Taken from De dónde son los cubanos
(Where Cubans are from)
Editorial Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 2005.

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

  

Chinese Immigration to Cuba
– Societies and Traditions

 

Federico Chang (Havana, 1937), graduated from Profesoral Superior Victoria, is a professor at the University of Havana and the “Enrique José Varona” Higher Teaching Institute, and is presently a researcher at the University’s  “Fernando Ortiz” Institute for Advanced Studies. He has published articles in national and foreign journals, as well as texts such as El ejército nacional en la república neocolonial (1899-1933), Editorial Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1981; Historia de Cuba neocolonial: organización y crisis (1899-1940), Editora Política, La Habana, 1998, and Los militares y el ejército en la república neocolonial, in Anuario de Estudios Cubanos, Editorial Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1975.

 

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY

 

In the 19th century, sugar production in Cuba went through a number of changes in its organizational and manufacturing structures. These called for new technologies and paved the way for discussions regarding slavery and the need to abolish slave trade as a source of labor. They took into account not only its economic implications but also its negative impact on both the country’s natural demographic growth and its ethnic and social composition.

 

Add to this general picture of Cuba’s productive society other specific issues bearing heavily on the mood which prevailed among local slave owners. They were frightened by the events in Haiti, the sugar industry crisis in Jamaica and the spreading slave revolts in Cuba. These led to the Escalera Conspiracy in 1844 and a whole new approach to slave trade.

 

However, it was the clandestine trade on African slaves –the target of ever-increasing British opposition– and the failure of a white colonization project what made Cuban landowners set their sights on the traffic in Chinese labor, an alternative suggested by the British themselves when in 1842 they talked about bringing contract workers from Asia, a practice in which they had experience.

 

Chinese immigration to Cuba started on June 3, 1847 when the first group of coolies disembarked in the piers of Havana. They came from Amoy, in the Guandong region, called to become the main source of such labor, mostly farmers in their late twenties, old enough to be well aware of their own standards and traditions and therefore reluctant to accept any attempt at cultural impoverishment or any work regime in violation of their contract.

 

Their destination in Cuba, as a rule, were the western and central sugar cane fields (La Habana, Matanzas and Las Villas provinces), though they also worked as laborers in railroads, docks, cigar factories and construction sites, and also as domestic servants, mainly in Havana and other cities like Cienfuegos.

 

As we said, the Chinese immigrants who worked in the plantations rejected any form of mistreatment as well as the very poor living conditions imposed on them, typical of a social regime based on slave labor as befits an exploitative, anomalous capitalism and a society propped by racial division.

 

Suicide, breakouts and the execution of foremen were among the coolies’ most common reactions. Around 1853 the first Chinese workers started to wriggle out of their contracts but, finding themselves unable to afford a ticket to return home, decided to settle in Cuba instead. On the other hand, when the Ten Years War broke out in 1868, many coolies identified with and joined the struggle, an expression of both their political stance toward colonialism and their own aspirations of recognition, respect and collective and individual freedom as a social group grown used to discrimination and exploitation. Their participation gave shape to a historical legacy –and an image– called to be central to their integration into the genesis of the Cuban people and a definite step toward the full identification of this ethnical group –and of every wave of immigrants therefrom– with the Cuban nationality.

 

The traffic in coolies continued throughout the Ten Years War despite increasing international opposition and many international scandals. In London, the Chancellor succeeded in getting support from Paris and Washington –and even Berlin– to arm-twist Spain into accepting the visit of an investigating diplomatic committee from Beijing to Lima in order to make an on-the-spot assessment of the situation (the situation of the Chinese in Peru had been under fierce criticism).

 

On March 18, 1874, the mandarin Chin Lan-pin arrived in Havana from San Francisco –where he had traveled the year before– at the head of a commission made up of a British and a French advisor, two interpreters, three secretaries and three servants. After his formal introduction to and meeting with the Spanish authorities and the Portuguese consul Eça de Queiroz –a loyal supporter of the coolies, whom he knew very well– he visited the provinces of Matanzas and Las Villas. As a result of his subsequent report, which helped put an end to the infamous Chinese slave trade in Cuba, a treaty was signed in Beijing on November 17, 1877 that was ratified by Spain one year later and published in Havana on July 29, 1879. Only after more than five years since Chin Lan-pin’s trip to the island and his in situ assessment of how cruelly the coolies were treated did the Spanish colonial authorities committed themselves to stop such practices, unlike many Cuban dealers and landowners who nevertheless kept their grip on Chinese immigrants, albeit as free laborers from then on.

