Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala, 1882-1923
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A01=Frederick Douglass Opie
Author_Frederick Douglass Opie
Category=JPQB
Category=KNX
Category=NHK
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Product details
- ISBN 9780813044422
- Weight: 300g
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 30 Sep 2012
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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 labourers. 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 labour. 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 organise by the ideas of Marcus Garvey. Regularly suffering class- and race-based attacks and persecution, black labourers 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.
The Guatemalan government sought to build an extensive railroad system in the 1880s, and actively recruited foreign labour. 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 organise by the ideas of Marcus Garvey. Regularly suffering class- and race-based attacks and persecution, black labourers 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.
Frederick Douglass Opie, professor of history and foodways at Babson College, is the author of Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, and a blogger at www.foodsasalens.com.
