Transnational networks and nation-building: the protest of Barágua and the transition from plantation societies to the modern nation-state in Cuba and the Americas

Hazard, Ethel

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Description

Title

Transnational networks and nation-building: the protest of Barágua and the transition from plantation societies to the modern nation-state in Cuba and the Americas

Author(s)

Hazard, Ethel

Issue Date

2013-02-03T19:28:35Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Torres, Arlene

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Torres, Arlene

Committee Member(s)

• Orta, Andrew
• Manalansan, Martin F.
• Jacobsen, Nils P.
• Summerfield, Gale

Department of Study

Anthropology

Discipline

Anthropology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• cultural anthropology
• history
• African American Studies
• African American History
• political theory
• Latin American Studies
• international relations
• international development
• international affairs
• nationalism
• abolition
• antislavery
• gender relations
• civil society
• organizational behavior
• civil sector
• civil institutions
• group dynamics
• politics
• transnationalism
• translocal
• Nation-state
• Plantation
• Cuba
• Jamaica
• Columbia
• United States
• state formation
• emerging markets
• associations
• nineteenth century
• labor
• political economy
• citizenship
• sovereignty
• feminist theory
• economic development
• Labor History
• plantations society
• colonialism
• post-colonialism
• community relations
• women's history
• political philanthropy
• Americas
• Antonio Maceo
• Jose Marti
• independence movements
• public culture
• ethnohistory
• social movements
• African Diaspora
• African Latin American culture
• blackness
• network analysis
• social networks
• ethnomethodology
• social science
• race and ethnic relations
• gender identity
• racial identity
• ethnic identity
• class
• migrants
• migrancy
• out-migration
• immigrant

Abstract

The formation of transnational ties, and the forging of transnational relationships between non-governmental organizations and politically marginalized groups, is often interpreted as a late twentieth century cultural phenomenon. This work challenges that supposition by examining the cultural practice of transnationalism during the last quarter of the nineteenth century in Cuba and other parts of the Americas. The historical process of nation-building, taken by a body of Cuban dissidents primarily from eastern Cuba, and their allies in the United States and the other islands of the Anglophone Caribbean, presents a new view of interpreting the rise of nationalist movements in the Americas. The practice of nation-building fostered by this group of social actors occurred culturally and historically alongside the emergence of a civil sector that included the growing importance of locally developed social institutions. The proliferation of political clubs, literary salons, and other civic organizations, analytically results in the reformulation of interdisciplinary questions regarding territorial belonging in the colonial, national, and imperial space of modern national and post-colonial territories in the American region. Expressions of locality and translocality are seen as critical markers of group and individual identity that problematicizes national belonging between and among economically, politically, and socially marginalized groups. Both the disciplines of history and cultural anthropology are better served by understanding the significance of migration and the creation of diasporic communities as resulting from nationalism as practiced during this period. Moreover, contemporary development policy that analyzes emergent civil sector institutional relationships and how these relationship impact gender, race, ethnicity, and economic identity transformations is also served. This dissertation utilizes the historical event, La Protesta de Barágua/The Protest of Barágua during the last quarter of the nineteenth century in Cuba as the organizing and analytical framework to examine the cultural complexity of nation-building as practiced through the creation of translocal relationships both individually and institutionally and the grievances articulated by within these marginalized communities and their institutional forms. The ethnohistorical lens that this specific event provides is one whereby, the experience of transition from plantation society to modern nation-state as experienced by marginalized groups such as Chinese migrant indentured laborers, poor and elite women, free people of color and slaves, is critically examined. This work does not seek to participate in “national-history” making, but instead gives insight into the consistent cultural flows of people and ideas within a dialogic chain of communication that was systemic and mutually influential. Hence, for these groups to gain greater political inclusion within the modern nation-state, a hemispheric process, articulated in political thoughts and actions, utilizing anti-colonial, nationalist, antislavery, and abolitionist political ideologies and rhetoric, was used by members of the dissident community in this work. Spanish colonial records, dissident political pamphlets, and a re-examination of secondary sources in Latin American and Caribbean history and cultural anthropology, each serve as the evidentiary basis for this work. Therefore, the hemispheric significance of La Protesta de Barágua/The Protest of Barágua, is interpreted as an articulation of not merely a culturally specific Cuban event, but within broader hemispheric struggles by other dissident groups that called for the immediate abolition of slavery as a critical step for creating equality among each of the constituent parts of the citizenry within the nation.

Graduation Semester

2012-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/42229

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2012 Ethel Hazard

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