 

It was not before 1883 that slavery was finally abolished and the coolies could rescind their contracts. According to official data gathered by the Colonization Commission, around 150,000 Chinese, mostly males, had been brought to Cuba, not counting those smuggled in and the so-called “Californians”.[1]

 

The process of their ethnic integration took place in a society shaken by intense revolutionary political movements that contributed to the birth of the Cuban nation and its constitution as a Republic with its own scope and limitations, in itself a significant change and a steppingstone to a radical revolution fueled by long-running ideological and cultural social demands by all classes, sectors, strata and ethnic groups that formed the Cuban population.

 

Hence the level of organization and social mobilization attained by Cuban blacks, mulattoes and Chinese, even if the coolies were the target of racial and social discrimination both in the colonial and the Republican periods, as shown in the coolie’s ethnocentric behavior ascribed to them during the former –and on which the colonial rulers based their dominance– as well as in the discriminatory and at times phobic view of the Chinese that prevailed in the latter. This was the main cause of the forms of association adopted by these immigrants to protect themselves as a group and assure their economic survival, the prelude to ethnic cohesion and therefore a greater ability to compete.

 

However, there was an upper crust among the Chinese under whose rule –and in keeping with their interests– all cultural, ethical and religious activities took place, in their hands the agglutination and organization of these and other habits as well as the relationships amid the community. This group took over and gave shape to a collective image and its debut into our society, thus becoming the forerunner of 19^th century-Cuba dynasty-like societies in charge of promoting principles of unity to better defend their peers.

 

THE CHINESE PRESENCE

 

Consequently, the first Chinese societies sprouted in our country in the late 1860s and early 1870s following the emergence and development of Havana’s Chinatown (Barrio Chino de La Habana), which blossomed together with its societies as more and more Chinese achieved some economic independence with a number of small business and –circa 1880– rather profitable grocery stores and shops. By 1884, according to records of the Guadalupe neighborhood, where Havana’s Barrio Chino is located, there were 20 Chinese shopkeepers in Galiano, Dragones, Zanja and Reina streets who sold Asian goods, and they are registered in Antonio Chuffat’s book as the first to create a guild, called Jung-Fuk-Kung-Si, held to be “the foremost Chinese Chamber of Commerce”.[2]

 

There’s another approach to the neighborhood and its Chinese dwellers in Ramón de Perseverancia’s Los chinos y su charada (The Chinese and their charades), published in 1894, where he wrote:

 

“It’s a piece of land where they have set up nothing short of a real town, a small space with a market place, theater, barbershops, shoe stores, tailor’s shops, grocery stores, several kinds of convenience stores, body worker’s shops, cafés, restaurants, silverware shops, all of them owned and tended by Chinese in their country’s style; their money runs but in their midst, no profits going to the country, rather the opposite…”.[3]    

 

About the wealthiest Chinese who owned shops and stores he says:

 

“(…) nothing can be said to tarnish their image; as members of their homeland’s richest families, they are endowed with first-class education and a solid, esquisite (sic) qualification, many of them skilled in three or four languages and with estensive (sic) knowledge about Science, Arts, Literature, Economics, etc., and a distinguished appearance that arouses our sympathy and makes them worthy of our respect”.

 

And he adds:

 

“They have put up large establishments where the stock predominantly consists of beautiful and original objets d’art which they industriously and with great perfection manufacture in their land. They own a splendid and vast Casino often attended by the cream of our society”.[4]     

 

Ramón de Perseverancia’s view tells of the economic and social boom within Havana’s Chinese community and depicts a new, refined social stratum blessed with an excellent education and great knowledge. Amazing how quickly this Chinese elite, or as the author points out, “the wealthiest and most powerful”, drifted apart from the coolie’s image and status. They are no longer the émigrés found in sugar cane mills, docks, cigar factories, urban construction sites or railroads, nor poor devils of rebellious, revolutionary conduct like the coolies who had taken part in the independence war back in 1868. Things changed in the late 19th century: a sector of Chinese immigrants got rich as a result of a growing capitalist mercantile system, the first sugar mills, and the modernization of its economy.

