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

The hundred years between the beginning of the coolie trade and the Cuban revolution were tumultuous ones for the Chinese Cuban community. Domestic and international political changes, including the advent of the Chinese and Cuban republics, US hegemony over the island, and the Chinese and Cuban socialist revolutions, would present challenges for Chinese migrants and their families on both sides of the Pacific. Yet, as Kathleen López argues in Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History, Chinese Cubans nonetheless carved out a sense of belonging in both countries, “alter[ing] both official and popular conceptions of what it meant to be Chinese or Cuban in different contexts” (p. 5).

Chinese Cubans is a comprehensive work on Chinese migration to the island during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. López tracks successive waves of Chinese migrants, including the coolie trade of the second half of the nineteenth century, the influx of agricultural workers at the conclusion of the First World War, and the exodus from mainland China after 1949. Throughout her study, López skillfully examines how migrants maintained transnational ties—not only to China, but also to other Chinese communities in the Americas—yet nonetheless asserted a place for themselves within the Cuban nation.

Of particular interest is López’s documentation of cross-cultural alliances that Chinese Cubans maintained with Afro-Cubans during the nineteenth century, which in part stemmed from similar treatment from white overseers. Once freed from their onerous labor contracts, former slaves and former coolies settled in similar locales, often intermarrying with each other. Chinese also participated in the wars for Cuban independence, many enticed by promises of freedom. López’s findings not only challenge a historiography that has seen little potential for Chinese migrants to form such interethnic alliances, but also implicitly challenge assertions that Chinese Cubans were unable to integrate into Cuban society. Indeed, López’s search beyond the hateful writings of elite white Cubans, who doubted the ability of Chinese to integrate, restores a sense of agency to the migrants themselves.

López’s findings are built on an impressive array of sources, obtained in national and local archives and libraries in the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, and the United States, as well as Spanish- and Chinese-language newspapers published in Cuba and overseas Chinese periodicals that circulated throughout the diaspora. In addition, remittance records, memoirs, and travel narratives allow López to craft a detailed portrait of Chinese migrants and their associations in the country. López contextualizes her work in the literatures on both the Chinese diaspora and aspects of race in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The temporal and geographical ground that López is able to cover in a single monograph is impressive. At the same time, Chinese Cubans raises tantalizing questions for future work. For example, did Chinese participate in organizations created by Cubans of color in the twentieth century? If not, did Chinese Cuban periodicals such as Fraternidad criticize such cross-race political activity? Additionally, López’s work raises fascinating questions about the Chinese community after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Did Chinese Cuban exiles participate in exile political activity, or were they shunned by the Cuban exile community?

Without question, however, Chinese Cubans is one of the best monographs on Asian migration to the Americas and makes a major impact on the literature on migration and race in Latin America. As a work that fills a major gap in our knowledge of the Chinese diaspora in the Caribbean, it will be of use to historians of the greater Chinese diaspora as well. Authoritative yet accessible, it would make a wonderful addition to reading lists for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses on Latin American or Cuban history, Asian diasporas, and ethnic studies.