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The Cargo of the Montserrat: Gilbertese Labor in Guatemalan Coffee, 1890-19081

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

David McCreery  and
Doug Munro
David McCreery
Affiliation:
Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia
Doug Munro
Affiliation:
University of the South Pacific
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Extract

Upon the plantations themselves the laborers are not so badly treated, for there they are the property of their owners, and men treat their own property well, especially when it is of considerable value. But they are brought from a thoroughly healthy climate, where disease is almost unknown, to a feverstricken region. Within twelve months their numbers will probably be reduced to one-third, and at the expiration of the three years a woefully diminished number will return to their lovely homes in the Western Pacific.

In recent years much attention has focused on the labor migration of Pacific Islanders, and particularly Melanesians, during the second half of the nineteenth century for work on the export plantations of Fiji, Samoa, New Guinea, and Queensland. A smaller number, but a quantity nevertheless significant for the populations from which they came, went to labor in Latin America. In 1862-63, for example, vessels from Peru kidnapped perhaps 3,600 persons from the smaller islands of the eastern Pacific and ventured as far west as the Gilbert Islands, where they ensnared three hundred or more unsuspecting individuals. A larger migration from the Gilberts occurred almost thirty years later, when in 1890-92 some twelve hundred individuals signed up to work on the coffee plantations (fincas) of the Pacific piedmont (boca costa) of southern Mexico and Guatemala; this constituted almost fifteen percent of the Gilbertese who migrated for offisland labor after the middle of the century. Less than 800 of the 1890s cohort actually arrived, and perhaps a quarter to a third of these died in the first year, so that their impact on an industry which annually mobilized tens of thousands of local Indians was limited. Nevertheless, for the Guatemalan coffee elites the experience confirmed what they had long suspected, that there would be no solution to their labor problems outside of the republic itself. For the Gilbertese this was by far the largest instance of labor recruitment of the decade, a period of economic hardship and political changes in the archipelago.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , January 1993 , pp. 271 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1993

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Footnotes

1

Financial support was generously provided by the Australian Research Council and the Flinders University of South Australia, which awarded the second author a Visiting Research Fellowship, October-December 1990; the first author received travel support from Georgia State University in June 1989. We are also grateful to Dorothy Shineberg for commenting on an earlier version, to Philip Baker for research assistance, and to Geralyn Pye for both these things. Ralph Shlomowitz, Philippa Mein Smith, and Stephen Webb gave us the benefit of their knowledge on health and mortality. We are especially indebted to H.E. Maude for his practical assistance. Thanks are also due to Barrie Carr and Lowell Gudmundson for bringing the authors into contact with each other. An earlier version was presented at the 38th Annual Conference of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, University of North Florida, 28 February-2 March 1991.

References

2 Inkersly, Arthur and Brommage, W.L., “Experiences of a ‘Blackbirder’ Among the Gilbert Islanders,” Overland Monthly (San Francisco), 23 (June 1894), 576.Google Scholar

3 The general surveys are: Scarr, Deryck, “Recruit and Recruiters: A Portrait of the Pacific Islands Labor Trade,” Journal of Pacific History, 2 (1967), 5–24;Google Scholar Newbury, Colin, “The Melanesian Labor Reserve: Some Reflections on Pacific Labor Markets in the Nineteenth Century,” Pacific Studies, 4:1 (1980), 1–25;Google Scholar Moore, Clive, Leckie, Jacqueline, and Munro, Doug, eds., Labour in the South Pacific (Townsville, 1990).Google Scholar

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5 Munro, Doug, “The Origins of Labourers in the South Pacific: Commentary and Statistics,” in Moore, , Lecki, , and Munro, , eds., Labour in the South Pacific, pp. xxxix–li;Google Scholar Bedford, Richard, Macdonald, Barrie, and Munro, Doug, “Population Estimates for Kiribati and Tuvalu, 1850–1900: Review and Speculation,” Journal of the Polynesian Society, 89:2 (1980), 199–246.Google Scholar Further details on the course and effects of nineteenth-century Gilbertese labor migration are in Macdonald, Barrie, Cinderellas of the Empire: Towards a History of Kiribati and Tuvalu (Canberra/Norwalk, 1982), chap. 4.Google Scholar