 

They settled permanently in 20th century-Cuba thanks to their continued economic activity, the creation of Chinese societies, and miscegenation, for they started to cohabit with or marry Cuban women of lowly origins (mainly black, mulatto and white), leaving their material and spiritual stamp on Cuba’s national identity.

 

GROWING STRONGER IN REPUBLICAN TIMES

 

Established in 1902, the Republic brought with it some changes in the forms of association that prevailed amid the Chinese community during colonial times, and so corporate, political, cultural, sports and artistic societies grew alongside their dynasties, which made this process even more complicated.

 

The first 30 years of the new Republic saw the arrival of further waves of immigrants, this time not only from China but also from the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean, who were escaping the fallout of capitalism’s imperialist phase and avoiding the worldwide restructuring of labor. Those were legal and illegal migrations, depending on the policies implemented by the prevailing economic interests and the existing circumstances in their countries of destination. In the case of Cuba, these immigrants assured the survival of their community, strengthened the development of Havana’s Barrio Chino and defined its role throughout the first half of the 20^th century.

 

Three key factors made this migration typical:

 

·        The presence in their community of an important group of importers and wholesalers who were members of the board in the Chinese casino Chung Wah (it means China) and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce[5] and managed to build up a network of credits and deals between Cuba and China and therefore a significant import capacity that allowed to preserve the Chinese styles and standards. To this end they had monopolized power over the major institutions within their community.

·        The predominance achieved over the Chinese community since the late 19^th century by China’s diplomats in Cuba, entitled to represent their government in the issuing of certificates and passports with which they controlled all migration-related business. Also part of this was the Chung Wah casino, at the same time an organization to unify and represent all the Chinese and a public office where every immigrant’s date of arrival, location and personal information were registered.

·        Several U.S. leaders who offered support to overseas communities, including the one in Cuba, turned a blind eye to illegal migration as part of their strategy to get a share of the profits that some European powers were making out of the Chinese market. Hence the illegal nature of this traffic, conducted on the fringes of a restrictive legislation that remained in force during the first Republican decades and made it hard to define the exact number of Chinese immigrants who came to Cuba. Official estimates have it that 535 arrived between 1902 and 1917, whereas 12,544 made the trip between 1918 and 1926. However, other sources from those years mention 10,000 between 1902 and 1917, and still others talk about 20,000-25,000 of them between 1918 and 1926, including legal travelers. A census taken in 1931 registered 24,445 men (99,18 %) and 202 women (0,82 %), for a total 24,647 Chinese.

 

This number reveals another feature of these immigrants: they left in waves for the United States in a clandestine process that reduced their presence in our island.

 

A necessary clarification: this illegal traffic counted on the help provided by the Cuban sugar lords who longed for more laborers despite the laws preventing them from hiring Chinese immigrants. Moreover, there were also the interests of corrupted Cuban officials and authorities involved in this human traffic.

 

These immigrants were mostly from Southern China–Guangdong, its city and harbor Shantou, and Fujian– as usual rural areas with a system of values and beliefs based as much on clannish traditions as on ethical and philosophical doctrines like Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, which joined family religious practices and became the backbone of their conventions. By merging with Cuba’s popular culture, psychology, diet, working habits, family life, religion and cults, they gave a distinct shape to the Cuban patrimony. 

 

In the 19^th century, these immigrants clustered around sugar fields in the areas of Matanzas, Cárdenas and Colón, where a 1862 census placed 45 % of all recorded coolies, a figure that had reached 46,5 % in 1972, according to the General Register. In Los culíes chinos en Cuba, Juan Pérez de la Riva says that the Ten Years War and the subsequent process to end coolie labor laid the groundwork for “a noticeable flow of immigrants to Las Villas province and particularly Cienfuegos (…)”.[6]

 

Yet, most of them settled in western Cuba, namely in the jurisdictions of Matanzas, La Habana and Pinar del Río. Find below a table describing how the Chinese population was divided by province in the 20^th century:

Table 1

 

CHINESE POPULATION (1907-1948)

 

 

SOURCE: Census taken in 1907, 1919 and 1931.

(*) Figures published in Carteles magazine, January 1948.

 

As we can see, the number of Chinese in the westernmost provinces (Camagüey and Oriente) grew around 1931 because of the growing sugar production both provinces enjoyed during the first 25 years of the Republic. Sugar is once again at the heart of this emigration and its economic dynamics: hamlets sprang up, new sugar production areas were established and populated and ports were opened to ship them. However, the Chinese presence –male for the most part– was still larger in western and central Cuba, a tendency unchanged since the turn of the century.

