Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History by Kathleen M. López (review)

Few outside of Cuba are aware of the history of Chinese immigration to the island. Kathleen López’s excellent book, Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History, seeks to fill this void by examining the complex experience of Chinese immigrants in Cuba and the important role they have played in this country’s history from the mid nineteenth century to the present. López takes a transnational approach to her topic by examining the multiple factors inside and outside of Cuba that shaped Chinese identities and experiences on the island, as well as how developments in Cuba affected local communities back in China. In constructing this history, she draws on archival material (plantation, associational, judicial, civil, and merchant records), newspapers, memoirs, and oral history from Cuba, China, and the United States. López deftly weaves analysis of Chinese in the capital with Chinese in other parts of the island (especially Cienfuegos), reminding us in the process that the Chinese Cuban experience did not occur solely in Havana’s Chinatown.

Ultimately, López argues that Chinese immigrants in Cuba forged transnational identities; they became Cuban while never losing their connections to China and the larger diasporic community. In making this argument, López balances a sojourner interpretation of Chinese migration with an immigrant one. Whether migrating to Cuba under forced pretenses as many Chinese laborers did during the mid nineteenth century or more freely as merchants and laborers did from then on, most Chinese arrived in Cuba believing they would be temporary residents on the island. However, many soon realized that returning to China was difficult or nearly impossible due to a lack of money or to having developed strong social and economic ties in Cuba. Thus, the majority of these individuals came to terms with staying in Cuba and increasingly began to identify with it. Chinese integration and claims to citizenship were based on interracial marriage (ninety-nine percent of Chinese immigration was male), raising children as Cuban, adoption of Spanish names, baptism and religious conversion to Catholicism, blending Chinese traditions with Cuban ones (i.e., the saint Sanfancón), reminding Cuban society of heroic Chinese participation in Cuba’s wars of independence, participation in Cuban patriotic events, and some participation in Cuban politics, labor organizing, and revolutionary activity. Yet, in becoming Cuban, these immigrants never stopped being Chinese: they formed Chinese neighborhoods, they sent remittances back to China and maintained family ties across the Pacific despite having families in Cuba, they passed on some of their traditions to their Cuban children, they created Chinese associations for mutual aid, entertainment, and in hopes of preserving their traditions, they created Chinese newspapers and followed and participated in Chinese modernization campaigns and larger political developments (i.e., Sun Yat-sen’s republican movement, the Japanese invasion of China during WWII, and the struggle between the KMT and the Chinese communists), and merchants maintained ties to the Chinese diaspora and China through business.

López’s work suggests that the construction of a hyphenated or transnational identity (i.e., Chinese-Cuban) was accidental, defensive, and reactive, while also willingly and actively sought out. The desire to maintain a connection to the homeland in combination with anti-Chinese sentiment, marginalization, and exploitation in Cuban society led Chinese immigrants to band together as a community and thereby maintain a Chinese identity. Nevertheless, the fact that Cuba was undoubtedly becoming their home encouraged many Chinese to actively identify with Cuba and, in the face of Cubans who did not welcome them with open arms, these Chinese sought to demonstrate to their neighbors that they belonged and were a part of the Cuban nation. Thus, the Chinese community attempted to balance their own desires and interests with larger societal pressures and international conditions and in the process constructed a hyphenated identity. Although López focuses on the Chinese immigrant experience in Cuba, her work reminds us that immigrant, national, and transnational/diasporic identities in general are...