TY - JOUR
AU - Núñez Seixas, Xosé, M
AB - Abstract On the eve of World War I, Havana boasted the second largest urban community of Iberian Galicians in the world, after Buenos Aires. The size of its immigrant population made it a core of Galician politics and culture, as one of the main centers of the Galician diaspora community in Latin America, which amounted then to more than half a million persons between Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay, Brazil and the United States. Galicians left a deep imprint on modern Cuban society. This legacy could be seen in the persistence of ambiguous stereotypes about gallegos in Cuban popular theatre and cinematography until the 1950s. Numerous Galicians experienced fast-paced, upward social mobility during the first decades of the twentieth century. And the network of Galician local associations in Havana influenced the development of social mobilization in their country of origin during the first decades of the twentieth century. This was a multifaceted phenomenon, which found expression in dozens of initiatives that took place at the local level, linking Galician parishes in Europe with their “neighbors” now residing in Havana. The present essay looks at the diverse forms of interaction between the Galician community in Cuba and the sociopolitical movements that developed in Spain during the first half of the twentieth century. Iberian Galicia was characterized by high rates of emigration between 1850 and 1930. Though there have been significant numbers of overseas migrants from almost all Spanish regions, Galicia has clearly led the lot through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Until the late 1950s most Spanish immigrants to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil came from Galicia (between 40 and 50% of all immigrants), while Canary Islanders composed the largest portion of Spanish migrants to Venezuela, closely followed by Galicians and Asturians. These last two groups were the main ones among Spanish migrants to Cuba (together with Canary Islanders), as well as to Puerto Rico and Mexico. If considered as an independent entity, Galicia would be among the European countries characterized by the highest rates of emigration in the period of mass migration (1850–1930). Migration deeply affected all aspects of Galician life and became a powerful conditioning factor of metropolitan society, economy and sociopolitical evolution. Since the late 1990s, new approaches to the study of Galician migrant communities in America (and later Europe) have uncovered the extent to which migrants, both those who returned to Spain and those who stayed in America, provided new resources for collective action and social change in rural and urban Galicia.1 While Spanish immigrants in the Americas were mostly concentrated in the cities, Galician immigrants were even more urban than the Spanish average. Furthermore, Galicians displayed a clear preference for large cities. In 1919, according to some estimates, around 9% of the population of Havana had been born in the Iberian Galicia. Galicians also made up 8–10% of the total population of the city of Buenos Aires until the 1930s, and something similar happened in Montevideo.2 Galician migrants were to be found among shopkeepers, shop assistants, and clerks, as well as among street sweepers or tramway drivers.3 In contrast with Southern Italy, Poland, or other European sending countries, the “historical wound” of migration in Galicia is far from being healed. The feeling of connection that Galicians have for others in the diaspora, what we might call diasporic imagination, is still alive in Galician society in the twenty-first century.4 An expression of this is the continuous strength of the associative network of Galician migrants abroad. More than four hundred recreational, social, cultural, and mutual aid associations exist today outside Galicia, over 160 of them in the Americas.5 The network of Galician mutual aid associations in Havana, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo that peaked in the 1920s (at over five hundred) had a significant impact on the sociopolitical dynamics of their places of origin. They provided resources for parish-based and locally based land-reform movements, as well as local weekly newspapers and politically articulated factions aimed at challenging the power of rural patrons. Emigrants sent home money, ideas, newspapers, and pamphlets, and those who returned—around 40–50% of the total until 1930—were to some extent “new men,” who were forged by competing for a living, who valued education and the need for mutual cooperation, and who held little respect for traditional patrons and rural elites. Thus, social mobilization in the Galician countryside during the first third of the twentieth century may be seen as an unexpected outcome of mass migration, which clearly helped spread new ideas alongside monetary resources. Likewise, emigrants financed public utilities throughout rural Galicia, as well as more than 250 primary schools before 1936, which were mostly characterized by their adoption of modern pedagogic methods. This consequence of mass migration operated at the level of collective action and has to be added to the most frequently studied impacts of exodus on the home country, that is, the amount and destinations of money remittances, which operated at a family level. In Galicia as in other European regions, savings earned in America were invested in buying land, allowing smallholding peasants access to full property.6 Transatlantic migration has also given rise to discussion on another level: its impact on the development of Galician ethnonationalism. From 1916 on, Galician activists began to use the label “nationalist” and to claim Galician nationhood based on the region’s linguistic distinctiveness. It is difficult to evaluate the extent to which mass migration affected the recovery of Galician culture and language after the mid-nineteenth century. On the one hand, mass migration to Latin American countries diminished the number of Galician-speaking people, and returnees tended to introduce Creole Spanish into rural settings. On the other hand, this effect was counterbalanced by the fact that many Galician writers, periodicals, and political associations emerged among the migrant communities in Argentina, Cuba, and Uruguay, waving the banner of Galician regionalism and, after 1920, of Galician nationalism. In fact, prior to 1936, ethnonationalist groups enjoyed a broader audience among the Galician migrants of Buenos Aires than in Galicia. A significant number of leaders favoring autonomy in the 1920s and 1930s turned into regional activists after a period of migration in the Americas.7 Central to this process was the emergence, beginning in the 1870s, of a Galician-American immigrant elite, composed of successful merchants, entrepreneurs, and members of the liberal professions. Many lawyers, university professors, writers, and journalists who experienced great success and enjoyed increasing popularity in Argentina, Uruguay, and Cuba had actually been liberal, republican, and regionalist expatriates, voluntary exiles who had preferred to leave Galicia following the failure of the First Spanish Republic (1873–74) and the coming of the Restoration monarchy (1874–1923). They aimed at recreating Galician identity, and a better Spain, in the new Latin American republics, particularly in dynamic urban centers like Buenos Aires.8 This elite was joined by new arrivals (lawyers and journalists who wanted to make a career in America), until the 1930s, and became increasingly diversified. There were socialist and anarchist expatriates, as well as republicans and, since the 1920s, some ethnonationalists. Some of these recent arrivals took over the ethnic leadership of the Galician migrant community, shaped a political and cultural program for the whole community, and dreamed of a renovation of Galicia and Spain. Their initiative contributed to the foundation of journals, mutual aid associations, leisure centers, and small-scale associations that brought together immigrants who shared a similar parochial or local origin. The powerfully articulated immigrant communities of Buenos Aires, Havana, and Montevideo were regarded with envy by Galician political elites, who often considered the Galician Americans to be the real promoters of the home country’s redemption.9 The more than six hundred Galician associations in the Americas before 1936—mostly concentrated in Buenos Aires and Montevideo—became in some respects a model of social organization. However, the dynamics of sociopolitical agitation varied according to the main destinations of Galician migration. While Galician immigrants in Brazilian cities hardly founded powerful associations, those in Montevideo gave priority to the establishment of large-scale mutual aid associations where politics played a minor role until the 1930s.10 By contrast, Buenos Aires and Havana saw the foundation of dozens of microterritorial associations that united immigrants from the same county, parish, or municipality and offered migrant leaders fertile soil for political agitation. In this respect, both communities followed similar patterns, yet their paths began to diverge in the mid-1920s. The Argentine Galicians played an increasing role in the politics of the homeland until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War,11 sent money to help Galician political refugees to escape from Francoist Spain, and hosted hundreds of political exiles during the 1940s. Thus, Buenos Aires became “the capital of the ideal Galicia,” in the words of the ethnonationalist leader and writer Alfonso R. Castelao, the president of the Consello de Galiza, a kind of regional government in exile.12 In contrast, the Galician community in Cuba blossomed during the first two decades of the twentieth century, but since the 1920s its political and cultural influence on the development of the politics of the homeland has declined. During the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, very few Spanish and Galician exiles took shelter in the Caribbean, in contrast to the large numbers who went to Mexico and Argentina. Exploring the reasons for such divergence may shed some light on the inner dynamics of diasporas and help explain why some diaspora networks succeed and endure, while others vanish. What was more important: the sociopolitical conditions that existed in the host society or the sociocultural background that migrants carried with them? How relevant was the role of ethnic leaders? Did sociopolitical and cultural mobilization in the sending society matter for the strategies adopted by migrant communities? In this essay, it will be argued that the sociocultural