By Philip A. Howard

Early within the 20th century, the Cuban sugarcane confronted a exertions trouble while Cuban and ecu employees balked on the inhumane stipulations they persevered within the cane fields. instead of reforming their practices, sugar businesses received permission from the Cuban executive to import hundreds of thousands of black staff from different Caribbean colonies, basically Haiti and Jamaica. Black exertions, White Sugar illuminates the tale of those immigrants, their exploitation through the sugarcane businesses, and the recommendations they used to struggle again.

Philip A. Howard strains the socioeconomic and political situations in Haiti and Jamaica that led males to depart their homelands to chop, load, and haul sugarcane in Cuba. as soon as there, the sector staff, or braceros, have been topic to marginalization or even violence from the sugar businesses, which used buildings of race, ethnicity, colour, and sophistication to subjugate those workers. Howard argues that braceros drew on their cultural identities-from strategies of domestic and relatives to non secular worldviews-to interpret and contest their reports in Cuba. in addition they fought opposed to their exploitation in additional overt methods. As hard work stipulations worsened in line with falling sugar costs, the rules of anarcho-syndicalism converged with the Pan-African philosophy of Marcus Garvey to foster the evolution of a protest tradition between black Caribbean employees. by means of the mid-1920s, this identification inspired many braceros to take part in moves that sought to enhance wages in addition to residing and dealing stipulations.

The first full-length exploration of Haitian and Jamaican staff within the Cuban sugarcane undefined, Black exertions, White Sugar examines the industry's abuse of hundreds of thousands of black Caribbean immigrants, and the braceros' answering fight for energy and self-definition.

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