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Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala, 1882-1923
Contributor(s): Opie, Frederick Douglass (Author)
ISBN: 0813044421     ISBN-13: 9780813044422
Publisher: University Press of Florida
OUR PRICE:   $19.75  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: September 2012
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- History | Latin America - Central America
- Social Science | Black Studies (global)
- Political Science | Labor & Industrial Relations
Dewey: 331.620
Series: Working in the Americas
Physical Information: 0.37" H x 6" W x 9" (0.54 lbs) 160 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Caribbean & West Indies
- Cultural Region - Latin America
- Chronological Period - 1851-1899
- Chronological Period - 1900-1919
- Chronological Period - 1920's
- Topical - Black History
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

In the late nineteenth century, many Central American governments and countries sought to fill low-paying jobs and develop their economies by recruiting black American and West Indian laborers. Frederick Opie offers a revisionist interpretation of these workers, who were often depicted as simple victims with little, if any, enduring legacy.

The Guatemalan government sought to build an extensive railroad system in the 1880s, and actively recruited foreign labor. For poor workers of African descent, immigrating to Guatemala was seen as an opportunity to improve their lives and escape from the racism of the Jim Crow U.S. South and the French and British colonial Caribbean.

Using primary and secondary sources as well as ethnographic data, Opie details the struggles of these workers who were ultimately inspired to organize by the ideas of Marcus Garvey. Regularly suffering class- and race-based attacks and persecution, black laborers frequently met such attacks with resistance. Their leverage--being able to shut down the railroad--was crucially important to the revolutionary movements in 1897 and 1920.