PRIVILEGED SCAPEGOATS: THE MANIPULATION OF MIGRANT ENGINEERING WORKERS IN MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY CUBA

Résumé 0

"This paper explores the reasons why the migrant engineering workers who traveled to Cuba to install, operate and maintain the steam technology that was being introduced in the island's sugar mills in the mid-nineteenth century, became convenient symbols in the response of the Spanish authorities and Creole elite to a number of fundamental problems facing Cuba as a Spanish colony. Though this migrant group has received little historiographical attention, the foreign engineers nevertheless not only contributed directly to the technological advancement of Cuba's sugar industry, they became symbols of the island's claim to modernity and at the same time its descent into economic dependency. While they may have desired nothing more thanto enjoy the economic privileges that their labors provided them with, they found themselves cast as scapegoats in the racial and political struggles of the period - unwitting representatives of abolitionism and symbolizing foreign desires for domination. By showing how these engineering workers were not as marginal to events as is presumed by the existing literature, the paper reappraises the historical role that such overlooked social groups might have played in and beyond the heated environment of Cuba in the mid-nineteenth century."