Table 2

 

COMPOSITION OF THE CHINESE IMMIGRANTS (1919-1970)

 

Year	Males	%	Females	%	Total
1919 1931 1943 1953 1970	10,016 24,445 15,657 11,350 5,710	97,20 99,18 98,96 95,91 96,91	284 202 165 484 182	2,76 0,82 1,04 4,09 3,09	10,300 24,647 15,822 11,834 5,892

 

SOURCE: Jesús Guanche, Componentes étnicos de la nación cubana, Colección La Fuente Viva, Ediciones Unión, Ciudad de La Habana, 1996, p. 86.

 

At all times in the Republican years males accounted for over 95% of the immigrants, as they did in the previous century, and miscegenation was rampant as increasing numbers of them set up families with Cuban women, whose crossbred offspring proved central to the Chinese immigrant’s insertion into Cuban society, even if their deportment and social scope was sensibly marked by a string of international events such as World War II, the Japanese invasion of China, and the triumph of a communist revolution in that country. Their inability to self-reproduce and the passing of time had a strong impact on the Chinese families, where children found themselves restrained to a socio-familial, chiefly matriarchal environment which played a decisive role in the constitution of specific traits, a topic we will discussed hereinafter in greater detail.

 

OWNERS AND WORKERS

 

We talked about the main features of the first waves of Chinese laborers in their capacity as hired workforce and how they gradually managed to insert themselves into the local economy and trade, either as free hands or as businessmen following their liberation.

 

In Juan Pérez de la Riva’s valuable book, already referred to, we learn about the Chinese hired in the 19^th century to work in the sugar, tobacco and other agricultural production industries as well as in urban construction sites, and also about those who became city shopkeepers.[7]

 

In the 20th century –- according to the 1907 census -– they took scores of different jobs in almost every branch, trade and field available then, be that in cities or the countryside, though chiefly in the former: agriculture, coal yards, barbershops, gardens, laundries, shoe shops, tailor’s shops, body worker’s shops, bakeries, etc. Some became owners of cafés and hotels, while others worked as servants and storekeepers.

 

Ownership behaved as follows:

 

Table 3

 

CHINESE OWNERS (1954)

 

 

SOURCE: Miriam Herrera Jerez and Mario Castillo Santana, De la memoria a la vida pública: identidades, espacios y jerarquías de los chinos en La Habana republicana (1902-1968), Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana Juan Marinello, La Habana, 2003, p. 151.

 

Table 3 shows data about the community of Chinese owners in some Havana municipalities (not including Marianao, Guanabacoa and San Miguel del Padrón). There’s a remarkable number of Chinese in fields where small businesses and investments prevail, mainly groceries, laundries, fruit and vegetable stalls, ice-cream and fried foods stands, etc., in other words, where they can service Cuba’s low-income classes, layers and sectors. At the same time, they are low- and middle-level owners in close contact with that population of low buying power with whom they share their commercial and daily life, since most have their private homes in their own shops.

 

Standing out from others are the 25 owners of fine foods, silk, hardware and porcelain shops who account for the wealthiest 2% in this group of 1,024 businessmen, according to the source. Although a minority –its authors point out– they monopolized the ethnic representation of the Chinese community and, as such, became the target of many demands from the rest of their countrymen who were eager for a larger, more democratic participation of these public entities.

 

In the 1950s, two factors had a negative impact on the community’s ability to develop and even its very survival: the flow of immigrants was interrupted as they increasingly set their sights on developed countries, a consequence of the new turn taken by worldwide capitalism. Besides, the colonies were so dependent as to be no longer attractive to those seeking economic improvement. The Chinese who chose Cuba were thus affected by a demographic twist of fate which detracted from their economic capacity and possibilities of development.

 

For its part, a process of economic stagnation shook the country that put paid to its chances of achieving a sustained growth. Laundry and other services were soon faced with a strong competition, so many investors from the U.S. –and elsewhere– opted instead to channel their money into the so-called “supermarkets” and washing and dry cleaning machines, a new technology that improved a service until then run by Chinese entrepreneurs. All of this had dire repercussions on the Cuban Chinese community’s economic situation and a strong impact on its ability to survive.