6 Swayne to Thurston, 11 June 1894, Records of the Western Pacific High Commission, Series 4, Inwards Correspondence-General, Public Records Office, London, 195/1894 (hereafter cited as WHPC 4); Siegel, Jeff, “Origins of Pacific Islands Labourers in Fiji,” Journal of Pacific History, 20:1 (1985), 46.Google Scholar

7 On Magee, see Seargeant, Helen, San Antonio Nexapa (New York, 1952), p. 77.Google Scholar

8 Trench to Kimberley, 20 March 1894, encl. in Records of the (British) Colonial Office, Series 225, Western Pacific, Public Records Office, London, k/46/6079 (hereafter cited as CO 225); McCreery, David, Development and the State in Reforma Guatemala (Athens, OH, 1983), pp. 61–63;Google Scholar Forsyth, L.N., ed., Journal of W. J. Forsyth (Boston, 1940);Google Scholar Maude, H.E., personal communication, 17 January 1991. The suggestion in Antonio García de Leon’s Resistencia y Utopia (México, 1985), pp. 190–91,Google Scholar that some of the Pacific Islanders were survivors of an 1878 uprising in New Caledonia is incorrect. [Personal communications from Dorothy Shineberg, 12 March 1991.]

9 McKinnon to Emberson, 20 August 1891, and “Extract from the diary of the Government Agent of Eastward Ho,” both enclosed in CO 225/36/21454; Thurston to Knutsford, 28 June 1892, and extract from New Zealand Herald, June 16,1892, both enclosed in CO 225/39/23076; Campbell to Thurston, 8 June 1896, WPHC 4, 278/1896.

10 Forsyth, , ed., Journal of W.J. Forsyth, p. 73;Google Scholar Canisius to Adee, 18 February 1883, United States Consular Despatches, Apia (Samoa), no. 28 of 1883, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Graham to Wharton, 1 April 1892, United States Consular Letters, Butaritari (Gilbert Islands), National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Davis to Scott, 12 August 1892, encl. in CO 225/39/23076; Samayoa to Roberts, 26 November 1895 (print), encl. in CO 225/51/19530.

11 Copy of the contract is enclosed in CO 225/51/24468. In this period Guatemalan workers typically received 2 reales a day [approximately $4.00 (U.S.) a month] and free or at cost food. See McCreery, David, “Debt Servitude in Rural Guatemala, 1878–1936,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 63:4 (1983), 749.Google Scholar (hereafter cited as HAHR.)

12 Weekly Examiner (San Francisco), 20 October 1892, enclosed in CO 225/40/24451. For further details on Black Tom, see Dana, Julian, Gods Who Die: The Story of Samoa’s Greatest Adventurer (New York, 1935), pp. 26–60, 125–28.Google Scholar

13 Macdonald, , Cinderellas of the Empire, p. 68.Google Scholar

14 Davis to Scott, 16 August 1892, enclosed in CO 225/39/23076. The background to the declaration of the Protectorate is discussed in Macdonald, , Cinderellas of the Empire, pp. v–vi, 67–68.Google Scholar

15 Inkersly, and Brommage, , “Experiences of a ‘Blackbirder’ …,” p. 572.Google Scholar

16 Davis to Scott, 16 August 1892, enclosed in CO 225k/39/23076; Davis to Scott, 17 November 1892 [copy], enclosed in WPHC 4, 270/1892. See also Ferguson to Gosling, 20 September 1892 encl. in CO 225/41/21335; Gosling to Rosebery, 26 September 1892, CO 225/41/21335.

