Three Guys from Miami Celebrate Cuban: 100 Great Recipes for Cuban Entertaining by Glenn Lindgren & Raul Musibay & Jorge Castillo

Author:Glenn Lindgren & Raul Musibay & Jorge Castillo [Lindgren, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Glenn M. Lindgren
Published: 2015-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chinese Cubans

The Chinese people first came to Cuba in the 1840s. Sugar plantation owners started bringing workers in from China to shore up the workforce in the cane fields. With new attitudes and laws against slavery, the worldwide slave trade was in decline and Chinese workers were willing to work for low pay. Cutting cane is laborious work, and the conditions in the fields are very hazardous. The leaves and stalks of the cane can be very sharp and it’s easy to get small cuts in the skin – cuts that don’t heal quickly in the damp, tropical climate.

The Chinese that came were indentured servants – that meant that they were little better off than slaves. They had to work for a fixed period to pay off the cost of their passage from China. However, once the contract was satisfied, many Chinese headed to Havana to start small businesses and become trades people.

It has become kind of a cliché, but yes, many enterprising Chinese started restaurants and laundries. Most of the Chinese settled in the same Havana neighborhood. Soon you saw street and shop signs in both Spanish and Chinese. The citizens of Havana’s Chinatown even had their own Chinese language newspapers and theaters.

Chinese people continued to immigrate to Cuba in the twentieth century. Many came because they had family in Cuba. Many more came, quite ironically, to escape communism at home. Raúl remembers buying fried fish from a Chinese street corner vendor – a common site in the 1940s and 1950s.

With Castro’s revolution in 1959, many Chinese fled the island to the United States. There are still many people throughout Cuba and Cubans around the world who have some Chinese blood. In Miami, we know several Chinese Cubans – the original Chino-Latinos.

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