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- Title
The Trouble with the Irish in the Cuban National Archives.
- Authors
Brehony, Margaret
- Abstract
There are few notable traces of an Irish presence in the fusion of cultural influences in Havana's cityscape but manuscript sources in the National Archives of Cuba provide accounts of Irish lives, lived amongst some of the wealthiest and more often the poorest of European immigrants in Cuban colonial society. This article describes the process of researching the history of a large workforce of Irish railroad workers who arrived in Havana in 1835 to build the first stretch of railroad in Latin America and the discovery of additional archival sources concerning different waves of Irish migration to the Hispanic Caribbean. It describes the riches and challenges of locating this cohort of immigrants in archival holdings in Havana and provides a reading of colonial reportage against a backdrop of the troubled context of Cuba, a global hub of the sugar trade and slavery, migration and culture.
- Subjects
HAVANA (Cuba); IRISH people; NATIONAL archives; FOREIGN workers; RAILROAD construction workers; HISTORY of emigration &; immigration; CULTURAL pluralism; NINETEENTH century; HISTORY; MANNERS &; customs
- Publication
Irish Migration Studies in Latin America, 2014, Vol 8, Issue 3, p15
- ISSN
1661-6065
- Publication type
Article