 

The establishment of the new Cuban republic in 1902 entailed the disintegration and reorganization of the societies that until then had prevailed in the Chinese colony. A different type of association came into being as a result of organizational and institutional demands imposed by the rising Republican order, and their dynastic principles made room for corporate, political, cultural, sports and artistic societies that added to the complexity of the Chinese community, its defense and cohesion.

 

CHINESE SOCIETIES IN CUBA: ANCESTORS, TRADITIONS AND RITES

 

All along last century, the Chinese introduced in Cuba the traditional associations of their homeland, based upon patrilineal bonds of kinship. Their societies enjoyed a boom in the 1920s and 30s, fostered by waves of immigrants who started to arrive in 1915 and for decades to come. These dynasties, which outnumbered all others, developed their links and designed their goals on the basis of the ethical-spiritual principle of worshipping the “first ancestors”, whom they honored as the founding fathers of their clans.

 

It is in these societies where the said principle was promoted and spread, where their spiritual, philosophical, religious and ethical conventions played a key role in maintaining, preserving and disseminating the community’s ancient habits and mustering the Chinese community around them.

 

In the 1920s some local or regional societies were founded to bring together immigrants according to their region, who were to be loyal to both their place of origin and its culture, on behalf of a dynastic view on loyalty intended to protect and boost such values and expected to be assimilated by a membership summoned to that end.

 

Their corporate and professional societies grouped the community around interests centered on the membership’s economic activity, closely linked in these cases with their ethnic cohesion, under a set of norms and regulations designed to protect the Chinese trade from its Cuban and/or Cuba-based foreign competitors. Among them were the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Chinese Salesmen and Retailers, the Association of Chinese Laundries and the Chinese Society of Fruit Stands.

 

They also had political societies where ideas and interests were brought face to face in matters of Cuban and Chinese policies, for instance, the Chinese Socialist Alliance, the Kuomintang and the Min Chi Tang, major forums of discussion about the contradictions and internal struggles of the Chinese revolutionary process, the creation of the People’s Republic of China, and life in Cuba, as well as about our island’s own political and revolutionary events.

 

Among the art societies we can mention several performing bands and opera troupes like Kuoc Sen, Kuoc Kong, Kuan Tih Lock and Chiong Wah Yin Lock Kou Se, also known through the radio and in their tours. The latter was the first Cantonese operatic company whose members were Cuban descendants of the Chinese.

 

As to sports, there were societies founded to practice specific disciplines, such as the Hai Yut Wui for kung fu and other martial arts and the Hoy Kuan and Jon Jen for basketball.

 

THE NATIONAL SOCIETY

 

All associative links lie on the Chinese origins of its members. The first attempts to create this kind of society were made since 1893 –as we said– taking the one established in Havana as the starting point. Thus began a process that extended across the country. This society was controlled by the Kuomintang and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce (founded in 1911). Built around 1954 beside the Kuomintang’s consular office, its building housed the Cheng Wah casino, a.k.a. the Chinese Colony Palace, and the Bank of China in the main floor. In keeping with the rules, the Consul presided over the casino in his own right.

 

A typical feature of those times in Cuba was the social and economic stratification where the wealthiest members of the Chinese community had control over the rest. For example, the abovementioned National Society was under Kuomintang’s political control.

 

All these forms of association existed within the community as a bonding element that preserved unity on the basis of stratification and organization, their purpose to protect the community’s cultural legacy and reassert the collective and individual identity of its members through a number of cultural and social practices fitting of their homeland.

 

Traditional ceremonies, rituals, performances and celebrations like the New Lunar Year Festival (the Qingming day), held in memory of their ancestors, contributed to preserve the Chinese’s age-old customs and profound spirituality insofar as they fed their links with their country’s culture.

 

Havana’s Barrio Chino provided a framework for such activities and a suitable environment for certain foods, items and services as befitted the immigrant’s eating and consumption habits, both missions carefully attended to by the societies located in or around the community. But they had another well-defined responsibility: organize the information about and use of language, control the vernacular media and liaise with China’s political and governmental authorities and other communities scattered all over Cuba and abroad, even with those in their homeland.

 

They had three newspapers: Kuomintang’s Man Sen Yat Po, Ming Chi Tang’s Hoy Men Kong Po, and the Chinese shopkeepers’ Wah Man Sion Po, all rooted in Chinatown and managed by its political and corporate societies.