background of immigrants mattered; however, in the mid- and long-term a major role was played by the opportunities available for individual and collective action within the migrant community, as well as the strategic decisions taken by immigrant elites. Such decisions were in turn conditioned by the modalities of their insertion and participation in Cuban politics and society. In fact, immigrant communities constituted a subfield of political agency often invisible to the host societies but not to the sending countries. The Galician Community in Cuba On the eve of World War I, Havana boasted the second largest urban community of Iberian Galicians in the world, after Buenos Aires and ahead of Galicia’s main town at that time (A Coruña). The size of its immigrant population made it a center of Galician politics and culture until the second decade of the twentieth century. In 1899, some 34.5% of Spanish immigrants in Cuba originated from the Iberian northwest; by 1931 this figure had risen to 40.1%.13 Contrary to Caribbean immigrants, such as Haitians and Jamaicans, Galicians tended to settle in the cities: Spanish-born immigrants represented 14.8% of Cuba’s urban population in 1907 and increased to represent 21% of Havana’s population in 1919. This indicates that Galicians composed between 7 and 10% of the total population of the capital. In 1922, the number of Galician immigrants in Cuba was estimated at 150,000.14 Galicians left a deep imprint on Cuban modern society. This legacy was noticeable in the persistence of ambiguous stereotypes about immigrants from Galicia (gallegos) in Cuban popular theatre and cinematography until the 1950s, which presented Iberians as hardworking and honest, yet also stereotyped them as prudish and unskilled. Contrary to British Caribbean immigrants, Haitians, and other communities, Galicians were not regarded as undesirable aliens but as silly relatives.15 The National Theater (Teatro Nacional), which ranks among the largest historic buildings in the capital, was originally constructed to host the biggest Galician association of Havana, the Galician Center (Centro Gallego), founded in 1879. Galician mutual aid associations in the Americas had some generic antecedents dating back to the mid-eighteenth century. In Havana, several trade guilds from the “Ancient Kingdom of Galicia” could be found as early as 1804. However, the rise of Galician ethnic associations was a later phenomenon, which mainly coincided with the onset of mass migration after 1870. The Sociedad de Beneficencia de Naturales de Galicia in Havana, established in December of 1871, was the first Galician society of that period in the Americas. Eight years later, the Galician Center (Centro Gallego) of Havana was formed. The main objectives of these institutions were mutual aid and beneficence. Their leadership incorporated economic elites from the immigrant community along with intellectual and political agitators, journalists, and publishers. At the end of the colonial period, the Galician community was articulated not only through a network of associations, choral societies, and some weekly newspapers—such as Eco de Galicia and La Tierra Gallega—directed by regionalist intellectuals, as well as diverse journals in Galician and Spanish, most of which supported some form of home rule for Galicia.16 The attitude of the Galician immigrant community towards the process of Cuban independence at the end of the nineteenth century was not homogeneous. On the one hand, the most representative Galician institutions and many immigrants adhered to Spanish nationalist stances during the period of the wars of independence. They shared the view held by the so-called Spanish Party (Partido Español), according to which, the end of Spanish rule over Cuba would bring about racial anarchy and the shakeup of ethnic hierarchies in favor of the colored population.17 Although Cuban home rule had been warmly supported by some Galician spokesmen and journalists, some of the fiercest opponents of Cuban devolution saw no contradiction between this tenet and the upholding of regionalism and decentralization for the future restructuring of Iberian Spain, bestowing large administrative powers upon Galicia, the Basque Country, and Catalonia.18 On the other hand, some Galicians—alongside other peninsular settlers and Canary islanders—were found among the ranks of the supporters of independence, as well as among the mambises (guerrilla fighters).19 Patriotic mobilization among the Spanish settlers who remained in the former colonies contributed to reinforcing the sense of belonging among them. The memory of Spanish rule and the fallen soldiers in the colonial war of 1895–98, for instance, remained alive among Spanish immigrants in Cuba and Puerto Rico.20 Yet, the violent separation of the island from the Spanish polity did not significantly disrupt the flow of immigrants from Galicia, which in fact increased slightly after 1902. Like the Catalan separatist groups born in Eastern Cuba during the first decade of the twentieth century, the Galician ethnonationalist organizations that emerged in Cuba during the early 1920s found a source of ideological inspiration in the intellectual architects of Cuban independence, as well as in the Irish Fenians of the United States. Thus, they often quoted the writings of the founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party José Martí, who had by then been converted into a national myth.21 Galician immigrants in Cuba were mainly occupied in small-scale commerce, the tobacco industry, alcohol distilleries, bakeries, tanneries, or laundries. However, like most Spaniards, Galicians were also present in every other sector of the Cuban economy. In 1899, 64.4% of working male Spanish immigrants were salaried workers (a large portion of whom were employed in the tertiary sector), and 27% worked in agriculture or cattle farming. They constituted the majority in some occupations: 90% of sailors, 68.4% of merchants, 54.5% of bakers, and 41.3% of tailors. Yet there were clear differences between the various Iberian communities: Galicians were overrepresented in professions linked to urban services. Moreover, several work niches were also occupied by people from a single municipality or parish of origin, such as gardeners from A Estrada (Pontevedra) and cooks from the Barcala Valley (A Coruña).22 The vitality of the Galician community led to the reinforcement of its organization. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Galician Center enjoyed solid growth through a broad range of mutual assistance activities and other services. By 1919 it boasted some fifty thousand members and had constructed a medical center. Other beneficence and mutual assistance institutions sprang up alongside the Galician Center in the first third of the twentieth century, counting on several hundreds of members.23 In a parallel fashion, veritable swarms of Galician parish, municipal, and supramunicipal associations emerged in Buenos Aires, Havana, and Montevideo between 1904 and 1930 that took the parish, the municipality, or the comarca (county, composed of several municipalities) as the locus of their territorial identification. These institutions can be referred to generically as “instruction societies” because most of them had an educational mission. Local associations did not appear spontaneously. On the contrary, they were the result of the existence of a space of transnational communication, first channeled through informal networks, which then crystallized in the foundation of associations.24 At times, a concerted effort by a community was sparked by a request from homeland acquaintances concerning a specific end, such as funds for public works, a church or a cemetery. The request would come through one or several male immigrants with professional prestige, prominent economic status, and a healthy network of personal relationships, resulting in a provisional committee to raise the needed funds.25 Though these committees did not always lead to an association, their informal organization fostered collective migrant actions to benefit their counties of origin. The Alianza Aresana de Instrucción of Havana, which pioneered the associative movement, arose from a meeting called by a merchant in November of 1903 to address a request from the parish priest of Ares (A Coruña) for local emigrants to help finance the rebuilding of its church. In April 1904, the participants agreed to establish a permanent association composed of forty-six members residing in Cuba, Mexico, and the USA, and they helped fund a primary school in Ares that was inaugurated in 1908. In spite of its origin linked to the local clergy, this association later became nonreligious, and several leading members were known to be Masons.26 The number of microterritorial associations increased dramatically after 1904. The sixteen Galician instruction societies in Cuba in 1909 became sixty-four in 1916, and 104 by 1923 (ninety-nine of them in Havana). There were 204 instruction societies on the island between 1904 and 1936, representing some 40% of Galician municipalities, mostly from the northern areas of the Lugo and Coruña provinces. Other estimates indicate a total of 216 Galician associations (including regional associations), of which 209 were local (microterritorial) societies, up until 1959.27 A direct correlation did not always exist between the presence of a sufficient contingent of immigrants in Cuba from a certain parish or municipality and the formation of an association. Two factors favored the emergence of microterritorial societies: 1) the presence of leaders, successful migrants, and prominent figures with status, charisma, and relational or tangible capital who could give their stamp of approval to associations, as well as political and intellectual activists interested in fostering associations; and 2) a certain degree of social and political mobilization in the places of origin. Thus, the creation of associations in Cuba did not only depend on social mobilization among immigrants and was far from being a one-sided phenomenon. The development of civil society in the Galician countryside was mirrored overseas, and vice versa. In fact, this constituted a good example of transatlantic entangled history.28 Table 1 Geographical Identification of Galician Instruction Societies in Cuba (1904–1936) Province Parish 2 or + P 1 M 2 or + M County Prov Total A Coruña 24 8 35 11 6 1 85 Lugo 25 7 28 12 3 1 76 Ourense 1 - 11 1 3 1 17 Pontevedra 8 2 14 - 1 1 26 GALICIA 58 17 88 24 13 4 204 Percentage % 28,43 8,33 43,13 11,76 6,37 1,96 100 Province Parish 2 or + P 1 M 2 or + M County Prov Total A Coruña 24 8 35 11 6 1 85 Lugo 25 7 28 12 3 1 76 Ourense 1 - 11 1 3 1 17 Pontevedra 8 2 14 - 1 1 26 GALICIA 58 17 