Vol. 71/No. 24      June 18, 2007

“For the past 160 years,” said Gen. Moisés Sío Wong, “the Chinese have been an integral part of Cuban history and culture.” He pointed to their massive involvement in the independence wars against Spanish colonial rule, their participation in the 1959 revolution, and the development of Chinese Cuban social, cultural, and political organizations throughout the island.

Sío Wong, president of the Cuba-China Friendship Society, addressed the crowd at the site of a former barracks where Chinese indentured workers, as well as African slaves, were confined and held for sale on their arrival in Regla during the mid-1800s.

The 10th Festival of Chinese Overseas, which opened May 30, was part of the ongoing efforts, backed by Cuba’s revolutionary government, to promote knowledge of the real history of Chinese immigration to Cuba and its vital place in this nation’s culture and history of revolutionary struggle.

The festival was sponsored by the House of Chinese Arts and Traditions along with the Chinese Immigrant Studies Program at the University of Havana. Carmen Eng, director of the House of Chinese Arts and Traditions; and María Teresa Montes de Oca Choy, president of the Chinese Immigrant Studies Program, chaired the event. Gen. Gustavo Chui, president of the Organizing Commission of the Chung Wah Association, the main center of the Chinese Cuban community, presided over the events.

The program included cultural events open to the public and a three-day conference. Performances of a Chinese opera, Lion Dances, wushu (Chinese martial arts) demonstrations, an art exhibit, a mahjong contest, samplings of Chinese Cuban dishes, and presentations of Chinese theater and dance were among the featured events.

The conference, devoted to the theme “Chinese Associations in the Overseas Communities,” drew more than 100 people, including members of numerous Chinese associations from Havana and other cities, students and instructors at the Cuban Wushu School in Havana’s Chinatown, and teachers, artists, translators, and others involved in promoting Chinese Cuban culture. Also present were a 12-person delegation from China, four participants from the United States, and one from France.

Delegates of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries came from five provinces of China. At a June 2 ceremony held at the headquarters of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, China’s ambassador to Cuba, Zhao Rongxian, and Sío Wong issued a stamp celebrating ties of solidarity between the two countries. Among those attending the ceremony and providing musical entertainment at it were some of the 400 Chinese youth currently studying Spanish at the Santiago Figueroa school in San Antonio de los Baños in Havana province.

An additional 1,200 Chinese students will be coming to Cuba in the fall to learn Spanish, as part of Beijing’s efforts to expand its trade and investment in Latin America.

A Cuban delegation will attend the Forum for Friendship between the Peoples of China and Latin America, to be held September 17-22 in Chongqing in central China.  
 
Part of Cuba’s culture and history
“The impact of the Chinese throughout our country’s history goes much beyond their numerical strength,” said historian Pedro Cosme, touching on a central theme of the festival. Cosme gave conference delegates a tour of the local museum in Regla, which includes a section on the history of Chinese Cubans.

At the opening of the conference, following remarks by Zhang Enxiang, vice president of the legislative assembly in China’s Jilin province, General Chui, who is also a leader of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, gave the keynote address. He described how 140,000 Chinese were brought to Cuba between 1847 to 1874, mostly to work on sugar plantations to replace or supplement the dwindling supply of African slaves. “These were impoverished Chinese who would accept an abusive contract under which they were enslaved for eight years or more, subjected to forced labor and sometimes to punishment as cruel as what was inflicted on African blacks,” he said.

“Chinese Cubans joined the independence war from the very first bugle calls in 1868, and in massive numbers,” he noted, citing the example of revolutionary leaders such as Lt. Pío Cabrera, Capt. José Tolón, Cdr. Sebastián Siam, and Lt. Col. José Bu Tak. Chui pointed to subsequent generations of Chinese Cuban revolutionaries, from José Wong, murdered by the Machado dictatorship in 1930, to the all-Chinese José Wong Brigade of the Revolutionary National Militia, which helped consolidate the revolution in Havana’s Chinatown in the early 1960s.

“Thousands of Chinese Cubans joined the tasks of the revolution in the literacy campaign, the 1961 victory at Playa Girón on the Bay of Pigs, the October [1962 ‘Missile’] Crisis, internationalist missions, in the fields of health, defense, education, agriculture, science and technology,” Chui said.

He also noted that in 1960 revolutionary Cuba became the first Latin American government to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, and that today, in addition to increased trade and cultural exchanges between the two countries, Cuba has medical volunteers in China performing operations to restore eyesight to those suffering from cataracts and other ailments.

Chui also described how, over the decades, Chinese immigrants organized mutual aid societies. These organizations, offshoots of associations founded in China and with branches in the United States, Canada, and other countries around the world where Chinese settled, are based on family ties or common origins in different regions of China.  
 