17 Inkersly, and Brommage, , “Experiences of a ‘Blackbirder’ …,” p. 575.Google Scholar

18 See, for example, Diario de Centro América (Guatemala), April 19 and 23, 1892, and May 24, 1892.

19 On the early history of coffee in Guatemala, see Solis, Ignacio, Memoria de la Casa de Moneda y del desarrollo económico del pais (Guatemala, 1979), IIIB, pp. 927–51.Google Scholar

20 McCreery, David, Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, forthcoming), chaps. 6–10.Google Scholar

21 Although Eric Wolf popularized this term in a series of articles and books, the paradigmatic statement is to be found in Cancian, Frank, “Political and Religious Organizations,” Handbook of Middle American Indians, (Austin, TX, 1967), VI, pp. 283–98.Google Scholar

22 As quoted in Solis, , Memorias, 1, p. 581.Google Scholar

23 McCreery, “Debt Servitude”; and McCreery, David, “An Odious Feudalism: Mandamiento Labor and Agriculture in Guatemala, 1858–1920,” Latin American Perspectives, 48:1 (1986), 99–117.Google Scholar

24 On debt peonage in general, see, among others, Bauer, Arnold, “Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression,” HAHR, 59:1 (1979), 34–63;Google Scholar Katz, Frederick, “Labor Conditions on Haciendas in Porfirian Mexico: Some Trends and Tendencies,” HAHR, 54:1 (1974), 1–47;Google Scholar Blanchard, Peter, “The Recruitment of Workers in the Peruvian Sierra at the turn of the Century: The Enganche System,” Inter-American Economic Affairs, 33:3 (1979), 63–83;Google Scholar Duncan, Kenneth and Rutledge, Ian, Land and Labour in Latin America (Cambridge, 1977).Google Scholar

25 Griffith, William, Empires in the Wilderness: Foreign Colonization and Development in Guatemala, 1834–1844 (Chapel Hill, 1965);Google Scholar McCreery, Development and the State in Reforma Guatemala, chap. 5.

26 Ferguson to Gosling, 20 September 1892, enclosed in CO 225/41/21335. Aubrey Gosling, the British Minister in Guatemala, seconded this report (Gosling to Rosebery, 25 September 1892, enclosed in CO 225/41/21335) without much enquiry; his son’s involvement in the venture may have clouded his judgment. His superiors in London certainly suspected that “[t]his was all coleur de rose” but recommended and took no action.

27 Weekly Examiner, October 20, 1892 [extracts], enclosed in CO 225/42/5130; see also Weekly Examiner, December 20, 1892 [complete version], enclosed in CO 225/44/930; New Zealand Herald (Auckland), December 4, 1892, enclosed in CO 225/42/5130.

28 Davis to Scott, 16 August 1892; enclosed in CO 225/39/23076; Inkersly, and Brommage, , “Experiences of a ‘Blackbirder’ …,” pp. 572, 574–75.Google Scholar

29 British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to Ripon, 19 December 1892, CO 225/40/24451; Foreign Office to Colonial Office, 26 December 1892 and enclosures, CO 225/41/24745; British Consul, San Francisco to Foreign Office, 28 December 1892, enclosed in CO 225/44/930. See also Pall Mall Gazette (London), October u.d., 1892, enclosed in CO 225/40/19562.

30 Lowe to Ripon, 1 August 1893, CO 225/44/15473; Gosling to Rosebery, 27 October 1893, enclosed in CO 225/44/20456.

31 Gosling to Rosebery, 17 October 1893 [copy], enclosed in CO 225/44/19530; see also newspaper clippings enclosed in CO 225/40/24436.

32 Fleischmann to Gosling, 10 October 1896, private and confidential [print], enclosed in CO 225/ 51/24468.

33 San Francisco Call, August 8, 1896.

34 Fleischmann to Gosling, 20 August 1896, private and confidential [print], enclosed in CO 225/51/ 22980; also see Lowe to Ripon, 1 April 1893, CO 225/44/15473.

35 Lowe to Ripon, 1 August 1893, CO 225/44/15473.

36 “List of Polynesians who will be repatriated, leaving Champerico (Rep. Guatemala) on June 21, 1908,” enclosed in WPHC 4, 106/1906.

