Rescuing Our Roots: The African Anglo-Caribbean Diaspora in Contemporary Cuba

281 Pages·2015·17.74 MB·English

by  Andrea J. Queeley

Rescuing Our Roots
Contemporary Cuba
University Press of Florida
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
New College of Florida, Sarasota
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola

RESCUING OUR ROOTS
The African Anglo-Caribbean
Diaspora in Contemporary Cuba
Andrea J. Queeley
John M. Kirk, series editor
University Press of Florida
Gainesville / Tallahassee / Tampa / Boca Raton
Pensacola / Orlando / Miami / Jacksonville / Ft. Myers / Sarasota
Copyright 2015 by Andrea J. Queeley
All rights reserved
All photographs reproduced here are part of the author’s private collection.
Chapter 4 is based in part on Andrea J. Queeley’s “Somos Negros Finos: Anglophone
Caribbean Cultural Citizenship in Revolutionary Cuba,” previously published in Global
Circuits of Blackness: Interrogating the African Diaspora, edited by Jean Muteba Rahier,
Percy C. Hintzen, and Felipe Smith, University of Illinois Press, 2010.
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
This book may be available in an electronic edition.
20 19 18 17 16 15 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Queeley, Andrea, author.
Rescuing our roots : the African Anglo-Caribbean diaspora in contemporary Cuba /
Andrea Queeley.
pages cm — (Contemporary Cuba)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8130-6109-2
1. Blacks—Cuba—Social conditions. 2. Blacks—Cuba—History. 3. Cuba—Race relations.
4. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—Cuba. 5. Cuba—Foreign relations—Soviet Union.
I. Title. II. Series: Contemporary Cuba.
F1789.N3Q44 2015
305.80097291—dc23 2015017863
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State
University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic
University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State
University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida,
University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.
University Press of Florida
15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
http://www.upf.com
This book is dedicated to
Anne Elizabeth Queeley, also known as May Daley,
who left her home to make a life in this place and lived
long enough to leave the memory of her eating mango
at the kitchen table, with me, her youngest grandchild
My mother, who taught me stories
My father, a devout member of the Curious Queeleys
Meredith . . . we were girls together

Contents
List of Figures viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Nested Diasporas, Multiple Mobilities, and the Politics
of Black Belonging 1
1. British West Indian Migration to Cuba: The Roots and Routes
of Respectability 36
2. Get Out or Get Involved: Revolutionary Change and Conflicting
Visions of Freedom 78
3. Special Identities in Cuba’s Special Period: Race, Region, and
Revitalization 111
4. “Somos Negros Finos” (We Are Refined Blacks): Rescuing Roots
as an Assertion of Respectable Blackness 143
5. “¿Gracias a la Revolución?”: Narratives of Social Mobility as Spaces
of Subject Formation 160
Conclusion: Dreams Multiplied . . . A Final Entrée to Cuba 179
Notes 185
Bibliography 215
Index 249
Figures
1.1. The Skeltons, founders of the British West Indian Welfare Centre,
ca. 1940 51
1.2. Wedding photo, ca. 1940 52
1.3. Passage to Cuba, ca. 1920 52
1.4. Wedding party, ca. 1940 53
1.5. United Negro Improvement Association poster for Black Star Line 59
1.6. British West Indian Welfare Centre leadership, ca. 1950 62
1.7. Office work on the Guantánamo Naval Base 69
1.8. Quinceañera celebration 71
2.1. Communist party members, ca. 1950 81
2.2. Revolutionary Jamaican grandmother, 1986 85
2.3. Children in “el monte,” literacy campaign 1960 87
2.4. Revolutionary woman 102
3.1. Mementos of revitalization 126
3.2. Meeting at El Centre 127
Preface
Same Ship, Different Destinations
Other national and ethnic groupings in Cuba—Spaniards, Arabs, Jews, Chinese—
have established solidarity life-lines with their co-nationals and co-ethnics. Black
West Indians do not have and desperately need a similar life-line. . . . Help provide
food, medicine and clothing for a man, woman or child, who may well be related
to your own forebears of the Middle Passage and beyond.
Alberto Jones, “Joining the West Indian Welfare Center”
Alberto Jones is a Cuban humanitarian and activist whose Jamaican parents
were among the wave of British West Indian immigrants who arrived in Cuba
during the first third of the twentieth century. He made his plea on behalf
of the British West Indian Welfare Centre (BWIWC) in Guantánamo in the
wake of Hurricane Michelle, which hit Cuba in 2001—when the country was
still treading water in the proverbial flood unleashed by the collapse of the So-
viet Union. Founded in 1945 by British Caribbean immigrants, “El Centre,” as
it is called by most, experienced a revival in the early 1990s when the children
and grandchildren of these immigrants began a Young People’s Department
whose mission was “rescatar las raices” (to rescue the roots).
Alberto, who had himself become an immigrant, migrating to the United
States and eventually settling in Northern Florida, was involved in this effort,
bringing visibility and material resources to the British West Indian Welfare
Centre. This was his most recent focus in a long history of local and global
social justice work on behalf of people of African descent. “We all came here
on the same ship, we just got off at different stops,” he explained when I spoke
with him after embarking on my own odyssey into the lives of those whose
forebears chose Cuba as their port of call. Initially driven by the question of
why this group of Cubans sought to rescue their roots in the post-Soviet era,1
this book is one of the many still-unfolding outcomes of that journey.