88 24 13 4 204 Percentage % 28,43 8,33 43,13 11,76 6,37 1,96 100 (P: Parish; M: Municipality; Prov: province) Author’s own elaboration, based on collected data. Table 1 Geographical Identification of Galician Instruction Societies in Cuba (1904–1936) Province Parish 2 or + P 1 M 2 or + M County Prov Total A Coruña 24 8 35 11 6 1 85 Lugo 25 7 28 12 3 1 76 Ourense 1 - 11 1 3 1 17 Pontevedra 8 2 14 - 1 1 26 GALICIA 58 17 88 24 13 4 204 Percentage % 28,43 8,33 43,13 11,76 6,37 1,96 100 Province Parish 2 or + P 1 M 2 or + M County Prov Total A Coruña 24 8 35 11 6 1 85 Lugo 25 7 28 12 3 1 76 Ourense 1 - 11 1 3 1 17 Pontevedra 8 2 14 - 1 1 26 GALICIA 58 17 88 24 13 4 204 Percentage % 28,43 8,33 43,13 11,76 6,37 1,96 100 (P: Parish; M: Municipality; Prov: province) Author’s own elaboration, based on collected data. Not unsurprisingly, some immigrant societies intentionally mirrored the peasant mobilizations of the place of origin. At other times, anticlientelistic mobilization in Galicia affected the unification of parish societies at the municipal or county level. This occurred between 1911 and 1915 with the associations in Havana that belonged to Vilalba county (Lugo).29 This also meant that associations did more than merely reproduce the preexisting sentiments of territorial belonging found in the local community from which the immigrants hailed. They sought to recreate the social space of the homeland in the Americas. The available samples for defining the social profiles of members of Galician instruction societies indicate clear overrepresentation of merchants, service sector employees, and those working in commerce, as well as unemployed women. As in the case of Montevideo and Buenos Aires, immigrant associations failed to attract broad sectors of the immigrant working classes, which found trade unions more attractive for representing their interests. In particular, the middle-class immigrants’ preference for giving priority to investments in leisure, beneficence, and schools in the motherland clashed with the immediate priority of working-class immigrants, who were more interested in mutual aid services.30 Membership data for most Cuban associations are hardly available. Yet, some examples suggest that qualified manual laborers, artisans, day laborers, unqualified manual workers, and sailors were underrepresented. A 1918 sample of fifty-nine members of the Liga Santaballesa shows that merchants comprised 20.33% of the total; clerks accounted for 25.42%; only 13.5% were sailors, artisans, or qualified manual laborers; and a miniscule 1.7% were day laborers and unqualified manual laborers. Of the ninety-nine members of Progreso de Lousada in 1941, merchants constituted 19.2%, employees accounted for 10.1%, some 6% were qualified manual laborers, and 2% were unqualified manual laborers and day laborers.31 Contemporary observers stressed that, while the leaders of instruction societies tended to be small- or medium-sized merchants, businessmen in the tobacco trade, intellectuals, or journalists, most fee-paying members were clerks, qualified manual workers, artisans, or service sector employees.32 Ethnic leaders were overwhelmingly male; women played a subordinate role, as wives or daughters. However, one association, Hijas de Galicia (Daughters of Galicia, founded in 1917), sought to provide healthcare and protection for Galician immigrant women, thus preventing them from falling into indigence and prostitution.33 Most associations had modest amounts of members, capital, and property. But to preside over an instruction society implied immediate social recognition on both sides of the Atlantic. Back in Galicia, ethnic leaders received honors and distinctions. This gave them clear symbolic capital vis-à-vis both the Galician immigrant collective and the local community in the homeland.34 All societies also named representatives in Galicia, mainly returnees. As early as 1908, emigrants returning from Havana established a mutual assistance society in the municipality of Ares (A Coruña). From the early 1920s on there was a returnees’ center in the village of A Estrada, which had its own newspaper and played an active role in municipal cultural, political, and social life. The returnees’ association became the main driving force of modernizing initiatives in the county until the 1930s.35 Education and Social Progress Microterritorial associations evince very diverse sociopolitical characteristics. A few of these societies in Buenos Aires began as ethnically based, working-class charities, inspired by immigrant contact with workers’ movements in the host countries. This was not the predominant tendency in Cuba, where the sociopolitical orientation of most instruction societies was fairly moderate and mainly linked to diffuse democratic-progressive projects concerned with issues related to local power in their hometowns. The main goal of Galician local and county associations was to set up or equip educational establishments in their hometowns. Through funding from instruction societies in the Americas, no less than 225 primary schools were founded in Galician parishes and villages during the first third of the twentieth century, and many existing schools were equipped with pedagogical materials or additional classrooms. Cuban associations were responsible for establishing 147 schools (65.33% of the total), mostly located in the provinces of A Coruña and Lugo (Figure 1).36 Figure 1: View largeDownload slide El Eco de Galicia, Havana, 187 (1923). Figure 1: View largeDownload slide El Eco de Galicia, Havana, 187 (1923). Though supporting schools in their places of origin was the primordial goal of Galician overseas instruction societies, broader sociopolitical agendas were also present. The educational program itself and the pedagogical ideology that informed most migrant-supported schools were more advanced and progressive than in Spanish public schools. This was part of a project that involved anticlientelistic efforts at democratic reform, as well as the construction of civil society in the country of origin. The Cuban-Galician intellectual Constantino Horta argued in 1912 that schools were a vehicle for the desired regeneration of Galicia through professional and technical training, civic education, and knowledge of the national history. Once the school had created citizens aware of their duties, democracy would extend itself: The means to regenerate and transform the Galicia of Spain [. . .] should proceed from the Galicia of the Americas, and should be transmitted by the few emigrants who return to the region; these means should not be entrusted to those who reside there and even less to centralist governments that impoverish our people [. . .]. The lever that lifts this social transformation labor in our land is education and the instruction of its inhabitants through newspapers, brochures, books, conferences, lectures, meetings and especially through schools.37 Mutual assistance objectives were also prominently reflected in the activities of instruction societies, but gradually lost ground as the great mutual assistance and beneficence institutions became established. Many migrants joined these entities because they were interested in mutual aid and recreation. A few leaders saw their associations as a platform for cultivating political objectives, but for most emigrants associationism mainly involved tangible material benefits. Supporting education became a unifying objective for a variety of actors. Beyond any precise sociopolitical orientation, education provided social returns and benefits for associates, for their present and future family members, and for their hometowns.38 Emigrant political initiatives were mostly limited to the local sphere, but sociopolitically scattered efforts could sometimes be coordinated into a common project. The goals expressed by founding members of associations were often imprecise. They tended to call for the progress and modernization of Galicia in vague terms that would win the highest support possible of emigrants from a specific place of origin: “union, good faith, honesty and philanthropy.”39 Grandiose aims were cast in interclass community terms, such as fostering an “associative spirit” among and between neighbors in Galicia and the Americas and coordinating efforts among agrarian associations and emigrant societies to foster educational progress and defeat political clientelism at its very roots.40 Societies established from 1920 on were more politicized, especially those arising from southern Galicia, and this translated into explicit, specific local support for the republican-oriented agrarian movement. As mentioned above, the Hijos del Ayuntamiento de La Estrada association was founded in 1915 at the request of the home county’s Agrarian Federation, which had been established in the homeland two years prior. This society became a direct source of funding for peasants’ agitation in that county, dedicating 50% of its funds to maintaining agricultural trade unions in the four municipalities of origin. The association also became quite prominent in the Galician community politics of Havana.41 Many migrant associations followed a similar pattern. Thus, the farmers’ association of Reádegos (Ourense) was also backed by the Hijos de Reádegos society and later by its successor, the Alianza de Villamarín of Havana.42 Explicit alignments of Galician associations in Havana with the socialist or anarchist-oriented workers’ movement in their homeland were less frequent. Unión Orensana of Havana (1909) constituted a noteworthy exception: it aspired to unite peasants and workers in support of reformist socialism and political reform. A full 70% of its income was directed to the Socialist Community Center and Lay School of its hometown (Ourense). Other associations generally limited themselves to supporting agricultural modernization in their counties of origin by collecting funds for farmers’ societies in Galicia, especially before 1920. Specific parish or municipal initiatives also involved the purchasing of fertilizer and communal agricultural machinery funded by emigrants. This also included improving hometowns through public and beneficent works: construction of hospitals, public lighting, waterworks, roads, and bridges. And most associations supported local political initiatives that would later become regional: encouraging political reform, neutralizing the power of local bosses through political consciousness-raising and peasant mobilization, and promoting the democratization of the political system and transparency in management, along with what was referred to as the “moral and material progress” of places of origin (Figure 2). Figure 2: View largeDownload slide Washing place erected in San Xoán de Río (Ourense), thanks