Afro-Asian Solidarity and Conflict in Latin American and Caribbean Labor and Liberation Movements

The Haitian Revolution reverberated throughout the circum-Caribbean, further entrenching African slavery in the Spanish possession of Cuba while hastening its demise in the British colonies. Sugar planters’ desire for cheap labor led the recruitment of tens of thousands of Chinese indentured laborers. This presentation traces the entangled histories of slavery and indenture in the region, focusing on Afro-Asian solidarity and conflict within overlapping labor regimes and liberation strategies. It examines Chinese migrants and their descendants against a backdrop of broader working-class, nationalist, and anticolonial struggles in Latin America and the Caribbean during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Kathleen López is Associate Professor in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Department of History at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She researches and teaches on the historical intersections between Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, postemancipation Caribbean societies, race and ethnicity in the Americas, and international migration. She is the author of Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History and numerous articles and book chapters. Her current research focuses on Chinese migrants, gender, and citizenship in the twentieth-century Anglophone Caribbean. She also is directing a public humanities project on global Latinx New Jersey.

Please note this event is part of the “Labor and Liberation Across the Atlantic” Symposium on October 11, 2024 co-sponsored by the  Oceanic Imaginaries initiative.

Please note this event will take place in-person only.