La colonie cubaine

1876 article from Spectateur on Cuba, urging a degree of caution due to the question of race and the US intervention, yet hopeful for Cuban independence.

Although the movement of Haitians to and from Cuba over the course of the American Sugar Kingdom in the Hispanic Caribbean is a well-known story, the 19th century movement of Cubans to Haiti is, though numerically smaller, an important story in the path to Cuban independence. This process was also accompanied by an acceleration of US power in the Caribbean region, as the Spanish-American-Cuban War brought Cuba and Puerto Rico directly into the US imperial orbit. However, before Cuban independence, the circum-Caribbean region played a key role as refuge and center for resources for the Cuban independence movement. Specifically, as a result of the Ten Years War (1868-1878), many Cubans fled abroad to escape repression, pursue business opportunities in tobacco (Key West comes to mind), and plan for eventual Cuban victory over Spanish forces. Haiti received many of these Cubans during this period, and as a movement weakening European colonialism and slavery in the region, enjoyed support. In order to grasp the scale of Cuban migrations during these turbulent decades, note how one scholar cited an estimate for 1500 Cubans residing in Jamaica for the year 1872.  Cubans based in Jamaica also interacted with Haitian exiles in Kingston, an important site for Haitian exile political activity described in great detail by Matthew Smith. 

1893 advertisement for Jean Rodriguez's barbershop, mentioning that he cut the hair of the Haitian president. Rodriguez was likely of Cuban origin.

The Cuban question became the focus of new pan-Antillean anti-colonial politics, consciousness, and debate as Cuban, Haitian, Puerto Rican, and Dominican intellectuals reconsidered their mutual ties and the necessity of a common front against colonialism. Betances, Marti, Maceo, Firmin, and Gregorio Luperon became the intellectual forebears of pan-Caribbean politics, proposing in various forms an Antillean federation to counter US and European imperialism in the region. The struggle for Cuban independence, and Haitian support for it, albeit often officially neutral, represent the development of this shift in Haitian conceptions of the Caribbean space. Moreover, the actual movement of Cubans in Haitian urban areas during these last 3 decades of the 19th century presented a transformation in the trades and novel attempts in the tobacco industry. Thus, Haiti's participation in the Cuban wars for independence also represented economic and social changes as hundreds, if not thousands, of Cubans moved to Haitian shores. This, in turn, likely shaped the nature of social struggle, the evolution of artisan associations in Haiti, and a discourse of national industry in which both Haitian and Cuban intellectuals sought to define their nationhood in the interest of the laboring classes.

1896 advertisement for a respected Cuban shoemaker in Port-au-Prince, Augustin Garcia.

According to Matthew Casey, who is one of the few to write about Cubans living in Haiti during the 19th century, Cubans were, by the 1890s, the most numerous nationality in Port-au-Prince after resident Germans and French. Their arrival in significant numbers is intimately tied to the Ten Years' War, and many of these Cubans, according to Zacair, were of African descent. It is understandable why Afro-Cubans would have, perhaps, preferred Haiti over Jamaica or the Dominican Republic as their homes, due to the proximity of Haiti and its history of slave revolution. It may even be that some of these Afro-Cubans, if from Oriente, possessed familial ties to Saint Domingue. Furthermore, their presence was felt in other principal towns, such as Jacmel and Cap-Haitien. Even smaller towns attracted Cubans, as Aubin found a Cuban shoemaker living in Petite-Riviere in the early 1900s. Cuban artisans in Haiti from 1870-1900 likely practiced their trades, especially those of barber, shoemaker, and tailor in all the major provincial towns.

A letter from a Cuban based in Gonaives, attesting to Haitian sympathy for the cause of Cuba Libre. From January 1897, to a Paris-based Cuban newspaper.

Indeed, according to some, they reinvigorated Haitian artisan professions by taking local apprentices. For example, Fequiere, writing in 1906, praises Cubans for perfecting the trades. In a history of Bel-Air, an area of the capital inhabited by workers and artisans, the author alluded to all the best tailors or shoemakers having been trained or shaped by Cuban expertise. Fortunately, historian Roger Gaillard names some of these influential Cuban shoemakers, whose work was held in high regard: Rufino Duarte, Augustin Garcia, Jean Laurin, Felice Shuey. These and other Cubans not only repaired shoes, but produced them, thereby weakening dependence on imports from abroad. Cubans additionally worked in a number of other professions, and were clearly held in high regard by Haitian journalists, educators, and intellectuals for their hard labor, willingness to train locals, and ability to exemplify respectable labor. The Cuban colony in Haiti was still favorably viewed in 1903, when an article in the 14 February issue of Le Devoir praised them for their contribution to Haitian artisan trades, even mentioning their marriages to local Haitians. Their comportment contrasted them with Europeans, or, even worse, the growing Syrian presence. Fequiere also praised Cubans for abiding Haitian laws and not intervening in political affairs, unlike resident Europeans and Levantines. 

1895 article from L'Echo d'Haiti expressing Haitian solidarity with Cuban independence fighters and refusing to expel their Cuban supporters from Haiti.