to the donations of local emigrants in Cuba, 1935 (@Arquivo da Emigración Galega, Santiago de Compostela). Figure 2: View largeDownload slide Washing place erected in San Xoán de Río (Ourense), thanks to the donations of local emigrants in Cuba, 1935 (@Arquivo da Emigración Galega, Santiago de Compostela). Agrarianism, Regionalism, and Immigrant Mobilization in Cuba Emigrant intellectual elites frequently acted in conjunction with sociopolitical movements throughout Galicia to foster transnational collective action. In so doing, they followed (on a smaller scale) a pattern of diaspora mobilization similar to that of Irish Americans.43 However, propaganda visits from political leaders of the Galician land-reform movement also had a catalyzing effect after the first decade of the twentieth century and reinforced the existing links between both shores of the Galician “Atlantic community.” The first leaders in seeking emigrants’ support were the metropolitan regionalists, who were directly inspired by the example of Irish-Americans. Since the 1880s, regionalist intellectuals and writers related to the Galician cultural renaissance (Rexurdimento) had experienced greater popularity in the Galician immigrant community of Havana than in the European homeland. Not only did migrants read their books, but they also financed some of their publications, including the third volume of the first “national history” of Galicia, the Historia de Galicia (1888), penned by the liberal regionalist Manuel Murguía. They particularly welcomed the books published by the female poet Rosalía de Castro, a key figure of the Rexurdimento who became a legend in the Galician diaspora after her death in 1885.44 Cuban Galicians also stand out in claiming the standardization of the Galician language. With this objective, a Havana-based association to promote the creation of a Galician language academy was set up in June 1905, thanks to the initiative of several journalists and writers, such as the poet Manoel Curros Enríquez—another prominent figure of the Rexurdimento, who had migrated to Cuba in 1894—and some qualified workers, such as the republican lithographer Xosé Fontenla Leal. The remittances sent from Havana decisively contributed to the creation of the Academy of the Galician Language three months later, as well as to financing its activity through the second decade of the century. The cultural commitment of the Havana association for the promotion of the Galician Academy was in theory devoid of political implications. Yet its more than four hundred members included several leaders of the instruction societies and the Galician Center, who would play a major role in community politics during the ensuing decades.45 Cultural activities were soon followed by explicit support of social movements and political initiatives in the homeland. At the height of its popularity in 1907, the political movement Galician Solidarity (Solidaridad Gallega) sought to consciously project its activity into the Galician communities of Buenos Aires and Havana. This alliance of traditionalists, regionalists, and republicans followed the example of the Catalan coalition Solidaritat Catalana by seeking to break the political monopoly of the monarchist liberal and conservative parties, which had alternated in power since the last decade of the nineteenth century. This coalition recommended that agrarian trade unions support overseas instruction societies in their districts, parishes, or municipalities in order to “faithfully execute their ideas.”46 Several Galician-Cuban newspapers were openly sympathetic to the solidarity movement and embraced the demand, first voiced by the more radical organization Directorate of Teis, to end the land tenancy system known as foros.47 These schemes never actually materialized due to the rapid demise of Galician Solidarity, but their impact in the medium term was relevant. In 1908, Galicians in Cuba formed a solidarity center along with an early land redemption committee, which was presided by Fontenla Leal and later led by the agrarian poet and ethnonationalist activist Ramón Cabanillas. In subsequent years, several Havana journals regularly expressed sympathy for the Galician land-reform movement.48 The October 1909 visit of Emilio Rodal, a delegate of the Directorate of Teis, significantly affected political effervescence among Cuban Galicians. Following, once again, the example of the Irish communities in North America, Rodal had been commissioned to build support from emigrants for the fight against the foros, which was carried out by the most important social movement in Galicia prior to 1936, the land-reform movement (agrarismo).49 Not long after his arrival in Havana, a well-attended assembly at the Galician Center led to increased support for the land redemption campaign and a public subscription to fund agrarianist propaganda. However, in the end, the economic contributions were below expectations; Rodal faced serious opposition from many members who supported the foros, and the center subsequently retracted its support for the campaign. For a time, instruction society leaders encouraged the establishment of a new land redemption committee in Havana, under the auspices of several intellectuals and journalists from the Galician community.50 During the second decade of the twentieth century, the land-reform movement took strong root among Galician societies in Cuba. This was reflected, too, in the establishment of new parish and county associations, which were directly inspired by the echoes of agrarian mobilization in their hometowns.51 The emergence of supralocal projects aimed at coordinating the scattered initiatives of the migrant associations was also related to that influence. A first expression was the formation in early 1910 of the Representative Committee of Galician Instruction Societies in Havana (Comité Representativo de las Sociedades Gallegas de Instrucción, CRSI), the first regional federation of Galician associations in the Americas—followed nine years later by the Coruña’s Federation of Associations in Buenos Aires and by the most important Galician political organization on the continent, the Federation of Galician Societies (FSG) of Argentina, which was founded in 1921.52 The CRSI was set up by eleven entities that jointly sent a memorandum to the Spanish Ministry of Education asking it to ensure the well-being of schools financed by immigrants; it did not express political objectives but instead sought “to ensure the ongoing existence of these societies” and to “strengthen relations” among them.53 The committee’s initial moderate steps were limited to backing the state educational projects announced by the new Spanish prime minister, the liberal politician José Canalejas.54 The politicization of the Galician community in Cuba was strongly influenced by the visit of an agrarian leader, which took place four years later. Now it was the turn of Basilio Alvarez, the most charismatic agrarian agitator in Galicia at that time and an ardent supporter of populist strategies. An ordained priest and the founder and head of the party Galician Action (Acción Gallega, 1909), Alvarez represented the republican variant of the land-reform movement and for a time galvanized public opposition to clientelism and the foros in the Galician countryside. As early as 1910, he sought occasional support from emigrants during elections in Galicia, and his Galician Action enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of the Galician-Cuban journal Suevia, which also supported other short-lived initiatives. The agrarian leader visited the island in April of 1913 and spoke at several meetings about land property, clientelism, and the need for “regional regeneration.” In Havana, he also published his most incendiary book, which encouraged emigrants to see themselves as the “General Staff and Officers” of a “peasant army” that would fight for social emancipation of smallholding peasants and farmers, as well as for a vague “redemption” of Galicia. However, the timing of this movement was ill-fated, and an intense struggle erupted among various factions within the Galician Center’s board of directors, all seeking to profit from the visit of the agrarian leader to reinforce their position within the immigrant community.55 The Galician Center received Basilio Alvarez warmly, but Galician immigrants in the Cuban countryside were more modest in their support, and the Havana instruction societies committed very little specifically. As a consequence, Alvarez left with few tangible results from his visit. 56 In spite of this rather underwhelming outcome, lasting links were forged with Cuban instruction societies. More powerful than practical results was the myth that equated Basilio Álvarez to the Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, who had made a successful tour in the United States to build support for the Irish Land League. The myth of the “Galician Parnell” was captured in the ardent civic poetry of Ramón Cabanillas, who published in Havana his book No desterro (In exile, 1913).57 Several fruitless attempts were made to reactivate the agrarian organization within the Galician immigrant community, thanks to the arrival of new Galician propagandists. In early 1917, the agrarian activist Xosé Diéguez Cerdeira arrived in Havana and founded a short-lived Galician Bloc to spread the agrarian creed. On its board of directors were some association leaders who sympathized with federal republicanism.58 The Galician-Cuban newspaper Eco de Galicia also supported the redemption of foros in 1922 and timidly backed the activities in Galicia of the Spanish socialist trade unions.59 The CRSI accomplished little more than expressing its broad rejection of clientelism and its concomitant desire for the reform and regeneration of Galician society. Organizational instability and political inaction defined its existence. It grew from fourteen member societies in 1912 to seventy societies in 1920 and to eighty-four in 1930. After that it declined and completely disappeared in early 1936.60 Among its projects were coordinating the pedagogical work of instruction societies in Cuba; supervising the construction of schools and hiring of teachers in Galicia; managing state subsidies; creating schools for arts, agriculture, and vocational training; assisting rural municipalities in building roads, fountains and public washhouses; and even establishing savings and loans to provide credit to peasants in Galicia for farm improvement.61 However, the CRSI was only politically prominent from late 1922 to mid-1923, at the height of the campaigns against the foros in Galicia. In contrast with the lukewarm attitude of Galician Center leaders, the CRSI, the Hijos del Ayuntamiento de