Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History

6. Transnational Connections

165 You bid farewell to the village well, setting out for overseas. It’s been eight years, or is it already ten, and you haven’t thought of home. Willow branches are now brilliant, fields exuberantly green; In her bedroom, the young woman’s bosom is filled with frustration and grief. —Hom, Songs of Gold Mountain On Santa Clara and Esperanza Streets the industrious Asians Antonio Gong, Fernando, Manuel, Alfonso, Mario, Benito, Ramón and Martín, all of the surname Jhon, have a magnificent vegetable garden and dedicate all the hours of the day to extract what is necessary to live and to save “a little something” for when they go to Canton. —El Comercio, 23 March 1923 C h a p t e r S i x Transnational Connections Former indentured laborers who remained in Cuba had laid the foundations for the development of Chinese communities across the island.The arrival of merchants and craftsmen from China and California and the establishment of Chinese consulates in Cuba further opened the way for the strengthening of ties between migrants and their homeland in the late nineteenth century. Throughout the era of exclusion, Chinese used Cuba as a springboard to the United States. However, with their networks and business opportunities , many also viewed Cuba as a destination for sojourning or settlement. The major wave of free Chinese migrants in early-­ twentieth-­ century Cuba sustained ties to China through letters, remittances, investments, and return trips. In the process, they transformed life in the Guangdong countryside and developed Chinese transnational communities in Cuba. Thousands of Chinese entered Cuba under the 1917 provisions for agricultural laborers. Soledad Estate in Cienfuegos recruited Chinese laborers and continued to concentrate them in the technical aspects of sugar production. In January 1921, for example, the following Chinese worked in the factory: Benito Díaz, Chon Chu, Chan Chau, Cun Chin, Sen Gui, and Ra Leon.1 The use of Chinese names in plantation records indicates the improved social and legal status of Chinese workers over the previous century. No longer 166 Transnational and National Belonging were they indentured laborers, given a Spanish name upon arrival or baptism and bound by contract to work long years on sugar plantations. Rather, they were free men who kept their names. Chinese took advantage of temporary laws allowing the immigration of contract laborers for sugar production . However, most quickly moved on or evaded the sugar estates altogether. Chinese increasingly made their way to Havana or provincial towns, where they worked in shops, restaurants, and laundries or engaged in small trade. With the second major wave of Chinese labor migrants to Cuba, new businesses and associations proliferated across the island. Havana, the nation’s capital and the principal port for immigrants, maintained the largest population of Chinese. By the 1920s, fruit and vegetable stands, restaurants, groceries , tailors, shoe and watch repair shops, and photography studios lined the streets of Havana’s Chinatown, one of the best known in the Americas.2 In 1927, Chinese owned 535 fruit and vegetable stands, 293 laundries, and 63 groceries in Havana.3 These commercial establishments were complemented by ethnic institutions—associations, theaters, four newspapers, a cemetery, language schools, a hospital, and a residence for the elderly. Chinese political , economic, social, and cultural life flourished through these transnational institutions. Shops continued to serve as centers for informal gatherings of immigrant men, providing remittance and letter-­ writing services and public space for discussions of business, circulation of hometown news, and socializing . Together with the more formal associations, shops became central nodes linking a Chinese migrant’s life at home and abroad.4 Remittances and Return Chinese in Cuba developed a “transnational social field” linking their places of origin and settlement.5 They maintained ties with home communities, corresponded with relatives and business associates in other overseas locales, and increasingly became part of the fabric of Cuban society. Like other movements of people past and present, migration between Guangdong villages and Cuban towns can be more accurately described as “translocal.” The patterns of Chinese transnationalism were based on sustaining ties with specific localities in Guangdong province. Luis Guarnizo and Michael Smith use the term “translocal relations” to describe the connection between “historically and geographically specific points of origin and migration established by transmigrants.”6 Chinese migrants carried out transnational activities at three basic levels: family, village, and nation. They maintained relationships 167 Table 7 Third-­ Order Businesses...