Resumen

CEPEDA SANCHEZ, HERNANDO. Struggles for Freedom: Asian-Latin American Connections in Coolie Trafficking to Cuba (1850-1860). Anu. colomb. hist. soc. cult. [online]. 2020, vol.47, n.1, pp.267-302.  Epub 28-Mar-2020. ISSN 0120-2456.  https://doi.org/10.15446/achsc.v47n1.83152.

In the mid-nineteenth century, a citizen of New Granada, Nicolás Tanco Armero, became the main exporter of Chinese coolies to Cuba, despite having expressed his passionate defense of citizens' right to freedom before his trips to the Far East (1855). The article argues that Tanco Armero constructed a purely capitalist, abolitionist, and civilizatory discourse based on the social and racial conditions of Chinese peoples, which allowed him to justify Asian servitude in carrying out forced labor in the Caribbean islands. Through the notion of representation, the article analyzes the psychological and sociological elements that, together, made up a mental toolkit that gave meaning to Tanco's visual impressions of the Oriental world. The article documents the complex processes of racial and cultural representation that the notion of freedom went through, and which became much more complex due to the presence of Asian colonists in societies accustomed to seeing only and coexisting with whites and blacks.

Palabras clave : connected history; coolies; Cuba; freedom; global history; system of representations.

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