La Estrada, and the Hijos de Silleda organized several meetings and established support committees for the Galician land-reform movement. This went hand in hand with parallel endeavors promoted by Galician associations in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, which engaged in a transnational campaign to protest the shooting of three persons by the Spanish police at a peasant demonstration in Guillarei (Pontevedra) in November 1922.62 They also publicly defended education as the guarantor of democracy and truly representative voting and expected Galician peasants to vote for antidynastic candidates and send reformist deputies to the parliament.63 One initiative that never prospered was the call to establish federative committees by electoral districts in Galicia that would agitate for the election of “men capable of demanding and achieving all the improvements and attention that Galicia and the other regions have a right to” in the Madrid Parliament (Figure 3).64 Figure 3: View largeDownload slide Banquet of an instruction society, Havana, 1935 (@Arquivo da Emigración Galega, Santiago de Compostela). Figure 3: View largeDownload slide Banquet of an instruction society, Havana, 1935 (@Arquivo da Emigración Galega, Santiago de Compostela). However, Galician Cubans never followed a revolutionary path against the Spanish state. On the contrary, they always gave priority to collaboration with the homeland’s public authorities, as a way to improve education and protect their investments in schools and public works in their counties of origin. During the military dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera (beginning in September of 1923), the CRSI sought to cooperate with the new government in order to maintain the continuity of the schools they financed in Galicia. In contrast with the generalized opposition to the dictatorship that spread among Buenos Aires’s and Montevideo’s Galician associations, most community leaders in Havana trusted the reformist and authoritarian agenda proclaimed by Primo de Rivera, who claimed to be the “iron surgeon” who would transform Spanish society from above. The Cuban Galician associations instructed their delegations in Galicia to ask the military government to purge the city halls of all rural bosses (caciques) and make material improvements.65 Only the weekly Eco de Galicia and the new ethnonationalist groups that emerged within the Cuban Galician community reacted negatively to the new dictatorial regime, which they regarded as the Spanish version of Mussolini’s Fascism.66 Yet, the influence of the Cuban migrant community on Galician politics decreased dramatically during the second half of the 1920s. The CRSI scarcely intervened in Galician political activity in the 1930s, except to call some assemblies in Havana in support of the Galician home-rule campaign during the Second Spanish Republic, which peaked in June 1936. However, in spite of widespread support for regional autonomy among Galicians in Cuba, contributions to fund propaganda for the Statute of Autonomy lagged behind those sent from Buenos Aires and Montevideo.67 The slow decline of the Galician colony in Cuba in terms of sociopolitical relevance and economic significance intensified with the Caribbean sugar crises of the 1920s. In the Galician immigrant community of Buenos Aires, an ideological synthesis of ethnonationalism, socialism, and agrarianism established strong roots. This was partly due to the engagement of several Galician leaders who came from the ranks of the labor movement.68 By contrast, this powerful synthesis never emerged in Cuba. The political influence of ethnonationalist groups that arose among Havana Galicians after 1917 was limited and largely testimonial in the end. The Galician Nationalist Assembly (Xuntanza Nazonalista Galega) of Havana had a sizeable membership but was not admitted into the CRSI until mid-1923. Most instruction society leaders fiercely opposed ethnonationalist initiatives, easily labeled as separatism, and as a reaction tended to support the stance adopted by the Spanish state. This hostility diluted the impact of such activist practices on the fabric of Havana-based Galician associations, in contrast with the achievements of similar endeavors by their counterparts in Buenos Aires, who managed to take control of the influential Federation of Galician Societies in the late 1920s. Certainly, the political intransigence of the new actors also contributed to blocking their capacity to influence the Galician community, particularly due to the weight of the radical independence position within Cuban-Galician nationalism. This was reflected in the short-lived journal Nós (Ourselves, 1921), full of references to the Irish struggle and appeals to imitate its strategies, as well as in the activity of the minuscule Galician Separatist Revolutionary Committee (Comité Revoluzonario Arredista Galego), founded in 1921 by Fuco Gómez, a leader of a small instruction society and self-taught writer who penned several books in defense of the Galician language and culture and was directly inspired by the model of José Martí’s Cuban Revolutionary Party.69 Galician Associations and Politics in Comparative Perspective Compared to the associative network of Asturian immigrant communities and, to some extent, Canary Island communities in Cuba (among whom minority nationalist groups also arose in connection with the journal El Guanche), Galician associations on the whole evolved in a more politicized fashion. They followed a sociopolitical trajectory linked to struggles for local power and support for social and political movements in the homeland.70 This can be partially explained by the fact that the land-reform movement was much more developed in metropolitan Galicia than in Asturias or the Canary Islands. Galician associations in Cuba were far more politically committed than Asturian or Castilian associations. Certainly, Galician societies from Havana lost much of their influence on the sociopolitical evolution of the homeland in the 1920s and especially in the 1930s. This phenomenon occurred in tandem with the steady decline in the economic prosperity of the Galician communities in the Caribbean islands, which in turn decreased financial remittances back to Spain.71 Yet, from the 1920s on, the politicization of Galician associations in Cuba and their active intervention in metropolitan politics were less advanced than in Argentina. What were the reasons for this divergence? First, most Galician instruction societies in Havana were composed of rural migrants from the northern areas of the provinces of A Coruña and Lugo, where the issues related to the foros were much less significant than in the center and south of the country. In fact, Northern-Galician farmers’ trade-unions focused more on technical production issues than on foro abolition. Therefore, the political initiatives of Cuban associations corresponding to municipalities of northern Galicia did not extend beyond reform and regeneration.72 This narrow focus resulted in limited support for the more radical factions of the land-reform movement, which demanded land redemption by force and nonpayment of rents, such as that of Galician Action and the subsequent agrarianist factions influenced by the socialists beginning in the late 1920s. Emigrants returning from Cuba also tended to be more reformist and less politically engaged than those of Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Brazil; thus, the Galician “habaneiros” were closer to the typical Asturian and Cantabrian “americano” of that period.73 Certainly, some lay schools founded by Cuban Galicians in their parishes of origin did become foci of political agitation and local opposition to the clergy and rural patrons. This was the case with the school in Os Devesos (Ortigueira, A Coruña), funded by the La Devesana association of Havana, which was closed by the military dictatorship in 1924 after being repeatedly denounced by local clergymen, and again in 1936 by the military rebels. However, most instruction-society supporters who returned from Cuba exercised erratic social agency; some even became rural patrons and used agrarian associations as a tool for accessing local power during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and later joined the antirepublican right wing during the Second Spanish Republic (1931–36).74 Second, the Galician Center and its branches were clearly dominant within the network of Galician ethnic associations in Havana. This was not the case in Buenos Aires, where the network of Spanish and Galician societies was multipolarized and local associations enjoyed greater prosperity and influence.75 In Cuba, immigrant elites often encouraged microterritorial associationism in order to extend their influence and symbolic capital, positioning themselves to run for election to the Board of Authorities of the Galician Center or its board of directors. So, much of the energy and public propaganda activity of the intellectual elites of the Galician community in Cuba was dedicated to disputing control of the Galician Center. From the last decade of the nineteenth century, these conflicts resulted in rivalries among island newspapers supporting one faction or another. In fact, personal loyalties and interests linked to administering the Galician Center’s increasing resources tended to outweigh existing political antagonisms. Therefore, Galician associations in Cuba offered less space for political activism—be it Spanish republicanism, Galician ethnonationalism, agrarianism or working-class radicalism—than their counterparts in Buenos Aires. Spanish republicanism among immigrants was weaker in the Caribbean than in Argentina. Cuba was not a main destination for Spanish republican expatriates before 1923, who usually headed for Buenos Aires and Montevideo.76 For this reason, Spanish republicans in Havana were not as numerous and politically influential among their fellow immigrants as in the Southern Cone and were chronically unable to achieve any stable organization from the very first Spanish Republican Committee of 1903 onwards. The Centro Republicano Español in Havana was not particularly active nor was the Alianza Republicana Española, founded in spring of 1930. As a consequence, the republican professional and commercial elites wielded no comparable influence within the Spanish community in Cuba.77 Galician participation was equally significant in the workers’ movements of Havana and Buenos Aires; Galician trade union leaders or anarchists were regularly deported back to Spain, particularly during García Menocal’s authoritarian administration (1913–1921).78 However, unlike what happened in the microterritorial Galician societies of Buenos Aires in the 