Cuba's Cosmopolitan Enclaves

How northeastern Cuba became a hub of internationalsolidarity and transnational movements in the 1920s and 1930s

This book exploreshow a region in Cuba that was widely known as a site of labor subjugationbecame a hub of international solidarity in the 1920s and 1930s. In the early twentiethcentury, United States agricultural companies like the United Fruit Companyestablished sugar export operations in Cuba's Oriente Province, creating a zoneof economic imperialism. These early multinational corporations recruited Afro-Caribbeanlaborers from surrounding islands, aiming to create closed, self-sufficient plantationcomplexes.

However, as FrancesPeace Sullivan shows in Cuba's Cosmopolitan Enclaves, the influx offoreign capital led to the development of diverse, vibrant communities in thesecompany towns. Drawing on archival sources in Cuba, the US, Russia, and the UK,Sullivan demonstrates how immigrant workers joined local Cubans in movementsfor radical transnational solidarity. In the interwar years, northeastern Cubabecame a center of Garveyite Pan-Africanism, global communism, and antifascistsupport for Republican Spain. In 1933, the region attracted the world'sattention when workers seized sugar mills in a revolutionary strike.

Placingnortheastern Cuba at the heart of the history of interwar internationalism, Sullivanshows how Oriente emerged as a focal point for visions of resistance. Cuba'sCosmopolitan Enclaves reveals how workers seized pathways created byimperialist companies and used them to advance their own goals. In this focusedstudy, Sullivan offers a detailed portrait of how ordinary people becameleaders in transnational radicalism.

A volume in theseries Caribbean Crossroads: Race, Identity, and Freedom Struggles, edited byLillian Guerra, Devyn Spence Benson, April Mayes, and Solsiree del Moral