Contested Community: Identities, Spaces, and Hierarchies of the Chinese in the Cuban Republic

In Contested Community, the authors analyze the Chinese immigrant community in Cuba between the years 1900–1968. While popular literature of the era portrayed the diasporic group as a closed, inassimilable ethnic enclave, closer inspection instead reveals numerous economic, political, and ethnic divisions. As with all organizations, asymmetrical power relations permeated Havana’s Barrio Chino and the larger Chinese Cuban community. The authors of Contested Community use difficult-to-access materials from Cuba’s national archive to offer a unique and insightful interpretation of a little-understood immigrant group.