1920s, their counterparts in Cuba offered fewer possibilities to left-wing worker activists, republicans, or ethnonationalists seeking to define and broaden spheres of political influence. A sizeable number of union leaders or labor organizers were self-declared Andalusian, Catalan, and Galician anarchists, socialists, and (since the early 1920s) communists. Some of Galicia’s main anarchist leaders in Cuba collaborated in the radical press and worked closely with native-born and other immigrant labor leaders, from Caribbean braceros and workers to Chinese culíes.79 Also some influential communist leaders who developed their activity in Galicia and later during the Spanish Civil War and in Soviet exile, such as the mason and shop assistant Enrique Liste Froján—afterwards known as Enrique Líster—joined the Cuban Communist Party during their period of residence in Havana.80 A third factor is related to the nature of Cuban Galician leadership. In the Caribbean island there was no deep involvement of intellectual elites to foster networks among Galician associations, political elites in the host society, and sociopolitical movements in Galicia. In fact, there were several phases of actual separation between intellectuals and the leaders of Galician associations, which generally did not include journalists and political activists on their boards of directors. This fact was also related to the generational cleavage caused by the independence of the island in 1898. Several leaders of the Cuban Galician community relocated to Galicia, such as the journalist Manuel Lugrís Freire; Waldo Alvarez Insua, the founder of the Eco de Galicia and the person behind the 1879 founding of the Galician Center; the journalist Juan G. Montenegro, who left Cuba for Argentina in 1898; and the writer and journalist Ramón Armada Teijeiro, who held posts in the short-lived autonomous government of Cuba. The emblematic poet Curros Enríquez died in 1908. Writers and journalists who arrived in the first decade of the twentieth century generally stayed only a short time on the island: this was the case with Ramón Cabanillas, who lived in Cuba from 1910 to 1915, and Antón Villar Ponte, who resided there from 1908 to 1910 before returning to Galicia and contributing to the founding of the first Galician ethnonationalist association, the Irmandade da Fala (Language Brotherhood) of A Coruña. Some others stayed long enough in Havana, such as the journalists Roberto Blanco Torres (from 1906 to 1916) and Adelardo Novo (director of Havana’s influential newspaper Diario Español, who returned to Spain in 1930), yet after this formative period, they developed the bulk of their political activity in Spain.81 Still others made Cuba their permanent home. They may have lacked the dynamism of the political and intellectual leaders of the large Galician contingent settled in Buenos Aires, but external factors imposed by the structure of the community of Galicians in Havana and the lack of opportunities to take on leadership roles also affected their potential for action. The inner politics of the multilayered Galician community were a matter of little concern for the Cuban public sphere. Yet, the disputes over the leadership of the Galician Center, one of the biggest organizations set up by Cuban civil society until the late 1950s, had a certain echo in newspapers and magazines even if they had virtually no impact on Cuban politics. As also happened in other Latin American countries, immigrants in Cuba did not act as a potential electoral lobby that could vote in favor of one candidate or another. Most Iberian immigrants saw few reasons to pursue Cuban citizenship. This lack of interest was aggravated by the absence of a welfare state and political corruption. Moreover, each immigrant community had access to well-connected compatriots or descendants of compatriots well placed in Cuban society, who in their turn helped newcomers find a job or gain access to public services.82 Galician associations understandably became less attractive for the immigrants’ sons and daughters. No significant waves of Spanish immigration arrived in the Caribbean after 1946, which prevented the generational renovation of the associations’ membership. Furthermore, remittances for building primary schools and public utilities in Galicia could barely be sent home after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and investments in the homeland diminished drastically. This eliminated one of the main reasons for the existence of microterritorial associations. Their decline beginning in the late 1940s was unavoidable and was accentuated after the triumph of the Cuban revolution. Yet some of the immigrants’ sons still continued to participate in the activities of their parents’ associations. Perhaps the most striking example is that of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, himself the son of a Galician immigrant from the Lugo province who stayed on the island after being drafted by the Spanish army. Castro, at that time a young lawyer, acted between 1951 and 1953 as legal adviser of the instruction society Hijos del Ayuntamiento de A Capela.83 No doubt this was a minor aspect of the Cuban leader’s biography. Yet, this anecdote also may show how in the twentieth century the development of immigrant associations and the evolution of Cuban civil society went hand in hand rather than shaping separate spheres of activity. Conclusion The historical rise and fall of the Galician immigrant community in Cuba has provided inspiration for both literary representations and political actors.84 The Galician heritage of Fidel and Raúl Castro, combined with the leading role played by Galicians in Cuban urban society between the 1880s and the 1950s, has tended to obscure the fact that the Caribbean island ceased to be the core of the Galician diaspora toward the end of the 1920s. This was partly due to economic factors, such as the sugar crises during this decade, which reduced immigrants’ prosperity and prompted many of them to return home.85 However, the socioeconomic environment of the host society was not the most important factor contributing to the steady decline of the political and cultural influence of Cuban Galicians on their home country. Nor did Cuban Galicians present a typical example of the differences between “proletarian” and “middle-class” diasporas, as the social profile of Galician communities in the Americas was fairly similar. The restrictions placed on migrant collective action by the institutional setting of the immigrant community in Cuba—which was overwhelmingly dominated by the greatest mutual aid institution, the Galician Center—were also responsible for the lack of migrant activists, union leaders, and ethnonationalist intellectuals interested in seizing control of the network of instructions societies. Certainly, the politicization of the Galician community institutions in Cuba was more intense than those of the Canary islanders, Asturians, and Basques, yet it remained far behind the strong commitment to the politics of their home country displayed by Argentine and Uruguayan Galicians. This was not only a consequence of the Southern Cone’s greater prosperity but also a reflection of the more radical strategies pursued by ethnic leaders within South American immigrant communities.86 This acted as a precondition for the different responses of Galician migrant communities to the stimuli received by the sending society in the 1930s, from the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic and the increasing politicization of rural areas to the outbreak of the Civil War and ensuing exodus of thousands of Republican activists, who found shelter predominantly in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, and Uruguay.87 As has been suggested for Italian and German expatriate communities around the globe, the case of the Galician Americans demonstrates how the evolution of diasporas is not only determined by the events of the home country. The internal dynamics of migrant communities in each host society, the precise moment of their emergence and their institutional structure, as well as the clash of political factions among migrant elites, are also relevant factors. Certainly, this was related to the fact that migrants themselves became transnational actors, who lost many characteristics of their former social and cultural backgrounds in order to adapt to their new environments. This process, of course, varied from place to place according to local customs and conditions. The Galician case underscores the importance of referring not just to one ethnic migrant diaspora but to several overlapping diasporas.88 Footnotes 1 See Alexandre Vázquez González, Emigrantes galegos, transportes e remesas (1830–1930) (A Coruña, 2015), for a general perspective on Galician mass migration during this period. Earlier attempts may be found in Ramón Villares and Marcelino Fernández Santiago, Historia da emigración galega a América (Santiago de Compostela, 1996), and Pilar Cagiao Vila, ed., Os galegos de ultramar (A Coruña, 2007), 2 vols. 2 See Abel Losada, “A historia demográfica de Cuba na primeira metade do século XX: O impacto da emigración,” Estudos Migratorios, 1 (1995): 120–65, as well as “La mansión de los gallegos,” Eco de Galicia, September 17, 1922. 3 While the historiography of Spanish and Galician immigration in Argentina is quite abundant, the same cannot be affirmed about Cuba, Uruguay, and Brazil. See José C. Moya, Cousins and Strangers. Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850.1930 (Berkeley, 1998); José C. Moya and Alejandro E. Fernández, eds., La inmigración española en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1999); Consuelo Naranjo Orovio, Del campo a la bodega: Recuerdos de gallegos en Cuba (siglo XX) (Sada-A Coruña, 1988); Pilar Cagiao Vila and Sergio Guerra Vilaboy, eds., De raíz profunda: Galicia y lo gallego en Cuba (Santiago de Compostela, 2007); Carlos Zubillaga, ed., Españoles en el Uruguay. Características demográficas, sociales y económicas de la inmigración masiva (Montevideo, 1997), and Herbert S. Klein, La inmigración española en Brasil (siglos XIX y XX) (Colombres, 1996). 4 For the concept of migrant diaspora, see Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London, 2008); Stéphane Dufoix, La dispersion. Une histoire des usages du mot diaspora (Paris, 2011), and William Safran, “The Diaspora and the Homeland: Reciprocities, Transformations, and Role Reversals,” in Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Yitzhak Sternberg, eds., Transnationalism: Diasporas and the Advent of a New (Dis)Order (Leiden, 2009), 75–100. For diaspora imagination in the Iberian context, see Pedro J. Oiarzabal and Agustín Oiarzabal, La identidad vasca en el mundo (Bilbao, 2005), as well as Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, “History and Collective Memories of Migration in a Land of Migrants: The Case of Iberian Galicia,” History and Memory 14, no. 1–2 (2002): 229–58. 