Indigenous Passages to Cuba, 1515–1900 by Jason M. Yaremko (review)

In this fairly compact volume anthropologist Jason Yaremko examines the long and varied history of voluntary and involuntary migration of indigenous people from other parts of the Americas to Cuba. Given Cuba's proximity to Florida and Mexico, especially Yucatan, not surprisingly the largest documented movements to the island came from those places. Indeed, one of the important conclusions this book points to is the long-term strength and historical complexity of Cuba's ties to Florida and Mexico. The movements of people he discusses were in many respects the product of the nature of Spain's colonial empire in which administrative, financial, and ecclesiastical structures together with commercial and other economic enterprises and networks connected and integrated various locales. Equally important, he makes a strong argument for the short- and longer-term impact on Cuban society and history of these migrations, although he is careful to point out the difficulty of illuminating many of the questions surrounding the longtime integration and persistence of both island and immigrant indigenous cultures, given what he acknowledges as the "paucity of available evidence" (165). Although the author takes advantage of the work of a number of scholars both within and outside Cuba who have pursued one or another aspect of his subject, by incorporating what have usually been treated as quite distinct and unrelated movements of people (Calusas, Timucuas, and Seminoles from Florida; Mayas from Yucatan; Nahuas from central Mexico; and Apaches from northern New Spain, among others) into his inquiry he offers an original and thought-provoking exploration of a mostly little-known dimension of Cuban history.

The book examines the ties that Florida Amerindians formed with Cuba, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the deportation of "indios barbaros" from northern New Spain in the late colonial period, and the mostly (although not invariably) coerced migration of Yucatec Mayas that had its roots in the early sixteenth century and continued through the nineteenth century. Although these separate movements originated in and reflected different circumstances, the existence of early precedents of Amerindian movement to Cuba doubtless contributed to the long endurance of the practice of looking to the peoples of the neighboring mainland to address Cuba's labor needs.

For most scholars probably the least familiar of these movements is the first, the varied contacts that members of various indigenous groups of Florida sustained with Cuba through trade, diplomatic missions, and migration, although some scholars of early Florida such as John E. Worth and John H. Hann have shed light on these connections. The relocation of indigenous immigrants from Florida as the result of the Spanish cession of Florida to Britain in 1763, in which some three thousand people evacuated from Spanish Florida, is well known. Earlier movements, however, such as that of a group of Calusas who in 1711 sought permission to move to Cuba to escape the predations of the British and their Yamasee allies that resulted in the relocation of some 280 people, provided significant precedents. Although the numbers of Amerindians who permanently resettled in Cuba were small, the indigenous connection between Florida and Cuba is notable for its longevity as Creek and Seminole groups became active participants over the course of the eighteenth century. Yaremko notes, for example, that "Seminole delegations were in Havana every year from 1772 through 1778" (52). These contacts involved trade as well as exchanges of intelligence. There also was a reciprocal movement of Cuban fishermen to the Florida Keys, some of whom probably remained and married there.

The enslavement and deportation of so-called barbarous Indians from northern New Spain is a more familiar part of Yaremko's story, thanks to the work of scholars of Mexican history such as Christon Archer. These forcible relocations spanned the latter decades of the eighteenth century and early decades of the nineteenth.

The largest and most sustained movement and the one for which there is the largest amount of evidence is that of Yucatec Maya, who were present in...