Frederick Douglass Opie’s Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala, 1882-1923 was recently published by University Press of Florida (2009). Jean Muteba Rahier (Florida International University) has described it as “a wonderful case study that complicates Latin American history, and particularly labor history in that region, by emphasizing the positive role played by black migrants in labor mobilization in Guatemala.”
Frederick Opie offers a revisionist interpretation of the underpaid black American (U.S) and West Indian laborers, “who were often depicted as simple victims with little, if any, enduring legacy,” but who were necessary for projects in the late nineteenth century, such as Guatemala’s extensive railroad system in the 1880s. The UPF review states: “For poor workers of African descent, immigrating to Guatemala was seen as an opportunity to improve their lives and escape from the racism of the Jim Crow U.S. South and the French and British colonial Caribbean. Using primary and secondary sources as well as ethnographic data, Opie details the struggles of these workers who were ultimately inspired to organize by the ideas of Marcus Garvey. Regularly suffering class- and race-based attacks and persecution, black laborers frequently met such attacks with resistance. Their leverage— being able to shut down the railroad— was crucially important to the revolutionary movements in 1897 and 1920.”
Frederick Douglass Opie is associate professor of history and director of the African Diaspora Program at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. He is the author of Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America (2008).
For UPF review and purchasing information, see http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=OPIEX001