5 For a general overview on Spanish migrant associations, see Juan A. Blanco Rodríguez, ed., El asociacionismo en la emigración española a América (Zamora, 2008), as well as Juan A. Blanco Rodríguez and Arsenio Dacosta, eds., El asociacionismo de la emigración española en el exterior: Significación y vinculaciones (Madrid, 2014). 6 See Mark Wyman, Round-trip to America. The Immigrants return to Europe, 1880–1930 (Ithaca, NY/London, 1993), for a general discussion. For the Iberian case, see Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, “Überseeische Rückwanderung und sozialer Wandel in Spanien und Portugal, 1850–1960: Ein Forschungsbilanz,” Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, 60:1 (2013): 62–83. 7 For the history of the Galician ethnonationalist movement, see Xusto G. Beramendi, Galicia, de provincia a nación: Historia do galeguismo político, 1840–2000 (Vigo, 2007). For Galician nationalism in the Americas, see Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, O galeguismo en América, 1879–1936 (Sada-A Coruña, 1992). 8 On the relevance of ethnic leaders for the development of migrant communities, see John Higham, ed., Ethnic Leadership in America (Baltimore, 1978), and Marco Martiniello, Leadership et Pouvoir dans les communautés d’origine immigrée (Paris, 1992). On the Spanish case, see Marcela A. García Sebastiani, ed., Patriotas entre naciones. Élites emigrantes españolas en Argentina (1870–1940) (Madrid, 2010), and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, Las patrias ausentes. Estudios sobre historia y memoria de las migraciones ibéricas (1830–1960) (Oviedo, 2014), 115–42. 9 An early example of this view is the regionalist historian Manuel M. Murguía, “El Centro Gallego de La Habana,” La Patria Gallega, April 15, 1891. 10 See Marília Klaumann-Cánovas, Hambre de tierra. Immigrantes espanhóis na cafeicultura paulista, 1880–1930 (Sao Paulo, 2005); Erica Samiento da Silva, Galegos nos trópicos. Invisibilidade e presença da imigração galega no Rio de Janeiro (1880–1930) (Porto Alegre, 2017); and Alejandro Fernández, “El asociacionismo español en el Cono Sur de América: Una visión comparativa,” in El asociacionismo, eds. Blanco Rodríguez and Dacosta, 209–33. 11 See Anxo Lugilde, A participación política dos emigrantes galegos, 1905–2011 (Santiago de Compostela, 2011). 12 See Bieito Cupeiro, A Galiza de alén mar (Sada-A Coruña, 1990), and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, O soño da Galiza ideal. Estudos sobre exilados e inmigrantes galegos (Vigo, 2016). 13 See José C. Moya, “Spanish Emigration to Cuba and Argentina,” in Sam L. Baily and Eduardo J. Míguez, eds., Mass Migration to Modern Latin America (Wilmington, DE, 2003), 9–28. 14 See Abel Losada, Cuba: Población y economía entre la independencia y la revolución (Vigo, 1999), 121–35. On Galician immigration in Cuba, see also José Antonio Vidal, La emigración gallega a Cuba: trayectos migratorios, inserción y movilidad laboral (1898–1968) (Madrid, 2005), as well as id., A Galicia antillana: Formación e destrución da identidade galega en Cuba (1899–1968) (A Coruña, 2008). For a comparison with other immigrant groups, such as Jamaicans and Haitians, see Tracey E. Graham, “Jamaican Migration to Cuba, 1912–1940” (PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2013), as well as Matthew Casey, Empire’s guest workers: Haitian Migrants in Cuba during the Age of US Occupation (Cambridge, 2017). 15 See Mayra Tolezano García, “La representación lingüistica del gallego en el teatro bufo cubano,” and Manuel González, “Cuba, Galicia, cine e emigración,” in Galicia-Cuba: Un patrimonio cultural de referencias y confluencias, eds. Concha Fontela and Manuel Silva (Sada-A Coruña, 2000), 187–96 and 199–212. On Cuban prejudices against Caribbean immigrants, see Marc McLeod, “Undesirable Aliens: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism in the Comparison of Haitian and British West Indian Immigrant Workers in Cuba, 1912–1939,” Journal of Social History 31, no. 3 (1998): 599–623, as well as some insights in Robert Whitney and Graciela Chailloux-Laffita, Subjects or Citizens. British Caribbean Workers in Cuba, 1900–1960 (Gainesville et al., 2013). 16 See Xosé Neira Vilas, A prensa galega en Cuba (Sada-A Coruña, 1985). 17 See María Paz Alonso Romero, Cuba en la España liberal (1837–1898): Génesis y desarrollo del sistema autonómico (Madrid, 2002), and D. Sappez, Ciudadanía y autonomismo en Cuba. Antonio Govín (1847–1914) (Castellón de la Plana, 2016). For the Galician community, see some details in Vilma Abeledo, “La guerra de independencia cubana en la prensa gallega de la isla a finales del siglo XIX,” in Yoel M. L. Vázquez, ed., Memoria (Havana, 2002), 181–206, as well as in the contemporary account by Xosé Baña Pose, Vida e milagros de Pepe de Xan Baña en trinta anos de Cuba [vindicación] (Havana, 1921). 18 See Enrique Novo García, Cuba y España. Réplica a juicios de Curros Enríquez sobre un libro de Montoro (Havana, 1894), who differentiated metropolitan “regionalism,” based on politico-administrative decentralization, from insular “autonomism,” whose objective was creating separate spheres of government that aimed at secession. See also Francisco Rodríguez, A evolución ideolóxica de M. Curros Enríquez (Vigo, 1973), 131–40. 19 See Xosé Neira Vilas, Galegos que loitaron pola independencia de Cuba (Sada, 1998), as well as Juan A. Blanco Rodríguez, “La actitud de Martí ante los españoles y la presencia de éstos en el Ejército Libertador Cubano,” in Juan-Pablo Fusi and Antonio Niño, eds., Antes del “Desastre”: Orígenes y antecedentes de la crisis del 98 (Madrid, 1996), 211–23. 20 See Víctor Castells, Catalans d’Amèrica per la independéncia (Barcelona, 1986); John-Marshall Klein, “Spaniards and the Politics of Memory in Cuba (1898–1934)” (PhD, University of Texas at Austin, 2002), available at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/etd/d/2002/kleinj029/kleinj029.pdf; last accessed 16 March 2016; Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, “¿Negar o reescribir la Hispanidad? Los nacionalismos subestatales ibéricos y América Latina, 1898–1936,” Historia Mexicana 265 (2017): 401–58. 21 See e.g., Fuco G. Gómez, Naciones ibéricas (Havana, 1931). Something similar occurred among Catalans, Basques, and Canary Islanders in Cuba: see Klein, “Spaniards and the Politics,” 250–300. 22 José M. Álvarez Acevedo, La colonia española en la economía cubana (Havana, 1936); José Antonio Vidal, “El monopolio laboral español en Cuba (1899–1933): la lucha por el control del trabajo entre cubanos y españoles,” Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos, 46 (2000): 489–525. 23 A similar institution was founded in 1928 to serve the large immigrant community from the municipality of Ortigueira. See Apuntes para la Historia del Centro Gallego de la Habana, 1879–1909 (Havana, 1911), as well as Naturales de Ortigueira (La Habana), Memorias 24 de Junio 192 –24 Junio 1964 (Havana, 1964). 24 On migrant associations as examples of transnational communication, see Alejandro Portes, Cristina Escobar and Alexandria Walton-Radford, “Immigrant transnational organizations and development: a comparative study,” International Migration Review 41, no. 1 (2007): 242–81, as well as Ludger Pries and Zeynep Sezgin, eds., Jenseits von “Identität oder Integration.” Grenzenüberspannende Migrantenorganisationen (Wiesbaden, 2010). 25 For example, a group of seventy-two immigrants from the parishes of As Somozas and Recemel (A Coruña) set up a committee as early as May of 1893 in order to gather funds to aid those who had suffered from the effects of a storm in their parishes of origin. See El Eco de Galicia, October 14, 1893. 26 See Galicia, November 15, 1903; April 17, 1904, and July 25, 1905. 27 See Vidal, “El monopolio laboral,” 523; id., A Galicia antillana, 157. 28 This argument is further developed in Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, Emigrantes, caciques e indianos. O influxo sociopolítico da emigración transoceánica en Galicia (1900–1930) (Vigo, 1998), 75–108. For the theoretical framework, see Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Penser l’histoire croisée. Entre empirie et réflexivité,” Annales Histoire, Sciences Sociales 58, no. 1 (2003): 7–36. 29 Follas Novas, April 12, 1908; May 17, 1908, and May 24, 1908. See also Núñez Seixas, Emigrantes, caciques e indianos, 187–98. 30 See Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 285–90; Sam Baily, “Las sociedades de ayuda mutua y el desarrollo de una comunidad italiana en Buenos Aires, 1858–1918,” Desarrollo Económico, 84 (1982), 485–514; Fernando J. Devoto and Alejandro E. Fernández, “Asociacionismo, liderazgo y participación en dos grupos étnicos en áreas urbanas de la Argentina finisecular. Un enfoque comparado,” in L’ Italia nella società argentina, eds. Fernando J. Devoto and Gianfausto Rosoli (Rome, 1988), 190–208. 31 Member registry books of the Liga Santaballesa (1918) and Progreso de Lousada (1941), Galician Migration Archive, Santiago de Compostela. 32 See e.g., A. Fernández, Para gloria del Terruño. Obra amena, interesante y de gran utilidad para todos los gallegos residentes en Cuba (Havana, 1909), 146–47 and 153, as well as J. Fernández Teijeiro, “Hijos de Vicedo,” Galicia, October 21, 1911; A. Alonso Salas, “Nuestras sociedades por dentro,” La Voz de Ortigueira, July 5, 1924; and Memorias de treinta años de un ortigueirés: Antonio Couzo García en La Habana (Havana, 1958). 33 See Julio C. Gozález Pagés, Emigración de mujeres gallegas a Cuba, las Hijas de Galicia (Vigo, 2003). 34 On the spheres of social reference of places of origin as patterns for symbolic behavior, see Robert K. Merton, Teoría y estructura sociales (Mexico City, 1970 [1940]), 228–386. 35 Follas Novas, April 19, 1908. For A Estrada, see also Xoán C. Garrido Couceiro, Manuel García Barros. Loitando sempre (Lugo, 1995). 36 See Vicente Peña Saavedra, Éxodo, organización comunitaria e intervención escolar. La impronta socioeducativa de la emigración transoceánica en Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, 1991), 25–50, as well as the catalogue of the exhibition Luces de alén mar. As escolas de americanos en Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, 2013). 37 C. Horta, “Cultura y regionalismo. II,” Suevia, February 22, 1912. 