 

Assuring benefits is another reason for the efforts to consolidate some members’ hegemony, whose functions include maintaining an old people’s home, offering assistance in cases of illness (for instance, the clinic Kow Kong, named after the regional society, was opened in 1928 in the neighborhood of Lawton to provide medical care to its members) and financial aid if a member or a close relative should die, and granting the right to be buried in the burial chambers these societies kept in the Chinese Cemetery. Rounding off the National Society’s duty is its role as representative before the rest of Cuba in charge of all arrangements and agreements with governmental, political, corporate, social and other entities, as it did in 1937 when it planned and organized the presence of The Dragon Troupe in Havana’s Carnival. It was during those festivities when the typical Dance of the Lion was first performed outside Barrio Chino. The Dragon arranged the participation in the Carnival of a music band made up of Chinese community members.

 

OTHER CHINESE TRADITIONS

 

One well-known Chinese tradition is related to the role played by death, a major cause of concern among a body of immigrants who harbored a deep-seated devotion to the cult of ancestry and the veneration of family and whose greatest wish it was to be buried in the sacred land of their forebears.

 

Historian and demographer Juan Pérez de la Riva explains in his book how this cultural expression of reverence to death gave way to a cynical business.

 

“We know about the old funerals of San Francisco,” –the author says– “for which the coolie would save a few cents every day for years in order to afford a decent burial in China. It didn’t take long for the Yankees to realize this could prove a profitable deal and took steps to that effect with their usual effectiveness. So in 1856 the first ship set sail from San Francisco with a load of 300 conveniently prepared corpses. Displaying a rather gruesome sense of humor, a local newspaper wrote about the event: ‘California has no rival when it comes to trading in Chinese people; it truly has a monopoly on them: it imports them crude and alive and re-exports them manufactured and dead.’ ”[8]

 

A tough, lengthy struggle took place in Cuba before the coolie could have a place to repose after death, for the country’s poor condition made it impossible to start a business similar to that of San Francisco. “At any rate, never were the Chinese in Cuba able to afford such a sorrowful satisfaction, nor could they count on a paltry little spot in a cemetery where they could finally rest that their friends could visit on New Year’s Day to lay an offering and light the lamp of remembrance.”[9]  

 

The coolies were despised even after they had died. Research made by specialist Edith Monterde has it that the Chinese who lived in Havana were first buried in the British’s cemetery, near the shorelines of El Vedado neighborhood in a place located between today’s streets G and M. Later on, from 1868 to 1871, their burials were transferred to San Antonio Chiquito cemetery, always away from the Espada Cemetery (founded in 1806 and closed in 1873), from where they were banned for being heretic. In 1872 it was still forbidden to bury the Chinese in public cemeteries or in those located in private farms.

 

When Columbus Cemetery was opened, some parcels in its boundaries were used to bury Chinese. According to certified records, most of those who died in Havana from 1879 to 1894 had no money to pay for their interment. From 1879 to 1883, a total 1,203 deaths were registered, of which 80% were single men, 992 (90%) were recorded under “charity”, and 86% had passed away in Havana’s third district, specifically in the neighborhoods of Monserrate and Guadalupe (where Barrio Chino was located). It was not until 1893 (almost 10 years after their contracts had expired) that the barriers put up by the Catholic Church were torn down. The Chinese consul succeeded in having a special cemetery built for his subjects, still in place today at 26^th St. in Vedado.

 

Said arrangements had been personally initiated since 1882 by the then consul Liu Liang Yuan, whose colleague Tam Kim Cho had bought the land off a rich Cuban businessman named Kohly and managed to get the work going in a place not far from the Columbus cemetery, which, together with his other brainchild –Havana’s Chung Wah casino– made him famous.[10] Such was the end of a long way the Chinese had to go to reunite with their ancestors after death.