Revival of Chinese associations
The role of the associations in the Chinese Cuban community today was the theme of the 2007 conference. At the closing session María Teresa Montes de Oca Choy noted that this year’s festival was marked by greater participation by leaders of associations, several of whom gave talks—often with informative video presentations—on the history and activities of their own organizations.

Conference sessions were held at the headquarters of different associations: Chang Wen Chung Tong, Kow Kong, and Lung Kong, as well as the Chung Wah Association and the House of Chinese Arts and Traditions. These and other associations also provided lunch and refreshments to conference delegates.

Graciela Lau Quan, vice president of the Lung Kong society, remarked, “There is a difference between the associations in Cuba and those in the United States, England, and Canada in how the leadership is chosen. In those places, they measure how much wealth the individuals have. In Cuba you have to work for the welfare of the community, you have to be a revolutionary.”

Members of various associations in Havana and delegates from Ciego de Avila, Holguín, Bayamo, and Camagüey explained how the societies provide vital services to the elderly members who were born in China: daily meals and other necessities, as well as visits to the gym, trips to the beach, and other recreational activities.

Rosario Chang, president of Chang Wen Chung Tong, explained how her association was shut down in 1967. The closing of most Chinese associations in Cuba, along with Arab and other similar associations and many churches and religious centers, coincided with what at the time was called the “Revolutionary Offensive,” the 1968 nationalization of most small businesses in Cuba. While many Chinese Cuban merchants and craftsmen continued to work as state employees, others emigrated to the United States and other countries.

Chang and others explained that the Chinese associations were reopened in the mid-1990s in response to the economic crisis known here as the Special Period, when Cuba abruptly lost most of its trade with the Soviet bloc countries. The associations were authorized to operate restaurants selling in hard currency, which allowed them to cover the costs of providing for the needs of the elderly Chinese at a time of shortages of many essential items. It was also part of the revival of Chinatown as a center of tourism to help bring in hard currency in order to buy food, medicine, and other necessities on the world market.

Today, Lau said, some 120 elderly residents of Chinatown go to Lung Kong’s Casa del Abuelo (senior citizens center) for free meals and other services, and another 80 who are less mobile are cared for at home.

The associations have also recruited new members, to expand beyond the decreasing numbers of those born in China to the much larger numbers of second, third, or fourth-generation Chinese Cubans, many of whom have found renewed pride in their Chinese roots and are taking classes in Mandarin, Chinese crafts, and martial arts.

Presentations were also given by professors, researchers, and university students on various aspects of history, including documentary videos such as Entre bambúes y palmeras (Between bamboo and palm trees), the first chapter of what will be a TV docudrama on the Chinese in Cuba.

Kathleen López, a professor at Lehman College in New York, and Mitzi Espinosa, a Havana librarian, gave a presentation on the little-known history of discrimination against traditional Chinese theater companies in Havana, San Francisco, and Honolulu in earlier decades. In Havana, Espinosa explained, local authorities would often force Chinese theaters to close by selectively enforcing safety regulations against them.

Isabelle Lausent-Herrera, a researcher from France, spoke about the history of Chinese in Peru, from early discrimination against the Chinese to the current wave of new immigration.  
 
Asians in U.S. interested in Cuba
Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press and editor of Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution, gave a presentation on that book. Citing the numerous meetings on the book across the United States, Canada, and other countries, she said it has generated unusually broad interest, touching a special chord among many people of Asian descent, who are proud when they learn about the real history of struggle of their ancestors.

This interest registers the impact of the ongoing struggles by immigrant workers across the United States who are fighting for the legalization of their status, Waters said. The book shows the attractive power of the example of Cuba’s socialist revolution, its “striking contrast with the discrimination that Chinese face elsewhere throughout the Americas and the world.”

Speaking after Waters, General Sío Wong noted the fact that some of the U.S. meetings on Our History Is Still Being Written required translation to Cantonese and Mandarin, and pointed to the importance of the book’s Chinese-language edition that is being prepared. “Pathfinder Press is playing an important role inside the belly of the beast by telling the truth about the Cuban Revolution,” he said.

General Chui, who joined Waters and Sío Wong on the platform, noted, “There are not only three Chinese Cuban generals in our Revolutionary Armed Forces. We also have many Chinese Cuban colonels, captains, and other officials and cadres. And many more are in the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, who are active in defense of our socialist revolution.”

After the presentation, conference participants bought some 50 copies of the book.

At the end of the festival, it was announced that next year’s event will be held here May 30-June 3, focusing on the theme of traditional medicine in Chinese Cuban culture.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home