37 Firth, Stewart and Munro, Doug, “Compaigne et Consulat; Lois Germaniques et Emploi des Travailleurs sur les Plantations de Samoa, 1864–1914,” Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 91 (1990), 115–34.Google Scholar

38 Campbell to Thurston, 8 June 1896, WPHC 4, 278/1896; “List of Polynesians on the Estates of Messrs. M.L. Barillas and Co., and of M. Eugene Dufourcq” [print], enclosed in CO 225/51/24468.

39 Gleeson to Roberts, 7 October 1894 [print], enclosed in CO 225/47/17092, and in WPHC 4, 245/1895. Gleeson’s arithmetic is suspect, but if he is correct in saying that 38 Gilbertese were still alive by November of 1895, then 71 had died of an attested 109 who arrived at finca Medio Monte.

40 See extract from the Coast Seamen’s Journal (San Francisco), January 22, 1896, enclosed in CO 225/51/4721.

41 On diseases and mortality in turn-of-the-century Guatemala, see Shatuck, George C., A Medical Survey of the Republic of Guatemala (Washington, D.C., 1938).Google Scholar In 1893 only 40 percent of the population of Guatemala was vaccinated against smallpox, and the rates were much lower among the Indian population. See: de Estadistica, Direccion General, Censo general de la República de Guatemala levantado en 26 de Febrero de 1893 (Guatemala, 1894), p. 124;Google Scholar and Seargeant, , Nexapa, p. 78.Google Scholar Gilbertese laborers in Hawaii had to be vaccinated by the authorities against smallpox when an epidemic broke out in 1881. See: Bennett, J.A., “Immigration, ‘Blackbirding’, Labour Recruiting?: The Hawaiian Experience, 1878–1887,” Journal of Pacific History, 11:1 (1976), 19.Google Scholar

42 Bunzel, Ruth, Chichicastenango (Seattle, 1952), p. 143.Google Scholar

43 Comparisons may be worked up in Shlomowitz, Ralph, “Mortality and the Pacific Labour Trade,” Journal of Pacific History, 22:1 (1987);Google Scholar 48 for Fiji; 50 for Queensland; and 53 for Samoa. Shlomowitz’s data do not relate to Gilbertese specifically but to Pacific Islander laborers generally.

44 See Curtin, Philip D., “Epidemiology and the Slave Trade,” Political Science Quarterly, 83:2 (1968), 190–216;Google Scholar Emmer, Pieter, “The Importance of British Indians into Surinam (Dutch Guiana), 1873–1916,” in Marks, Shula and Richardson, Peter, eds., International Labor Migration: Historical Perspectives (London, 1984), p. 104;Google Scholar Moore, Clive, Kanaka: A History of Melanesian Mackay (Port Moresby, New Guinea, 1985), pp. 244–54;Google Scholar Shlomowitz, Ralph, “Mortality and Workers,” in Moore, , Leckie, , and Munro, , eds., Labour in the South Pacific, pp. 44–47.Google Scholar

45 Fleischmann to Gosling, 10 October 1896, private and confidential [print], enclosed in CO 225/ 51/24468. This is not inconsistent with the experiences of Gilbertese plantation workers in Hawaii, 1877–87, and with Pacific Islander plantation workers in other places of employment, where bacillary dysentery, pulmonary tuberculosis and influenza-pneumonia were the principal causes of death. Rennie, Sandra, “Contract Labor under a Protector: The Gilbertese Laborers and Hiram Bingham, Jr., in Hawaii, 1878–1903,” Pacific Studies’, 11:1 (1987), 92–93;Google Scholar Bennett, , “Immigration, ‘Blackbirding’, Labour Recruiting?:…,” p. 22 Google Scholar; Shlomowitz, Ralph, “Epidemiology and the Pacific Labor Trade,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 19:4 (1989), 585–610;Google Scholar Shlomowitz, Ralph, “Differential Mortality of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the Pacific Labour Trade,” Journal of Australian Population Association Google Scholar(forthcoming).

