“Their [the Chinese] role in Cuban history, together with their contribution to the national economy and culture, made them a component part of cubanía, according to the essayist and ethnographer Fernando Ortiz. In recognition of this fact, after independence a monument was erected in Havana in honor of the Chinese combatants in the three wars, a black granite column… [that reads] ’there was not one Chinese traitor, not one Chinese deserter.’”

The Chinese in Cuba, 1847-now, Mauro García Triana, Pedro Eng Herrera Lexington Books, 2009

This quote “there was not one Chinese traitor, not one Chinese deserter.” was written by Gonzalo de Quesada, in Mi primera ofrenda, 1892.

CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Miami

Excerpt from 2015 interview about the Chinese in Cuba.

CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Miami

Excerpt from 2015 interview about the Chinese in Cuba.
 

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A personal letter sent by two daughters who live in Hong Kong. They told their father their family’s details and hoped that he could come back to Hong Kong. Listen to the letter in English above.

From the James and Ana Melikian Collection

Regla Albarran Miller grew up in Barrio China, Havana’s Chinatown, and now lives in Tucson, AZ.

A tiny treasure in the James and Ana Melikian Collection shows the family record of Yu Pu Wu (Julio Eng). He was born in Guangdong province in 1900, we speculate from the contents that he had two wives in China and 5 children. At the age of 27 he left China for Cuba, to work as a merchant in Havana. Leaving all of his family behind.

When you see the memo icon, follow along with the Eng family as they live the history of the Chinese in Cuba.

Associate Professor, Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences

Excerpt from 2015 interview about the Chinese in Cuba.

all images from the James and Ana Melikian collection

Associate Professor, Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences

Excerpt from 2015 interview about the Chinese in Cuba.

“Afterward I was sold to a sugar plantation in Colon with forty people. But after seven days, one man was beaten to death. His name is Chen Agou and he was from Fujian. He was beaten because he was sick and weak in the feet. I was hit a lot. One day I was beaten so hard that I even passed out for a while. But later I came back to life. We worked from three in the morning to eleven at night. After eight years, except me only nineteen people survived. Three people from Nanhai hanged themselves, and sixteen people died of illness. The owner asked managers and overseers to beat me. He said, even if one is beaten to death, I still have enough money to buy another ten people. He was really mean and evil. (Deposition 240)” (165)

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The Coolie Speaks, Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba, Lisa Yun – Temple University Press, Philadelphia – 2008

(Petition 54) “… Though the officials and the businessmen in Cuba have gained so much money from the Chinese labor, they do not know how to appreciate; instead, they humiliate us, trample on us, and insult us by making us slaves and treating us like animals. Have you ever heard of any other things more miserable than this in history? We heard that the Chinese government has already reconciled with those big foreign countries and those countries have already prohibited the trade of black people; why is it that nobody tries to save the Chinese in Cuba? Why? Since the Cuban officials have made ways to make us slaves over and over, we have been trapped here for seventeen or eighteen years and have already become weak. We are not really sure about our future. Maybe we will be tortured to death in the official worship or at the bondage place; or will be expelled out and will die in the street because of sickness and aging. In all, when we die, we will have no coffin and no grave. Maybe our bones will be burned and mixed with bulls and horses’ bone ashes and then used for the bleaching of white sugar! Our sons will have their sons, and then their sons will have sons. Nobody in our family will have a chance to know where we are. How pitiful! How pitiful!” (256-7)

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The Coolie Speaks, Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba, Lisa Yun – Temple University Press, Philadelphia – 2008

“By 1932 there were 3.889 Chinese business establishments across Cuba, valued at $3,924,677. These included 1,808 grocery stores, 799 fruit and vegetable stands, 656 laundries, and 312 restaurants. The 18,484 registered Chinese were divided into three catagories: businessmen (8,611), workers (8,246), and miscellaneous (1,627).” 200

Chinese Cubans, A Transnational History, Kathleen López, The University of North Carolina Press, 2013

“The outstanding Chinese-Cuban leader of the popular revolutionary struggles against the Machado dictatorship was José Wong (Huang Taobai). Born in Guangzhou in 1898, he arrived in Cuba in the early 1920s, already a product of the revolutionary democratic struggles that in 1911 put an end to millennia of imperial rule in China. Together with Julio Antonio Mella, José Wong founded the Cuban Anti-Imperialist League in 1925, and soon joined the newly formed Communist Party of Cuba. In 1927 he helped establish the Revolutionary Alliance for the Protection of Chinese Workers and Peasants in Cuba, founded on a platform of opposition to the dictatorships of both Machado and Chiang Kai-shek, and became the first editor of its paper, the Gunnun Hushen [Workers and Peasants Voice].

Arrested in 1930 by the dictatorship, Wong was assassinated on Machado’s orders, strangled to death in a cell at Havana’s infamous Castillo del Príncipe prison.”

The unique history of Chinese in Cuba: from independence wars to socialist revolution. Presented by Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press, to a June 27, 2011, conference in Guangzhou, China, on the history of Chinese in Cuba.

Chinese-Cuban descendant now living in New York City.

Chinese-Cuban descendant now living in New York City.

“The sinking of the Maine sparked a wave of public indignation in the United States. Newspaper owners such as William R. Hearst leaped to the conclusion that Spanish officials in Cuba were to blame, and they widely publicized the conspiracy. Realistically, Spain could have had no interest in drawing the United States into the conflict. Yellow journalism fueled American anger by publishing ‘atrocities’ committed by Spain in Cuba. Hearst, when informed by Frederic Remington, whom he had hired to furnish illustrations for his newspaper, that conditions in Cuba were not bad enough to warrant hostilities, allegedly replied, ‘You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.’ President McKinley, Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed, and the business community opposed the growing public demand for war, which was lashed to fury by the yellow journalism. The American cry of the hour became, ‘Remember the Maine, To Hell with Spain!'”

wikipedia

“Hung Aguang couldn’t stand the torture and ran away, but he was caught. He was locked up and beaten so hard that he bled all over. He still had to wear chains at work… They barely gave him any food. He was so hungry that he ate sugarcane, he was beaten again immediately. Hung Aguang hanged himself… Then more that twenty workers went to the official and complained; they said they did not want to work in that sugar plantation anymore. (Deposition 670)” (151)

The Coolie Speaks, Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba, Lisa Yun – Temple University Press, Philadelphia – 2008

In 1861 the Rockland, Maine ship Forest Eagle set sail from Macao bound for Havana, Cuba, carrying 500 Chinese workers – “coolies” – to the sugar fields. The vessel was commanded by Captain Thomas Pillsbury, of Rockland, and had aboard a Coolie Master, John O. Shaw.

Courtesy Penobscot Marine Museum, PMM# LB1980.220.168, Applebee Collection

Because the British and Spain placed restrictions on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, prices of African slaves rose. At the same time, the British had fought the Opium Wars with China and the outcome allowed the British to control ports all along the Chinese coastline. “To launch the coolie trade in Cuba, Cuban planters used a company called the Real Junta de Fomento y Colonizatión.” (15) This company was owned by slave traders, who thought of a solution – bring “coolies”, indentured workers, to the plantations in Cuba and Peru. In 1847 they set up to begin the collection of Chinese in the port of Amoy and Guangdong province.

The Coolie Speaks, Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba, Lisa Yun – Temple University Press, Philadelphia – 2008