Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala, 1882-1923

by Opie, Frederick Douglass

• ISBN13: 9780813033716
• ISBN10: 0813033713
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-07-05
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

"A significant contribution that enriches historical narratives. This is a wonderful case study that complicates Latin American history, and particularly labor history in that region, by emphasizing the positive role played by black migrants in labor mobilization in Guatemala.-Jean Muteba Rahier, Florida International University In the late nineteenth century, many Central American governments and countries sought to fill low-paying jobs and develop their economies by recruiting black American and West Indian laborers. Frederick Opie offers a revisionist interpretation of these workers, who were often depicted as simple victims with little, if any, enduring legacy. The Guatemalan government sought to build an extensive railroad system in the 1880s, and actively recruited foreign labor. For poor workers of African descent, immigrating to Guatemala was seen as an opportunity to improve their lives and escape from the racism of the Jim Crow U.S. South and the French and British colonial Caribbean. Using primary and secondary sources as well as ethnographic data, Opie details the struggles of these workers who were ultimately inspired to organize by the ideas of Marcus Garvey. Regularly suffering class- and race-based attacks and persecution, black laborers frequently met such attacks with resistance. Their leverage--being able to shut down the railroad--was crucially important to the revolutionary movements in 1897 and 1920.

Author Biography

Frederick Douglass Opie is associate professor of history and director of the African Diaspora Program at Marist College. He is the author of Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Foreword	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Historical Context: Race and Labor in Guatemala	p. 8
Race, Resistance, and Revolution in the Late Nineteenth Century	p. 28
Race Relations on the Early-Twentieth-Century Caribbean Frontier	p. 41
Revolvers, Shotguns, Machetes, and Clubs: The Strikes of 1909-1919	p. 52
Labor Radicalism on the Caribbean Coast: Ladino Mobilization in Guatemala, 1920-1923	p. 66
We Depend on Others Too Much: Garveyism and Labor Radicalism in the Caribbean Basin	p. 87
Epilogue	p. 97
Notes	p. 103
Bibliography	p. 125
Index	p. 139
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