 

A further step toward the foundation of what we know today as the Chinese Cemetery was taken by societies established during the 19^th century and especially by the Chung Wah casino: they built up family vaults for their members and other funeral works intended for their customary rites of passage, usually held on All Souls’ Day (November 2), when they merged their cult of death with the Catholic practice that held sway in Cuba. They also celebrated Clarity’s or Divine Light’s Day (Qingming) in late March or early April, depending on the lunar or the agricultural calendar, to honor their ancestors with toasts and offerings of foods (in Cuba, flowers are included too). In his book Los chinos en Cuba: apuntes etnográficos, José Baltar describes the rituals as follows: 

 

“Legend has it that at the time of the Warring States, Wen Gong, prince of Jin, was sent into exile with a group of his retainers. Beset by hunger and cold weather, a man called Jie Zhitui cut some flesh from his own arm to make soup for Wen, who only found out some time later. Once they were back, Wen Gong was proclaimed emperor and awarded all his faithful with posts. Jie Zhitui –who had saved him then– was with his mother in the Mianshang mountain, where he had decided to live his last days as a hermit. Wen Gong went looking for Jie but, unable to find him, ordered to set the mount on fire him to force him out. As a result of his absurd command, both Jie and his mother perished. Having heard of the tragedy, the emperor decreed three days of mourning for his loyal subject and forbid to light any fire for the duration. His servants prepared his meals with cold foods, giving rise to a special celebration: Cold Food Festival. The incident is said to have taken place 2 days before the 5^th of the third month, so Qingming was chosen to pay tribute to the Chinese’s loved ones.

 

“On that day the relatives clean the sepulcher, weed out its surrounding grounds and lay flowers at them. Foods, sweets and drinks are offered to satisfy the deceased’s needs; candles and sandalwood sticks are lit, and pieces of money-looking paper are burned for the dead to receive in the other world.”[11]  

 

FAMILIES AND SOCIETIES

 

The Chinese societies in Cuba were very exclusive, closed to Cuban wives and their mixed-blood offspring except as guests in certain activities. Harder still was the access to managerial positions for the very few descendants who could join any society, as in the case of Chinese women, similarly restricted to simple member status owing to the dynastic patrilineal structure of these clubs.

 

Differences in the family structure had various social effects. In families of Chinese and Cuban parents, children were taught the norms and traditions of each parent’s culture and, with language being a basic element available to them, most managed to overcome the linguistic barrier and became bilingual. Those who were born to Chinese fathers and mothers could join at will any society established in Cuba by their community.

 

However, children begotten by a mixed marriage were banished from the Chinese societies, whose ethnic unity always relied on ironclad rules conceived to preserve cultural standards as a means of protection and economic survival and help the community’s upper crust strengthen their grip on power.

 

They were dangerous, these descendants, for they could become a steppingstone to assimilation which would tamper with the said ethnic unity and the whole industrious economic and social defensive system based upon it. This clannish conservative edict grew into a reactionary, paralyzing attitude that prevailed until the 1960s, when the requirements underwent substantial changes. A marked reduction in the flow of immigrants crippled a community already weakened by the exclusion from its ranks of mixed-blood descendants who, after all, accounted for the vast majority.

 

It was not the Chinese father but the Cuban mother –whether they were legally married or just living together– who played the main role in the cultural and spiritual formation of those families, and for a number of reasons: the children’s difficulties to command their fathers’ language –and vice versa– and the fact that there was hardly any bilingual training or Chinese language courses available. Consequently, Spanish language prevailed at school. Moreover, the man used to devote himself to the arduous task of providing for the family’s economic sustenance –these were poor households for the most part– while the mother took care of both the housework and her children, whose education was therefore in her hands. So, unable to speak Chinese and deprived of a real emotional link with their father, they drifted more and more apart from him, his Chinese relatives and his original community, and got closer instead to the Cuban culture represented by their mother and her own roots.

 

Ignorance of the Chinese language also stopped those children from fully grasping China’s culture. Some very specific, evocative elements still exist within these families: eating habits, martial arts, traditional medicine, ethical and spiritual values, that is, the usual features that mold the Asian father’s image and prevail throughout the Cuban society as a yardstick of his image. Add to this picture descriptors such as laboriousness, inscrutability and honesty, as well as racism and phobic leanings fueled by certain traits like slow-wittedness and a love of gambling ascribed to this ethnic component indelibly engraved on the Cuban landscape.

