays or propaganda that might call into question their good faith toward the Cuban motherland, whose creation was the sole interest that animated them in serving it. And they served. —Guillermo Tejeiro, Historia ilustrada de la Colonia China en Cuba (1947) C h a p t e r F o u r Freedom Fighters It is said that one of the men eligible to serve as president of the first Cuban republic in 1902 was José Bu Tak (Hu De), a celebrated Chinese mambí and veteran of all three wars for Cuban independence from Spain (1868–98). In 1869, José Bu and sixty other Chinese indentured laborers rose up to join the insurgents in Sagua la Grande. Bu guided Cuban forces through the mountains of Trinidad, delivering messages for General Máximo Gómez across the fortified ditch constructed by Spain and earning the rank of captain. Those who knew Bu on the battleground during the 1895 war describe him as ferociously charging with a machete and shouting “¡Cuba yat pa’ carajo!” (For Cuba! Spanish go to hell!).1 How is it possible that just a few decades after the end of the coolie trade one of the lowly Chinese laborers would be spoken of with such high esteem in Cuban nationalist discourse? During the thirty years of struggles for independence from Spain, Cubans were forced to reconsider the relationship between race and the emerging nation. The independence movement advocated the abolition of slavery and embraced Cubans of color. The Spanish, however, represented it as nothing more than a lawless insurgency with the potential to turn Cuba into a black republic, thus evoking old fears of another Haiti. In the interim between the end of the Ten Years’ War (1868–78) and the onset of the War of Independence (1895–98), an idealized portrait of the black insurgent emerged in public discourse. Ada Ferrer argues that this figure, “dreaded emblem of race war and black republic, was neutralized and made an acceptable—and 118 Migrants between Empires and Nations indeed central—component in the struggle for Cuban nationhood.”2 Intellectuals and activists of all socioracial backgrounds forged a conception of a raceless Cuban nationality as the ideological foundation of the movement. Chroniclers of the wars for independence wove stories of black mambises into narratives of the birth of the Cuban nation.These stories about the feats of average soldiers for the cause of “Cuba libre” also reference patriotic actions by Chinese. The recent history of the Chinese as coolie laborers who had suffered the same atrocities as slaves made them a natural choice for the construction of a cross-­ racial discourse about Cuban revolutionary soldiers. Both slaves and coolies shared a common trajectory from bound laborers to cimarrones (runaways) to freedom fighters. During the late nineteenth century , daily interactions with Cubans, ethnic networks, and legal claims facilitated the Chinese transition out of indenture. But it was their participation in the Cuban struggles for independence from Spain that enabled the Chinese to be included as an integral component in the public discourse on the Cuban nation. Nationalist writings on the role of the Chinese during Cuba’s shift from colony to nation further cemented their position. However, while on the surface Cuban nationalist discourse glorifies Chinese contributions to the independence struggles, qualified portrayals of their roles indicate a deeper ambivalence toward their full inclusion in the new republic. Throughout Cuban history, the story of the Chinese mambises has been told and retold, from an 1892 treatise by a Cuban statesman to a recent memoir by three Chinese Cuban generals who fought in the 1959 revolution.3 While war narratives highlight moments of ferocity and courage on the front lines of battle, they also emphasize the Chinese role in noncombat auxiliary activities. Chinese delivered messages, prepared food, and acquired medicine and clothing for the rebels—auxiliary roles that have also been associated with Cuban women and Afro-­ Cuban men. A discourse of Chinese freedom fighters as returning peacefully to work after the war promotes the ideal of a certain kind of Chinese immigrant in the Cuban nation, one who helps with the rebuilding process through manual labor. The selective glorification of the “contributions” of the Chinese to the Cuban nation becomes especially...

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