Race and Labor in the Hispanic Caribbean: The West Indian Immigrant Worker Experience in Puerto Rico, 1800-1850 (review)

Much like the current debates in the United States today on immigration policy and the need for foreign workers, the Spanish Crown wrestled with similar dilemmas in its Caribbean colonies at the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth centuries. With laborers either scarce or unwilling to work in the cultivation of cash crops, the Crown looked to recruit immigrant workers as a solution to the perceived labor shortage. Such efforts succeeded and non-Hispanic immigrants contributed significantly to Puerto Rico's agricultural, commercial, and industrial expansion. However, the influx of foreign (nonwhite) workers also gave rise to a belief between Spanish colonial officials and white elites alike that West Indian immigrants were a real or potential security threat. In the same way that the U.S. government has had to balance economic and political objectives, so too did Spanish colonial authorities; thus, immigrant workers and their families came to be viewed as "a necessary evil" (p. 150). For the most part tolerated but not welcomed, the story of non-Hispanic immigrants to Puerto Rico in the first half of the nineteenth century has not been told until now.

Chinea asks the question: "What is the relationship between immigration from the non-Hispanic Caribbean and social, economic, and political conditions in Puerto Rico during the first half of the nineteenth century?" (p. 5) The answer is those non-Hispanic immigrants; in particular ones from the West Indies provided much of the requisite labor, capital, and technical skills necessary for the transformation of Puerto Rico into a thriving producer of cash crops. Chinea masterfully recounts the struggles of foreign nonwhite workers who came to Puerto Rico in search of better economic opportunities and their efforts to carve out a niche for themselves. Likewise he lucidly relates the responses of Spanish and local Creole elites who vacillated between cautious support and overt hostility toward these West Indian migrants. In doing so, Chinea fills a void in the growing discourse on the study of immigration to Puerto Rico.

The book is divided into four chapters. The first provides a succinct overview of foreign immigrants in Puerto Rico prior to the nineteenth century. Particular attention is devoted to highlighting the existence and interplay of subaltern groups such as indigenous peoples and maroons that have been historically silenced or distorted. Chapter 2 provides detailed statistical and biographical information of 5,400 heads of family who arrived or settled in Puerto Rico between 1800 and 1850. A substantial number of these came from the non-Hispanic Caribbean, primarily from French colonies and former possessions in the midst of revolutionary upheaval. The third chapter assesses the impact of free foreign immigrants on Puerto Rico's economy and society. Non-Hispanic immigrants brought with them not only labor and capital, but badly needed technical skills and expertise, which greatly facilitated Puerto Rico's emergence as a major sugar exporting island. Moreover as Chinea keenly observes, the influx of foreign artisans and entrepreneurs enabled a growing number of the island's inhabitants "to fill their personal adornment and aesthetic cravings" (p. 113). Finally, the last chapter examines the decline of nonwhite immigration and the role of racial politics in this development. Here Chinea places events in Puerto Rico within the context of abolitionist and independence struggles in the greater Caribbean. Spanish colonial authorities feared the expansion of anti-colonial and abolitionist activity to Puerto Rico and Cuba. Therefore, they "closely policed the movements and social interactions of the nonwhite immigrant workers" (p. 125), dealing harshly with any threats to the political and/or social order. By 1850 legal immigration channels were effectively closed to 'undesirable' nonwhite West Indian immigrants yet they remained open to 'desirable' white Spanish and Latin American immigrants.

What makes Chinea's book stand...