Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History

Introduction: A Transnational History

1 I n t r o d u c t i o n A Transnational History Two Lives In 1859, the fifteen-­ year-­ old Tung Kun Sen (Dong Gongcheng), a native of Dongguan County in Guangdong Province, China, was kidnapped and taken to the Spanish Caribbean colony of Cuba as part of the infamous coolie trade. He signed a contract of indenture that obligated him to work for eight years on a sugar estate in Cárdenas, Matanzas Province. There he was baptized and given the name Pastor Pelayo, after Cuban planter Ramón Pelayo. After completing his term of service, he was forced to recontract for another eight years. When Pastor Pelayo finished his indenture, he was in his thirties and had no hope of returning to China. He migrated eastward to the sugar districts of central Cuba. There he moved from estate to estate, earning wages as part of a cuadrilla, or work gang, and eventually became a labor contractor. Recently out of bondage, the former indentured laborer came into daily contact with enslaved African men and women on the cusp of emancipation. Through earnings from his work gangs, he managed to accumulate enough money to purchase freedom for a domestic slave named Wenceslaa Sarría and her brothers. Pastor Pelayo and Wenceslaa Sarría entered into a common law union and had nine children together, who they raised among a network of people of Chinese and African descent in the town of Cienfuegos. Pelayo emerged as a leader among the local Chinese, establishing an immigrant association and a theater. Both Pelayo and his first Cuban-­born son, Blas, supported the War for Independence from Spain in 1895 and registered as eligible voters after the establishment of the new Cuban republic. In 1913 Pastor Pelayo died, insolvent due to a penchant for gambling. He is buried in a plot at La Reina Cemetery in Cienfuegos, much of which today is inundated with water and overgrown with weeds. Just a few years later, when the Cuban government permitted the wartime importation of contract labor, a second major wave of Chinese laborers crossed the Pacific. Among them was Lui Fan (Lü Fan), who in 1918 at age eighteen emigrated from his village in Xinhui County, Guangdong Province. Lui Fan initially worked on a plantation to fulfill Cuba’s need to increase 2 Introduction sugar production during World War I. He soon abandoned the estate and began peddling vegetables in the town of Cienfuegos. Carrying two baskets on a bamboo pole balanced on his shoulders, Lui Fan became a familiar sight in his Cuban neighborhood, where he was known as Francisco Luis. A decade passed before Lui Fan made his first trip to his home village in China. He built a new house and married, with all of the villagers celebrating at an extravagant banquet. After his second return visit in 1930, his daughter Baoqing was born, but he was unable to see her until another return visit in 1932. His second daughter was born later that year, after he had departed for Cuba. From overseas, he named her Mali, after the Western name María or Mary. Lui Fan never again returned to China, leaving his two daughters to grow up in the village without their father. Both married and had families of their own, but they maintained their father’s ancestral home in Lui Village, near the market town Daze. Lui Fan dutifully sent home remittances once or twice a year, and for special occasions such as the birth of a grandchild, he sent home more money than usual. Back in Cuba, Francisco Luis developed a relationship with a Cuban woman, with whom he also had two daughters, Lourdes and Violeta, each of which he also gave a Chinese name, Guiguí and Guipó. The domestic arLui Fan (far right) with Lui villagers in Havana, Cuba, 1929. (Courtesy of Violeta Luis) Introduction 3 rangement deteriorated, however, when their mother abandoned the family after three years. Luis raised his two Cuban daughters on his own, while continuing to support his Chinese family. He encouraged a relationship between his Cuban daughters and his Chinese daughters by sending photos and writing letters on their behalf. His Cuban daughters believed that they were corresponding with Chinese cousins. From the beginning, however, his Chinese daughters knew that they had half-­ sisters in Cuba and referred to them as “Third Sister” (sanmei) and “Fourth...