Centenary Paper: Living Hell: The Chinese Coolie Trade in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

Abstract

Between 1847 and 1874, approximately 150,000 Chinese were brought to Cuba under termed contracts to fulfil a labour shortage on sugar cane plantations. Known as ‘coolies’, they suffered harsh conditions and were treated severely. Coolies were generally viewed as dutiful and submissive and their voices have largely been confined to the margins of literature and history. However, the nineteenth-century testimonies and illustrations of Chinese coolies denounce the savagery and cruelty of the Spanish overseers, while simultaneously revealing that coolies were not passive victims. The coolies demonstrated agency, courage and strategic resistance in the act of migrating, in their words, and rebellions. Coolie labour played a major role in reshaping Cuba’s sugar economy and its existing systems of production. In addition, the amplified presence of the Chinese in Cuba challenged existing paradigms of race and nation. Cuban society was no longer Black and white. The growing Chinese population forced a reconsideration of this traditional binary vision of society and, in the formation of a new Chinese–Cuban identity, complicated notions of what constituted cubanidad.