Mavericks or Misfits? Irish Railroad Workers in Cuba - 1835-1844

Los registros archivísticos de la emigración irlandesa a Cuba describen una colonia de irlandeses contratados en Nueva York para trabajar para la Comisión del ferrocarril cubano. Los trabajadores contratados de Irlanda y de las Islas Canarias sufrieron unas condiciones de trabajo brutales bajo las reglas militares españolas en las que cualquier tentativa de absentismo era tratada como una deserción y castigada con prisión o ejecución. Sostengo aquí que las formaciones sociales y las formas de lucha en la creación de un proletariado sin tierra sentaron las bases y generaron las conductas de resistencia subalterna en este encuentro entre “un proletariado ambulante,” integrando los sistemas británico e ibérico de trabajo colonial. Contra-formaciones modernas sociales importadas y adaptadas al “nuevo mundo” se analizan ulteriormente desde la óptica de las teorías postcoloniales que trazan la mano de obra transitoria y temporal como un elemento intrínseco de la historia de la expansión capitalista.Archival records of Irish migration to Cuba describe a colony of "irlandeses" contracted in New York in 1835 to work for the Cuban Railway Commission. Contract labourers from Ireland and the Canary Islands were forced into a brutal work regime under Spanish military rule where any attempt to abscond was treated as desertion punishable by prison or execution. I argue that social formations and forms of struggle in the creation of a landless proletariat lay the ground in generating the conduct of subaltern resistance in this encounter between "a roving proletariat" and intersecting British and Iberian systems of colonial labour. Counter modern social formations imported and adapted to the "new world" are further analysed drawing on postcolonial theories which frame mobile transitory labour as an intrinsic, if recalcitrant, element in the history of capitalist expansion

Molecular Epidemiology of Neisseria meningitidis Serogroup B in Brazil

Background: Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B has been predominant in Brazil, but no broadly effective vaccine is available to prevent endemic meningococcal disease. To understand genetic diversity among serogroup B strains in Brazil, we selected a nationally representative sample of clinical disease isolates from 2004, and a temporally representative sample for the state of São Paulo (1988-2006) for study (n = 372). Methods: We performed multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) and sequence analysis of five outer membrane protein (OMP) genes, including novel vaccine targets fHbp and nadA. Results: In 2004, strain B:4:P1.15,19 clonal complex ST-32/ET-5 (cc32) predominated throughout Brazil; regional variation in MLST sequence type (ST), fetA, and porB was significant but diversity was limited for nadA and fHbp. Between 1988 and 1996, the São Paulo isolates shifted from clonal complex ST-41/44/Lineage 3 (cc41/44) to cc32. OMP variation was associated with but not predicted by cc or ST. Overall, fHbp variant 1/subfamily B was present in 80% of isolates and showed little diversity. The majority of nadA were similar to reference allele 1. Conclusions: A predominant serogroup B lineage has circulated in Brazil for over a decade with significant regional and temporal diversity in ST, fetA, and porB, but not in nadA and fHbp

Irish Migration to Cuba, 1835-1845: Empire, Ethnicity, Slavery and \u27Free\u27 Labour

This interdisciplinary thesis examines and critically analyses previously unexplored materials relating to Irish transient labour in Cuba from 1835-1845. Sociological theory and historical analysis are applied to archival accounts of Irish railroad workers to examine this episode of labour migration from a multi-dimensional perspective that pays close attention to processes of class, race, legal status and to a lesser extent gender. This study treats the archive not as a \u27repository of the facts\u27 but as a \u27complexly constituted\u27 discourse of slavery and free labour, produced in the formation of colonial processes of class, ethnicity and migration. Irish contract labourers became part of a modernising project to replace slavery with \u27free\u27 labour with the additional aim of \u27whitening\u27 the population. Postcolonial theory is applied to the historiography of the railroad workers and rather than ask \u27how the Irish became white\u27, this study examines the discourse and strategies of Cuban colonial elites in which Irish, workers, were seen as \u27whitening\u27 agents in the formation of a separate Cuban identity in opposition to the perceived \u27africanisation\u27 of Cuban culture. I also turn the postcolonial gaze on Irish migration history by examining pre-famine mobile labour, and its repertoire of resistance to coercive labour relations as part of \u27a counter-culture of modernity\u27 which began with an Irish agrarian underground. The position of the railroad workers raises in a complex way other issues thrown up by the extraordinary historical context of transatlantic migration in which they operate including an established Cuban-Irish slaveholding elite and forced migrants from Africa and indentured labour from the Canary Islands. Irish migration to Cuba is analysed against the contentious politics of a deepening dependence on slavery in an era of abolition, Cuban nationalist \u27whitening\u27 strategies, and questions of solidarities and resistance in the overlapping processes of class and race.2016-09-2