Gone But Not Forgotten: The Overlooked Struggle of Chinese “Slaves”
By Nevin Coyne The Untold Story of Asian Labor in Cuba starting in 1847 and lasting until 1874, began a mass migration of Chinese laborers as both forced and willing participants were taken by ship to ports around Cuba and the Caribbean to replace the dwindling African slave labor. Of the 125,000 Chinese trafficked to Cuba, there were 2,841 who left behind testimonies that described their descent into a hellish system of bondage. One group came together to write a lengthy testimony of their experience, which opened with: “We are sinking in a strange place and living in a hell on earth” (Yun, 36). Many people forget or overlook that Chinese indentured laborers were essentially a replacement for African slave labor and were treated nearly identically. In Chinse in Cuba,…