 

In his valuable essay Relaciones interétnicas e interraciales: un estudio desde los chinos y su descendencia, anthropologist Pablo Rodríguez quotes a very singular Chinese descendant whose own words portray everything that his world contributed to imagination and symbolism:

“Since I was very young I was quite curious about things Chinese. My dad taught me the language, which I speak, read and write. My mom was a white Catholic. I even took my first Holy Communion. Maybe God exists, and maybe He is Jesus, but maybe He is someone else, I don’t know for sure. However, my late parents do know, because they are in another dimension. At their level they can speak with the gods. Besides, when you were a child and it was cold, whom did you ask to tuck you in? When you were hungry, who would feed you and protect you? Your parents, right? So, whom will you ask to fulfill your needs? Whom will you turn to when you are lonely and desperate? To a god who is so high? Isn’t that inhumane? It is your ancestors, those who are closest to you, who will take heed of your call and know who to appeal to, ask or beg for what you need. That is why I worship my ancestors above all else. Whom I ask first, you wonder? My mom, of course, because I had a closer relationship with her, although I had a lot of faith in him, since he was a very fair person.”[12] 

 

It is also in that religiousness where the Chinese Cubans set in relief such important feature of the vital, real and wonderful roots of Cuban and Caribbean patterns as the cultural syncretism that defines us as a product of ethnic interbreeding.

 

THE IMPACT OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION ON THE CHINESE COMMUNITY

 

Started in 1953, the revolutionary process got the whole Cuban population and its ethnic components involved in its dynamics and radical nature. The Chinese Cubans, by no means an exception to this rule, were present in the underground struggle and even in the Rebel Army. And although no classist or sociological study has ever been made that allows quantifying and qualifying the role of our social classes in this rebel war, we can mention officers Moisés Sio Wong and Manuel Shueg, paradigmatic representatives of China’s descendants in this new stage in the fight for Cuban independence.

 

There’s another event that testifies to the Chinese Cuban contribution to our revolutionary process: a state entity called ‘Chinatown Promotional Group’, established by the Cuban state in the early 1990s, made up of officials of Chinese extraction who work at community level to revive and preserve Havana’s Barrio Chino and make it evolve into a tourist attraction by boosting this neighborhood’s commercial and economic life. They also take part in Havana government’s efforts to improve material and spiritual living conditions in Centro Habana municipality through the revitalization of local buildings and services in and around Barrio Chino. Furthermore, the Group intends to preserve Chinese customs, habits and language in the neighborhood –there are about 400 Chinese in Cuba today– and keep in contact with and strengthen links to other ethnic societies of Chinese origin in and outside Cuba. Another goal is to develop friendship between Cuba and China and preserve the bonds existing with the ethnic Chinese diaspora.

 

The dynamics of the revolutionary changes had a social, political and institutional impact on the Chinese, whose community was enjoying a certain degree of stability by that time owing to its retailers’ political and ideological influence and the dominance achieved by an elite clique of Chinese businessmen, importers and shopkeepers politically grouped around the Kuomintang since 1935. This made it possible for them to survive regardless of the critical situation facing Cuba’s neocolonial economic, political and social model, and especially its ethnic groups, as a result of the demagogic policies applied by the conservative and xenophobic nationalism put forward by [president] Ramón Grau San Martín’s Partido Auténtico through the Fifty Per Cent Law.[13]

 

Events such as Fulgencio Batista’s inauguration in 1935, the mandate of two authentic governments (1944-1952) and Batista’s coup d’état in 1952 seemed to indicate that the political Establishment forayed into a new framework of power relations that the 1930 revolution had led to a crisis before it showed up again during the insurrection begun in 1953.

 

This situation was finally resolved with the revolutionary triumph in 1959[14]. About the reorganization the Chinese community experienced in its wake, we can briefly point out that it became apparent through a transition of power, the expropriation of the Kuomintang and the presence of a group of Chinese communists in the Chung Wah casino. All these measures went off peacefully, since nationalism had fallen into disrepute among the Chinese (including those settled in Cuba) since 1940 and had thus smoothed the way for the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In the particular case of Cuba, this situation became part of the people’s solid consensus regarding their Revolution and its influence on the Chinese community, also a victim of Batista’s blood-stained military power.

 

Because of political and classist conflicts inside the Chinese community, Havana’s Provisional Government decreed in 1960 the intervention of the Chung Wah casino and the replacement of its managers, who had assumed a dissociative stance by insisting to keep on the wall a picture of Chiang Kai-shek (a political figure who led the Nationalistic against the rising People’s Republic) and were launching harsh attacks against the Cuban Revolutionary Government. New authorities came to the foreground, marking the end of the old hegemony and the beginning of the Chinese community’s integration into the revolutionary process with fresh interests in mind and new opportunities for the Chinese Cubans to join any society.

 

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