38 Contrary to idealized views that see instruction societies as a sheer expression of generous charity by migrants, I regard them as a field of collective action, where different members exchanged views, contended, and defended their particular interests. See Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, “Migrant Associations: The Spanish Transatlantic Experience (1870–1970),” Social History 41, no. 2 (2016): 1–19. 39 Follas Novas, November 29, 1908. 40 C. Fernández, “Sociedad de Instrucción San Adrián,” Follas Novas, August 30, 1908. 41 Labor Gallega, June 20, 1916; Núñez Seixas, Emigrantes, caciques e indianos, 213–20. 42 For the case of the Northwest of the Ourense province, see Raúl Soutelo Vázquez, Emigración, negocios e política na Galicia rural: Coles (1887–1940) (Ourense, 2014). 43 See Victor A. Walsh, “Irish Nationalism and Land Reform: The Role of the Irish in America,” in P. J. Drudy, ed., The Irish in America. Migration, Assimilation and Impact (Cambridge, Ma, 1985), 121–48, as well as Ely M. Janis, A Greater Ireland: The Land League and Transatlantic Nationalism in Gilded Age America (Madison, 2015). 44 In 1886, several Galician periodicals in Cuba joined forces to raise funds for a mausoleum devoted to Rosalía de Castro in her hometown cemetery of Padrón (A Coruña). The proceeds were promptly channelled into a mausoleum located in the city of Santiago de Compostela. See Xosé Neira Vilas, Manuel Murguía e os galegos da Habana (Sada-A Coruña, 2000), and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, “Rosalía de Castro and Galician Migrants: The Construction of a Diaspora Myth,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 93, no. 3 (2016): 285–301. 45 See Xosé Neira Vilas, “A xénese en Cuba, 1905–1906,” Grial, 171 (2006), 5–7; and Xosé M. Dobarro Paz, “Manoel Curros Enríquez, Xosé Fontenla Leal e a Real Academia Galega: observacións e datos sobre as súas orixes e vicisitudes,” Boletín da Real Academia Galega 362 (2001): 203–66. 46 Centro Solidario Coruñés, Modelo de Reglamento para Sociedades Agrícolas Gallegas, redactado a petición de fundadores de ellas y para su Gobierno (A Coruña, 1908). 47 See A Nosa Terra, December 12, 1907; Follas Novas, August 25, 1907, October 6, 1907, November 29, 1908, and March 1, 1908. Foros were a land tenancy system of medieval origin in Galicia, Asturias, and parts of León, based on a contract involving the indefinite and transferable lease of land in exchange for payment of rent. See Ramón Villares, La propiedad de la tierra en Galicia, 1500–1936 (Madrid, 1982). 48 See Galicia, June 19, 1909, and Neira Vilas, A prensa, 81–95. 49 See Miguel Cabo Villaverde, O agrarismo (Vigo, 1998), as well as id., “Agrarisme et agrariens en Galice: bilan et perspectives de recherche,” in P. Cornu and J.-L. Mayaud, eds., Au nom de la terre. Agrarisme et agrariens en France et en Europe du 19e siècle à nos jours (París, 2007), 65–84. 50 Galicia, October 9, 1909, and November 7, 1909; Vida Gallega, April 30, 1910. 51 See Suevia, 22, September 1912. 52 See a descriptive account by Hernán Díaz, Historia de la Federación de Sociedades Gallegas: Identidades políticas y prácticas militantes (Buenos Aires, 2007). 53 See “Comité Representativo de las Sociedades Gallegas de Instrucción,” Galicia, August 27, 1910. 54 “Mensaje a Canalejas,” Suevia, October 2, 1910. 55 “La intransigencia. Origen e Historia,” Galicia Gráfica, February 18, 1916. 56 See “Acción Gallega en Cuba,” Pro-Galicia I, no. 4 (1913). For the context of Basilio Alvarez’s visit to Cuba, see J. Montero, Nuevos valores de la política. Basilio Álvarez y los agrarios gallegos (Madrid, n.d.), 49–51 and 81–82. 57 See Xosé M. Dobarro Paz, “O nacemento dun poeta en terras cubanas, Ramón Cabanillas,” in Xornadas sobre Ramón Cabanillas (Santiago de Compostela, 2001), 161–208. 58 “El Bloque Gallego de La Habana,” Labor Gallega, February 5, 1917. 59 “Hacia la nivelación económica de Galicia. La agitación agraria,” Eco de Galicia, January 15, 1922; “La nueva política gallega,” Eco de Galicia, July 22, 1923; X. da Fonte Nova, “El problema agrario gallego,” Eco de Galicia, May 6, 1923. 60 Peña Saavedra, Éxodo, 680–85; “El Comité Representativo y sus andanzas,” Eco de Galicia, 30 September 1928. 61 CRSI communiqué, reproduced in A Terra, January 1922. 62 On December 4, 1922, a protest assembly took place regarding the events in Guillarei. It was backed by CRSI, and there were two thousand protesters present. Several speakers supported launching an agitation campaign in Galicia in order to achieve an abolition of the foros. Two speakers even called for the independence of Galicia, which was well received by part of the audience. See Galicia, December 9, 1922. 63 See, for example, El Emigrado, August 7, and August 16, 1922. 64 See A. Portela, “A las Sociedades del Distrito de Mondoñedo,” Heraldo de Galicia, April 23, 1922. 65 See Núñez Seixas, Emigrantes, caciques e indianos, 227 and 239–40. 66 See, for example, “El Mussolini español. La coartada de los poderes españoles,” Eco de Galicia, October 7, 1923. 67 See Peña Saavedra, Éxodo, 681–92; Núñez Seixas, Las patrias ausentes, 361–412. 68 For example, the socialist Ramón Suárez Picallo, who later became a Galician nationalist deputy in the Spanish parliament during the Second Republic (1931–36). See Hernán Díaz, ed., Ramón Suárez Picallo. Años de formación política. Selección de textos (1916–1931) (Buenos Aires, 2008). 69 This individual sought to develop an alternative pro-independence stance, along with a particular form of writing the Galician language. See Xurxo Martínez González, Fuco Gómez (Pontevedra, 2007). 70 For a contrast with the Asturian community in Havana, see Francisco Erice, “Los asturianos en Cuba y sus vínculos con Asturias: rasgos y desarrollo de una colectividad regional en la etapa final del colonialismo español,” in Pedro Gómez Gómez, ed., De Asturias a América. Cuba (1850–1930). La comunidad asturiana de Cuba (Oviedo, 1996), 71–152, as well as José M. Prieto-Fernández del Viso, “Asociacionismo y educación. Las sociedades de instrucción asturianas en América,” in Blanco Rodríguez and Dacosta, eds., El asociacionismo, 335–50. On the Canary Island community, see Gregorio J. Cabrera Déniz, Canarios en Cuba: Un capítulo en la historia del archipiélago (1875–1931) (Las Palmas, 1996). 71 See Ramón Villares, Figuras da nación (Vigo, 1997), 169–226. 72 This is seen in the cases of Ortigueira, where Cuban associations supported the local liberal faction; Vilalba, where Havana-based societies intervened in favor of the social-catholic newspaper El Ratón (1911–1915); and A Estrada, where Cuban societies supported the newspaper El Emigrado and an independent conservative candidate in 1923, who took up the banner of the interests of the returned migrants. See Núñez Seixas, Emigrantes, caciques e indianos, 179–251. 73 See Antonio L. Oliveros, 1935: Asturias en el resurgimiento español (Apuntes históricos y biográficos) (Gijón, 1982 [1935]), 49–59, as well as Germán Ojeda and Rafael Anes, La emigración de asturianos a América (Colombres, 1993), 91–124. 74 “La política del Directorio Militar. La escuela de los devesanos,” Eco de Galicia, May 4, 1924. See also several case studies in Lourenzo Fernández Prieto et al., eds., Poder local, elites e cambio social na Galicia non urbana (1874–1936) (Santiago de Compostela, 1997). 75 Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 293–305. 76 Angel Duarte, La República del emigrante. La cultura política de los emigrantes españoles en la Argentina (1875–1910) (Lleida, 1998). 77 See a descriptive account in Jorge D. Cuadriello, El exilio republicano español en Cuba (Madrid, 2009). 78 See Consuelo Naranjo Orovio, “La inmigración española y el movimiento obrero cubano 1900–1925,” Arbor, 547–48 (1991): 217–39; Amparo Sánchez, “Inmigración política en Cuba: los anarquistas españoles (1900–1925),” Revista Millars XXVI (2008): 65–76; and Amparo Sánchez, Sembrando ideales. Anarquistas españoles en Cuba (1902–1925) (Seville, 2008). On the Galician participation in Spanish anarchism, see Neira Vilas, Galegos que loitaron, 169–226. 79 See Vidal, La emigración gallega, 377–82; Philip A. Howard, Black Labor, White Sugar: Caribbean Braceros and Their Struggle for Power in the Cuban Sugar Industry(Baton Rouge, 2015); Joan Casanovas, Bread, or Bullets! Urban Labor and Spanish Colonialism in Cuba, 1850–1898 (Pittsburgh, 1998), and Juan Pérez de la Riva, Los culíes chinos en Cuba, 1847–1880 (Havana, 2000). 80 See Enrique Líster, Memorias de un luchador. I. Los primeros combates (Madrid, 1977), 15–28. 81 See Emilio X. Insua López and Carlos Nuevo Cal, O primeiro Antón Villar Ponte: Achegamento ao periodo de formación do fundador das Irmandades da Fala (1881–1908) (Lugo, 2003), as well as Belén Pazos Touriño, Pilar Pena and Marcos Seixo, Roberto Blanco Torres: Vida, obra e pensamento (Lugo, 2002). 82 See Margarita Cervantes-Rodríguez, International Migration in Cuba. Accumulation, Imperial Designs, and Transnational Social Fields (University Park, PA, 2010); José C. Moya, “Immigrants and Associations: A Global and Historical Perspective,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31, no. 5 (2005): 833–64. 83 See http://www.espanaexterior.com/region/72-Galicia/noticia/332493-Hijos_de_Capela_en_La_Habana_nombra_Socio_de_Honor_a_Fidel_Castro_que_fue_su_secretario_de_1951_a_1953; last accessed 3 July 2015. 84 See e.g., the successful novel by the Cuban writer Miguel Barnet, Gallego (Madrid, 1981). 85 See R. Álvarez Estévez, Azúcar e inmigración, 1900–1940 (Havana, 1988). 86 See e.g., Terrence Lyons and Peter G. Mandaville, eds., Politics from Afar: Transnational Diasporas and Networks (New York, 2012), as well as Gabriel Sheffer, Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad (Cambridge, 2003). 87 For an overview on the Galician exile of 1936–39, see Xosé M. Núñez Seixas and Pilar Cagiao Vila, eds., O exilio galego: Política, sociedade, itinerarios (Sada/Santiago de Compostela, 2006). 88 See Donna R. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (London/New York 2000), 58–81; Glen Penny and Stefan Rinke, “Germans Abroad: Respatializing Historical Narrative,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 41, no. 3 (2015): 173–96; and Dirk Hoerder, “Losing National Identity or Gaining Transcultural Competence: Changing Approaches in Migration History,” in Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches and New Perspectives, eds. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka (New York/Oxford, 2010), 247–71. © The Author 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Galician Immigrant Societies in Cuba: Local Identity, Diaspora Politics and Atlantic Mobilization (1870–1940)
JF - Journal of Social History
DO - 10.1093/jsh/shx104
DA - 2019-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/galician-immigrant-societies-in-cuba-local-identity-diaspora-politics-732xsKt74j
SP - 705
VL - 52
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -