Five Manuscript Documents Regarding Chinese Women Indentured Laborers in Cuba.

Rare documentation of the presence of Chinese women as indentured laborers in Cuba. While some broader colonial records occasionally mention a handful of women, historian Evenlyn Hu-DeHart emphasizes that the migration was "almost exclusively male," with women making up significantly less than 1% (often cited as a few dozen individuals across decades) of the total "coolie" population. Women were "unprofitable" because they could not perform the same difficult manual labor on sugar plantations. Through exclusion, plantation owners intended that Chinese male laborers (in contrast to enslaved people) would theoretically remain a bachelor workforce that would either die or return to China, rather than forming families.

The first set of documents requests registration and identification for Carmen, an Asian woman who was abroad(?) when the Asian Citizen Registry was conducted and was therefore missed. These letters include a note, written on printed scrap paper, with the single line "Es una asiatica y no esclava," suggesting how unfamiliar the governor's office was with the presence of Chinese indentured women.

The second document pertains to Maria de Jesus, referred to as an "escalva china" by her patron, Doña Josefa Mendoza de Martínez (also, unusually, a woman). The verso of this letter references another, younger girl enslaved by Mendoza de Martínez, also named Maria.

We find no other documents naming female Chinese indentured laborers in existing collections.

1. Four documents. One leaf, 30.6 x 21 cm folded, with 3 pp. manuscript text; one manuscript note on printed scrap, 14.3 x 7.5 cm; one leaf with manuscript text recto, 25 x 15 cm; one leaf with manuscript text recto, folded 21 x 15.3 cm. Cuba, July 1872. Toned, minor insect damage, a water stain on the largest leaf, some splitting where folded, registration marks from earlier sewn or stab binding.

2. Single leaf, manuscript text recto and verso, 31.5 x 21.6 cm. Matanzas, Cuba, 18 April 1873. Toned with some losses along lettering not affecting legibility.