7 - Returning to Haiti and the Aftermath of US Occupation

Summary

In the summer of 1928, after a year of working in Cuba, Nathan Borgella and other Haitians were apprehended by police; two were killed as they protested. The individuals in question had entered Cuba legally and had committed no crime. Nevertheless, they were being deported. The group was forced onto a steamer and dropped off in Petit-Goâve, Haiti, miles away from Borgella's original point of origin. Upon returning, “he traveled to the capital on foot, having nothing to eat but a can of sardines and two small pieces of bread.” After arriving in Port-au-Prince, the deportee took his story to the radical newspaper Le Petit Impartial to “officially bring it to the attention of the Haitian government.” Borgella's forced expulsion from Cuba and his voluntary movements between rural and urban Haiti were shared by tens of thousands of Haitians between 1928 and 1940. His efforts to communicate with the state illustrate that the massive return of migrants was closely tied to the politics of the late occupation and its aftermath.

Migrants continuously returned from Cuba to Haiti during the officially recognized migratory movement. Between 1913 and 1931, it was common for migrants to return home at the end of the Cuban sugar harvest. Almost 20 percent of the Haitians who migrated to Cuba annually during the 1920s had already entered the country at least once, highlighting the circular nature of migration. However, flows of return migrants increased dramatically beginning in 1928 and throughout the 1930s. In 1928, as the case of Borgella indicates, the Cuban government forcefully repatriated over 2000 Haitians from the country. Those numbers increased in subsequent years as the Cuban government shifted its relationship to both the United States and Haiti. In 1933, Cuban revolutionaries successfully overthrew Cuban dictator (and US ally) Gerardo Machado. The most notable acts of the short-lived, post-revolutionary Cuban government were to abrogate the Platt Amendment, which had ensured US imperial dominance over Cuba, and to institute the Nationalization of Labor, or 50 Percent, law, which required companies operating in Cuba to ensure that at least half of their workers were Cuban. The reach of the Cuban state expanded further under the subsequent government of Fulgencio Batista.