Cubans were also courted in Haiti for their technical skills and experience in the tobacco industry. Unlike, say, the Dominican Republic, where Cuban immigrants found a place in the burgeoning sugar industry in the last few decades of the 19th century, Haiti did not offer such favorable conditions for aspiring planters. However, during the same period, Cubans were involved in a number of attempts at launching tobacco farming on a large-scale, as well as cigar production. For instance, in 1876, a group of around 100 Cubans arrived in Port-au-Prince, eager to settle and establish a tobacco industry. However, due to a concurrent diplomatic row with Spain involving the Ten Years War, a Cuban and a Spanish national, the Haitian government decided against allowing them refuge. Charles Vorbe saw this as a missed opportunity for Haiti to develop a tobacco industry. Cubans were also involved in a later attempt to cultivate tobacco on a large scale, this time on the Dumornay estate of Charles Fatton. Unfortunately, a fire led to the dissolution of the plantation, and the Cuban workers left for Jamaica. 

Two Cuban mechanics offering their services in Port-au-Prince in 1870.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Cubans were almost certainly involved in a more durable tobacco company, based at Diquini, STL. Launched by Germans and Americans, STL endeavored to use scientific methods to grow tobacco on a vast scale, employing over a hundred people on its farmland and fabrique. Aubin identifies the workers as Jamaicans, but US Minister Powell's consular report mentioned Cuban cigarmakers producing over a thousand per day, about half for the domestic market. Of course, Haiti's tobacco industry never expanded to match that of Cuba or the Dominican Republic. Yet, the significance of Cuban labor in the attempts to develop one indicate the significance of Cuban migrants. They were sought for improving production and to launch another industry, further tying Haiti into global commodity chains and diversifying exports. Cuba was undoubtedly the school for Haitians such as the mechanically-inclined Pantaleon Guilbaud, who also launched his first cigarette fabrique in the 1910s, after living in Cuba. Guilbaud later becamed a celebrated industrialist in the 1920s and 1930s, producing cigarettes with a modern factory. For additional information about this industrialist whose success in the tobacco sector, Candelon Rigaud and Antoine Bervin's  Pantal à Paris provide more detail. Without precedent in tobacco from Cubans or experience in Cuba first-hand, it is hard to imagine Guilbaud succeeding.

1870 Notice for the visit of Francisco de Paula Bravo, a Cuban, to Haiti to promote solidarity with  during the Ten Years War.

Now that it has been established that the Cuban presence in Haiti influenced artisans, urban labor, the small tobacco industry, and shaped Haitian relations with Spain, their larger significance in a moment of regional change can be ascertained. By improving the trades in Haiti, Cubans improved production standards and shaped consumer demand. They almost certainly, as hinted by Roger Gaillard, influenced how their apprentices and Haitian peers saw themselves and the class question, too. For example, the rising participation of  Coeurs-Unis des Artisans in Cap-Haitien by the end of the 19th century might also be partly related to the diffusion of ideas from Cuban artisans. Moreover, the Cuban tobacco sector of the 19th century often included the most militant workers organized into associations and unions, the cigarmakers. While few of these established themselves in Haiti, their influence might have lingered with the nascent tobacco sector laborers in Haiti. Robert J. Alexander's history of Cuban Labor Movement also refers to walkouts and strikes among shoemakers, tailors, drivers, and others during the 1870s, when some of these very same artisans were moving to Haiti. Undoubtedly, the militancy, work stoppages, and early attempts at unionization by Haitian shoemakers could also have something to do with the influence of Cuban teachers, although many of the master artisans would have been petit-bourgeois owners of workshops employing others. In short, the Cuban presence  shaped the course the development of class consciousness, as the appearance of a pamphlet in 1890 probably reflects.

Dr. Ulpiano Dellunde, a Cuban based in Cap-Haitien, friend of Marti, and Haiti delegate of the PRC.

The Cuban colony, over the course of the late 19th century, also tightened bonds between Haiti and the Cuban struggle. Cuban patriots had visited Haiti since 1870, and would continue to do so. Maceo, Marti, Betances, and other prominent proponents of Cuban and Puerto Rican sovereignty spent time or lived there, formed associations to assist the liberation struggle, and came to regard the place as central to the story of Caribbean autonomy. Even as Cubans continued to struggle over the racial question and fear of another Haiti, their presence there forged ties that did not dissolve after independence. The mutual respect grounded in the revolutionary past of Haiti, its utility as a base of operations for insurgents, and the centrality of Hispaniola within the Antillean space made it so. 

Thomas Trenard, a Cuban tailor, promoted his business in various Port-au-Prince newspapers for several years, such as this 1888 newspaper.

Thus, Cubans residents continued to advertise their businesses in Port-au-Prince newspapers after 1898. Cuban and Haitian trade connected the two islands as Haitian emigration to Cuba expanded exponentially under the aegis of US empire. The return of Haitian migrants from their Cuban sojourn exerted new influences on music, taste, sensibility, and politics. And it goes without saying that the Cuban medical missions after the Revolution have been life-saving for countless Haitian citizens. Today, Cubans come to Haiti for shopping, and are still well-liked by the Haitian people. These bonds were forged by the experience of anti-colonial movements of the late 19th century, in which the Cuban colonie of Haiti played a pivotal role. In spite of this anti-colonial heritage, the two were bound by a new form of domination that reversed migration ways with the rise of US empire.