Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala, 1882-1923 (review)

Within contemporary debates over capital's uneven development, the making of the global South has become a significant concern. Yet too often, the history and experiences of workers have been overlooked in such debates. Frederick Douglass Opie's Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala, 1882-1923 offers a needed counterpoint to this historical amnesia, exploring the movement of black laborers from the New South of the Southern United States, Jamaica, and elsewhere, to Guatemala's coastal departments of Zacapa and Izabal.

Opie's previous work, Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, is a cultural history of the culinary traditions of the Black Diaspora that stretched from the Atlantic slave trade through Civil Rights and Black Power. In Hog and Hominy, Opie situates soul food's history in relation to slavery and an "amalgamation" of Central and West African influence (xi-xii). He then demonstrates the ways that African Americans transformed the food in relation to different cultural contacts, historical moments, and geographical contexts. Though more confined in focus, Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala similarly expands upon the transnational dimensions of African American history and develops a perspective on African American agency that resonates with Hog and Hominy. Centrally, Opie argues, black laborers acted within constrained circumstances yet actively formulated a dynamic response that emerged from both unique historical experiences and transforming contemporary circumstances.

Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala is organized chronologically and begins with a brief overview of black Guatemalan history. Opie then analyzes labor recruitment and the construction of the Northern Railroad, a major line in the Guatemalan railway system. Railroad construction, based upon contracts with United States companies, began in the late-nineteenth century, spanned multiple presidential regimes, and depended upon the recruitment of black laborers from the West Indies and Southern United States (12). Furthermore, railroads provided necessary infrastructure for the development of banana plantations operated by the Boston-based United Fruit Company (UFCO). On UFCO banana plantations, black workers formed the core of the labor force in the early-twentieth century (41).

White management operated as a constitutive force in defining coercive and racialized relations of production on the railroads and banana plantations of Guatemala. As Opie notes, conditions of production resembled those of a "penal colony" at times (33). White managers actively struggled to arrange production through racial and national difference. In several instances, managers claimed that white workers could not labor in Guatemala's heat and at the same time insisted that black Jamaicans were preferable over black Southerners (17, 34-35). Despite managerial preferences, black labor from the Southern United States remained a core component of Guatemala's labor force. Regardless of national origins, managers constructed a glass ceiling that ultimately prevented black workers from entering skilled positions. As Opie shows, it was clear to workers that white skin was a prerequisite for skilled and less arduous work positions (32).

The Guatemalan state, through numerous presidential regime changes, was central to making black labor available for hire and to the struggle to discipline black immigrant laborers after their arrival. When the state intervened in conflicts between laborers, police used violent force against black workers. In addition, it was not uncommon for arrested laborers to be forced into prison labor. While the state jailed and arrested black laborers, it treated white foreign managers from the United Fruit Company and from the railroads with deferential respect (51).

Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala clearly demonstrates that multinational capital and the Guatemalan state operated together and exerted significant force on black immigrant laborers. However, rather than being passive objects of history, Opie reveals how black laborers actively organized multidimensional forms of resistance to both white managers and, at times, Latin American workers who attempted to challenge their employment. Through an expansive consideration of agency, Opie's analysis demonstrates that black laborers acted to countervail the directives of management, the state, and fellow workers.

Crucially for Opie's analysis, agency is not simply a metonym for resistance. Instead, Opie shows...