Sugar, Black Belonging and the Anglo-Caribbean Cuban Experience: A View From Backstage

The Sugar Curtain is a metaphor for much more than the economic, political, and ideological disconnect between Cuba and the United States that followed the 1959 Revolution. Sugar formed the bedrock of Cuba’s 19th century colonial and post-colonial economy, aborting—making a mockery of, really—aspirations and declarations of freedom and sovereignty for more than a few. When you pulled back the Sugar Curtain, blood, broken backs and heartache poured from the stage in torrents filling the theatre like the Overlook Hotel hallway in The Shining, Stanley Kubric’s classic 1980 horror film. When we take the long view, when we consider Michel Rolf Trouillot’s silenced past and the hidden histories that are often not hidden from the sugar makers, the Sugar Curtain was there before the troubles that the Cuban Revolution caused by disrupting the naturalized order of things, before the seizure of businesses and severance of diplomatic ties. Evidence of the Sugar Curtain’s magic is not that it purports to have cut off two historically, culturally and economically intertwined nations just ninety miles apart from one another but that the black bodies that fueled the industry after which this curtain is named are largely invisible in its evocation. From my vantage point, the Sugar Curtain does the work of separating simultaneous interdependent realities: owners from enslaved, Spanish soldiers from mambises, mistresses of the house from maids, U.S. military officers from the Guantánamo Naval Base’s Cuban and West Indian workers, the embargo from el bloqueo, Castro from Fidel, and perhaps even my American researcher self from my black diasporic self

El Puente: transnationalism among Cubans of English-speaking Caribbean descent

This article examines intra-Caribbean migration and transnationalism through the case of anglophone Caribbean immigrants and their descendants in Cuba. In seeking an explanation for the resurgence of English-speaking Caribbean associations in Cuba during the 1990s, it explores the historical trajectory of this group from the time of arrival through the 1959 Revolution to the present. In addition to providing a narrative of the experience of this particular group of Anglo-Caribbean/Afro-Latin American/African diasporic subjects and illuminating the continuities and discontinuities in transnational practices over time, I argue that this case of West Indian Cubans expands the notion of the transnational social field itself beyond the sending and receiving countries, particularly for those who lived in Guantánamo and worked on the US naval base. I also argue that this case clearly, and perhaps dramatically, demonstrates the primacy of the state in regulating transnational processes and provides insights into how second and third generation immigrants, who are very rooted in their national identity, can become agents of transnational and Diasporic practices

Pensions, Politics, and Soul Train: Anglo-Caribbean Diasporic Encounters with Guantánamo from the War to the Special Period

Centering the narratives of Cubans of Anglo-Caribbean origin, this chapter examines encounters with the Guant\xE1namo naval base. For some black immigrants and their Cuban-born children, the Base was a space of transnational conviviality and source of status and upward mobility. With the 1959 revolution, it became one of the theatres of the escalating hostilities between the United States and Cuba, catching this community in the crossfire. Now, in the post-Soviet era, the Base continues to create a loud echo in the lives of Anglo-Caribbean Cubans. Exploring the contours of the Base’s impact in the political, economic, and cultural spheres, this chapter engages questions of identity, citizenship, and asymmetries of power at the intersections created by this particular case of militarization

A Dream Derailed?: The English-speaking Caribbean Diaspora in Revolutionary Cuba

This dissertation describes and analyzes the evolution of English-speaking Caribbean identity in Cuba. In seeking to explain why Cubans of English-speaking Caribbean descent moved to revitalize their ethnic institutions during the Special Period, it (1) evaluates the characteristics and social position of the English-speaking Caribbean communities prior to the Revolution, (2) explores the impact of the Revolution on individuals and communities, in particular their experience of social mobility and participation in revolutionary struggle, and (3) focuses on their experience during the Special Period in examining the relationship between cultural narratives among black immigrants and their descendants and shifting levels of social inequality. Using interviews with people of English-speaking Caribbean descent, archival and secondary sources, and participant observation in eastern Cuba, this research investigates how people who lay claim to this identity have negotiated the economic and political terrain of revolutionary Cuba. It argues that, across time, people of English-speaking Caribbean descent have used civilized blackness to challenge ideologies of black inferiority that justify racial marginalization and exclusion. In addition, they have responded to social inequality and anti-black discrimination through participating in radical collective struggles for social justice. This research indicates that strategies have been evident in the revitalization of ethnic institutions by people of English-speaking Caribbean descent during the Special Period. It also suggests that black immigrant dreams of a better life have been derailed by the rising social inequalities in post-Cold War Cuba