Foreword
RUPERT LEWIS
MARGINALIZED DIASPORAS
The relationship between the peoples of the Northern Caribbean islands has been going on from pre-Columbian times, that is, from before Spanish conquest of these islands. This movement of peoples was followed by European genocide of the indigenous peoples, enslavement of Africans and the imposition of colonial rule.
Later, Caribbean networks of revolutionaries existed during the Spanish- colonial period in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. So that the war of liberation involving José Martí and Antonio Maceo has resonances here, as Jamaica provided refuge for Maceo’s mother, José Martí and many others.
We are therefore beneficiaries of the liberation struggles against slavery, colonialism and imperial domination. For instance, W. Adolphe Roberts (1886–1962), the Jamaican novelist and historian, visited Cuba nineteen times in the early twentieth century. He was enamoured of José Martí and wanted to see a similar sense of sovereignty developed in Jamaica. The Jamaican writer, Herbert George DeLisser, less nationalistic than Roberts, wrote a book in 1910 entitled Jamaica and Cuba which highlighted the close linkages in trade and social relations between the islands.
Attention has been paid recently to the Windrush generation in Britain and the crises faced by West Indians resulting from inhumane treatment by the British government.
But it is equally important to pay attention to our communities and diasporas in Cuba, for they are part of our Jamaican and Caribbean family. In Guantánamo and elsewhere in Cuba there are multiple family and cultural
histories which delineate forgotten histories which need to be recovered. These West Indian diasporas in Cuba and Latin and Central America have become marginalized as the current focus is on those in Britain and North America.
These diasporas began in the early twentieth century when African descendants in the Caribbean were drawn into the labour pool of American investments in Cuba and involved in the building of railways and modern sugar plantations. The sugar mills had the most advanced technology of the time. Thousands of West Indian workers were also drawn into working for the United Fruit Company, which dominated banana production in Central America and the Caribbean. Others were also recruited into the labour pool of the largest infrastructural development of the early twentieth century – the Panama Canal.
Annette Insanally’s edited text, Regional Footprints: The Travels and Travails of Early Caribbean Migrants (2006), attempts to break this marginalization. One of the tasks of a conference such as this is getting to know each other, nurturing the neglected area of Caribbean relations, developing exchanges and encouraging scholarship and other initiatives.
WHAT DOES “WEST INDIAN” MEAN?
Some years ago, I visited a West Indian community in Havana and an elderly lady who hailed from St Thomas asked me if they “still brukkin rock stone a roadside”. She was referencing the times when this practice was part of road construction. Our conversation stirred memories of old-time Jamaica. Reading the recent book by Sharon Milagro Marshall, Tell My Mother I Gone to Cuba: Stories of Early Twentieth Century Migration from Barbados (2016), I was struck by how a “West Indian” identity was preserved. To be West Indian meant that you spoke West Indian English, developed schools to ensure your children were educated in English, attended a Protestant church, played cricket, identified as British and felt superior to Latins. There was also a sense that “revolutions” and political instability were inherent in the Latin way of governance, whereas the British Empire had generated some modicum of legislative and executive order that characterized the English-speaking Caribbean. Finally, there was respect and affection for the British king or queen. I anxiously await those who have lived the West
Indian experience in Guantánamo to share their experience of what being a West Indian has meant for their identity in a Latin context.
But we need to recognize a greater fluidity in the interchange of cultural and political influences. Clinton Hutton depicts his father, Alphonso Hutton, as returning from Camaguey to Hanover, Jamaica, with a militant nationalism drawing on the military leadership of Antonio Maceo, the black general. Hutton notes that his father stood up to racism in Cuba, drawing on his strong sense of pre-colonial African history. Political values were therefore influenced by Cuba’s legacy of racism as well as its anti-colonial history.
In addition, Cuba has been influential in the area of music. Clinton Hutton has pointed out the impact of Latin music on the English-speaking Caribbean. A number of outstanding Jamaican musicians, born in Cuba, were influenced by Cuban music. Among them were the singer Laurel Aitken, and Tommy McCook and Roland Alphanso of the Skatalites fame. But Jamaica has also influenced Cuba through reggae music and the iconography of Bob Marley and Rastafari. Accompanying reggae is a Jamaican version of blackness and the Jamaican language. These factors have had an impact on Cuban culture.
THE COLD WAR
My knowledge of Cuba started in high school under my Spanish teacher, who was studying Cuban literature. His name was Winston Davis. This was in the 1960s and Davis had had his passport seized after a visit to Cuba. These were the days of the Cold War when the Jamaican government had the police target individuals who visited Cuba. A number of Jamaican academics and activists had their passports seized. Among them were the economists George Beckford and Leroy Taylor. Walter Rodney also visited as a student and this is partly why his case file received so much attention in 1968. Hopefully, we now live in different times when both parties in the Jamaican parliament have come out against the 19 October 1960 US embargo on Cuba that has now lasted almost six decades.
The year 1972 was a turning-point for Cuban-Caribbean relations as Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago opened diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro’s government. However, the price exacted for Jamaica’s recognition of Angolan independence in 1975 and Manley’s support
for Cuba’s military involvement in the Angolan war was the destabilization of the Jamaican economy. Many Cubans of West Indian descent fought in those battles. These persons should also be the subject of memoirs and studies. On my first visit to Cuba in 1978, I interviewed an old West Indian in Havana who told me that if he had been young, he would have gone to fight in Angola. Those battles resulted in the defeat of the South African forces.
THE FUTURE
We hope that CARICOM will not shift its position on opposing the US boycott of Cuba because of pressure from the current US administration. As evidence of the good Cuba-Caribbean relations, my colleague Professor Jessica Byron recently documented and analysed intra-Caribbean cooperation, including Cuba’s considerable role. And in a recent speech, Ambassador Ines Fernandez documented Cuba’s support in the areas of health and trade. Indeed, in the Northern Caribbean we are poised between two great markets – North America and South America. There are immense opportunities for trade.
I wish you success with your deliberations.
