Migrations, Exploitation and Transculturation: the Maya in Cuba

Abstract

In the context of human trafficking in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, it is important to note the phenomenon of the forced importation of Yucatec Mayas to Cuba. The Yucatec Maya presence is attested in Havana since the sixteenth century, when the first Spanish conquistadors had the “licencia” to import to Cuba rebellious Maya captured in the conquest campaigns and in the “entradas” in the free territories of Yucatan. The forced migration of Yucatec Mayas to Cuba was not the only phenomenon recorded in the Caribbean indigenous diaspora, since indigenous allies, from the Calusa and Tequesta communities of Florida, also had moved and settled in Havana from the 16th century onwards, in this case with a voluntary migration, to strengthen their alliance with the colonial government. On the other hand, hundreds of other indigenous rebels to colonial power, the Apaches and Chichimecas of the northern region of New Spain, were captured in the pacification expeditions of that region and integrated as a servile force in the constructions, fortifications and port works of Havana, in addition to the work in the island’s sugar mills and tobacco plantations.
Although the movement of the indigenous population to Cuba took place throughout the colonial period, this forced trafficking increased in the mid-nineteenth century, during the so-called Caste War, in which the Maya rebels captured by the Yucatecan government were forced to work in Cuban houses and fields in servile conditions. The lack of documentation does not allow us at the moment to have a clear understanding of the cultural life of the Mayas in Cuba, but from the limited data known today it is possible to get a first approach to their condition of existence, their identity and their survival until the present time. In this paper, I intend to present the servile condition of the Yucatec Mayas in Cuba for a possible critical approach to their historical, cultural and anthropological study.