‘Migration’, the movement of people across borders, is not alien to historical research. Recently, historians have examined the way migration has influenced identity in ‘diasporas’: migrants from the same origin that have settled in a new place. This research has opened up inquiries into the complex identifications that diasporic communities have with ‘citizenship’ and ‘belonging’.[1] They are people with ‘feet in two societies’: simultaneously attached to their new nation and birthplace.[2]
I am particularly interested in this identity question vis-à-vis Chinese-Cuban diasporas. Coinciding with the rise of Subaltern Studies, the histories of previously neglected spaces and groups of people, previous work on the Chinese-Cubans has focused on them in the nineteenth century, especially during the Cuban Wars for Independence (1894-98).[3] Few of these works have focused on Chinese-Cubans in the twentieth century – or if they have, the twentieth century is written alongside the nineteenth century as part of a broad overview of how Chinese-Cubans have never conformed to political and legal definitions of national identity and citizenship.[4] Moreover, these works are written about using traditional historical methodologies. Only a few authors, like Kathleen López, are incorporating new methodologies, like transnational history, into their research. There is, therefore, a need to write a twentieth century history of the Chinese-Cubans through the use of new methodologies, like transnational history.
To fill in this gap, I will use global microhistory to conduct a survey of the Chinese-Cubans during two periods of upheaval: the Chinese Civil War (1945-49) and the Cuban Communist Revolution (1953-58).[5] During these periods, I will examine how ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Cubanness’/’cubanidad‘ manifested in the writings of three notable Chinese-Cubans: Antonio Chuffat-Latour, and Pedro Eng Herrera and Mauro García Triana. Chuffat-Latour was a supporter of Sun Yat-Sen’s Kuomintang Party.[6] Eng Herrera and García Triana played a large role usurping Fulgencio Batista and bringing Fidel Castro into power.[7]
Tentatively, I argue that our current understanding of identity-formation is too simplistic. In comparing identity in these two periods of upheaval, it seems that in both, the shared experiences of colonialism and revolution in both China and Cuba were what allowed Chinese-Cubans to feel like – and become regarded as – members of the Cuban nation and nation-building project. To show this, I utilise Chinese and Cuban epistemologies in my analysis, examining how bodies are imagined and used in both. From this, I hope to show that claiming Chineseness allowed Chinese-Cubans to access experiences and understandings of colonialism and revolution. This access gave them power to speak about these topics as they manifested within Cuba. In turn, this power is what allowed the three men to acquire cubanidad and become key members of the Cuban nation-building projects in their respective contexts. Overall, this reveals a paradox – people can be acknowledged as outsiders and yet still be considered integral to their new home’s nation-building project.
[1] Wendy Kozol, ‘AHR Conversation: On Transnational History’ in American Historical Review, Vol. 111, No. 5 (December 2006), p. 1445
[2] Elsa Chaney, ‘The World Economy and Contemporary Migration’ in International Migration Review, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1979), p. 209
[3] See Robert Evan Ellis, China in Latin America: the Whats and Wherefores; Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, Cuba: Idea of a Nation Displaced; Lisa Yun, The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba; L. Eve Armentrout Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns: Chinese politics in the Americas and the 1911 Revolution; Lok Siu, ‘Chino Latino Restaurants: Converging Communities, Identities, and Cultures’ in Afro-Hispanic Review 27:1; Mauro García Triana, Pedro Eng Herrera, Gregor Benton (tr.), The Chinese in Cuba, 1847-Now; Kathleen López, Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History; Gregor Benton, Chinese Migrants and Internationalism: Forgotten Histories, 1917-1945
[4] López, Chinese Cubans, p. 5
[5] See Tonio Andrade, ‘A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys, and a Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory’ in Journal of World History; Martha Hodes, ‘A Story with an Argument: Writing the Transnational Life of a Sea Captain’s Wife’ in Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700-Present 21:4, Bernhard Struck, Kate Ferris, Jacques Revel, ‘Introduction: Space and Scale in Transnational History’ in The International History Review 33:4
[6] Antonio Chuffat-Latour, Apunte Histórico de los Chinos en Cuba
[7] Mauro García Triana, Pedro Eng Herrera, Gregor Benton (tr.), The Chinese in Cuba: 1847-now.