Black Labor, White Sugar: Caribbean Braceros and their Struggle for Power in the Cuban Sugar Industry, By Philip A. Howard (2015) Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 324 pages. ISBN: 978-0-8071-5952-1

Philip A. Howard, currently Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at the University of Houston, is a recognized authority on Afro-Cuban history and, more generally, African influence in Latin America and the Caribbean. His first book, Changing History: The Afro-Cuban Cabildos and Societies of Color in the Nineteenth Century (1998) discussed Afro-Cuban benevolent societies. Black Labor, White Sugar also explores African influences on Cuba and analyzes braceros, or workers, principally from Haiti and Jamaica, who came to Cuba to work in the sugar industry. “From its beginnings in the colonial era,” he asserts, “the cultivation of sugarcane in Cuba engendered immeasurable misery for the predominantly black labor force that cut, loaded, and hauled the tropical commodity” (1). That misery increased when, during the U.S. occupation of Cuba, sugar producers and refiners built technologically advanced sugar mills and imported workers from other countries to create an ethnically diverse transnational labour force. Throughout the volume, the author pursues two lines of inquiry. He explores the oppressive organizations that dehumanized workers and the perilous conditions of life they faced in Cuba. However, he also emphasizes the agency of the workers, strategies they used to resist both sugar companies and xenophobic Cubans, and the development of a militant working-class consciousness. Howard begins by analyzing the workers who moved from their countries to Cuba. Some of these workers remained in Cuba only for the sugar harvest, where others attempted to stay more permanently. Black Haitian and Jamaican workers migrated to Cuba for specific reasons, including to protest against “the structures, policies, and social arrangements that reduced these workers’ socioeconomic opportunities and mobility at home” (22). The period the book covers was a moment of profound transformation for Cuba, which had very recently gained independence from Spain. Chronic labour shortages and the need among sugar producers and refiners for workers encouraged violations of the bans on black immigration. Additionally, sugar companies, owned by both Cubans and foreigners, attempted to replace as many black Cuban workers as they could with black Caribbean workers. Sugar company elites believed black Caribbeans were more tractable than black Cubans were. However, the companies never completely eliminated Cuban workers. As Howard notes, sugar companies became adept at using the different ethnicities of their workers to, at once, foster competition and antagonism and narrow the possibility of labour solidarity. He pays very careful attention to this theme throughout the book: how companies continually attempted to drive wedges between different groups of workers. When Haitian and Jamaican workers arrived in Cuba, they found conditions analogous to slavery. Furthermore, Cubans and North Americans “demonized the workers to a degree where their clothes, language, and skin color had transformed them into gangs of disfigured and terrifying monsters” (67). The sugar companies provided very little for workers and attempted to wring the maximum amount of labour out of them. This leads Howard to comment, on more than one occasion, that immigrants became victims of unmerciful exploitation. Given the appalling conditions of life for many braceros, this is an accurate assessment. In addition, many Cubans believed black Caribbean braceros were undesirable aliens who would compromise Cuban sovereignty. In a vicious cycle, the increasing numbers of black workers fueled racism and violence. Black workers, in other words, found themselves in an unenviable position: exploited by sugar companies and hated by many Cubans. They had very few friends to turn to and often found themselves mistreated by unscrupulous corporate officers, xenophobic officials, and angry Cuban citizens. Importantly, the workers in this volume do not appear as helpless ciphers genuflecting before domineering corporations. Howard explore numerous strategies of resistance, …