Tell My Mother I Gone to Cuba

Barbadians were among the thousands of British West Indians who migrated to Cuba in the early twentieth century in search of work. They were drawn there by employment opportunities fuelled largely by US investment in Cuban sugar plantations. Tell My Mother I Gone to Cuba: Stories of Early Twentieth-Century Migration from Barbados is their story.

The migrants were citizens of the British Empire, and their ill-treatment in Cuba led to a diplomatic squabble between British and Cuban authorities. The author draws from contemporary newspaper articles, official records, journals and books to set the historical contexts which initiated this intra-Caribbean migratory wave.

Through oral histories, it also gives voice to the migrants’ compelling narratives of their experience in Cuba. One of the oral histories recorded in the book is that of the author’s mother, who was born in Cuba of Barbadian parents.