46 Fleischmann to Gosling, 17 October 1893, enclosed in CO 225/44/19530.

47 San Francisco Call, August 8, 1896.

48 Briggs to Trench, 20 January 1894 [telegram], enclosed in CO 225/46/6079. Also see enclosures in CO 225/46/4374.

49 Magee to Trench, 25 January 1894, and Trench to Kimberly, 20 March 1894, both enclosed in CO 225/46/6079; Trench to Kimberly, 21 April 1894 [copy], enclosed in CO 225/46/8182. See also de Leon, Antonio García, “Lucha de clases y poder político en Chiapas,” Historia y Sociedad, 22 (1979), 65;Google Scholar and Seargeant, , Nexapa, pp. 76–79.Google Scholar

50 Mercer to Bramston [minute], 2 February 1893, in CO 225/44/1818. See also Mercer to Bramston [minute], 9 September 1893, in CO 225/44/15473; minute of 10 March 1894, in CO 225/46/4374; Colonial Office to Foreign Office [draft], 16 April 1894, enclosed in CO 225/46/6079; Davis to Scott, 9 August 1892, enclosed in CO 225/39/23076.

51 Gleeson to Roman Catholic Mission, Nonouti, 7 October 1894, enclosed in CO 225/47/17092, and in WPHC 4, 245/1895.

52 Gleeson to Roberts, 24 November 1895 [print], and Roberts to Samayoa, 25 November 1895 [print], both enclosed in CO 225/44/19530; Foreign Office to Roberts, 10 October 1895 [copy], encl. in CO 225/49/17881; Roberts to Salisbury, 19 November 1895 [print], enclosed in CO 225/49/22717; Roberts to Salisbury, 19 November 1895, (print), encl. in CO 225/49/22717; Roberts to Salisbury, 9 December 1896 and 17 December 1896 (prints), encl. in CO 225/51/1959; Warburton to Salisbury, 1 February 1896 [print], enclosed in CO 225/ 51/4721; CO 225/51/10578.

53 Campbell to Thurston, 8 June 1896, WPHC 4, 278/1896.

54 San Francisco Call, August 8, 1896.

55 “List of Polynesians Existing on the Estates of Messrs. M.L. Barillas and Co., and M. Eugene Dufourcq” [print], enclosed in CO 225/51/10578.

56 País, Alfonso Bauer, Catalogación de las leyes y disposiciones de trabajo de Guatemala del período 1872–1930 (Guatemala, 1965), pp. 86–90.Google Scholar

57 Roberts to Salisbury, 21 March and 22 March 1896 [prints], enclosed in CO 225/51/10578; Campbell to Thurston, 8 June 1896, and encls., WPHC 4, 278/1896; Gosling to “My dear Bertie,” 30 August 1896, and Fleischmann to Gosling, 20 August 1896 [prints], encl. in CO 225/51/22980; Gosling to Salisbury, 21 October 1896, and Fleischmann to Salisbury, 10 October 1896, private and confidential [prints], encl. in CO 225/51/24468.

58 This is the Gilbertese rendering of his real name, Te’o Teotau. See Montgomery to McOwen, 17 June 1907, enclosed in WPHC 4, 106/1906.

59 Roberts to Salisbury, 21 March 1896 [print], enclosed in CO 225/51/10578; Fleischmann to Gosling, 20 August 1896, private and confidential [print], enclosed in 225/51/22980.

60 Fleischmann to Gosling, 20 August 1896, private and confidential [print], enclosed in CO 225/51/ 22980. For comparison, see Munro, Doug, “Planter versus Protector: Frank Cornwall’s Employment of Gilbertese Plantation Labourers in Samoa, 1877–1881,” New Zealand Journal of History, 23:2 (1989), 177.Google Scholar

61 Fleischmann to Gosling, 10 October 1896, private and confidential [print], enclosed in CO 225/ 51/24468.

62 Foreign Office to Gosling, 21 December 1896, CO 225/51/26421.

63 McCreery, Rural Guatemala, chaps. 7 and 9.

64 Thurston to Chamberlain, 7 August 1896, CO 225/50/19587.

65 Munro, Doug and Firth, Stewart, “From Company Rule to Consular Control: Gilbert Island Labourers on German Plantations in Samoa, 1867–96,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 16:1 (1987), 33–39.Google Scholar

66 Thurston to Norman, 22 February 1895, CO 225/47/5569; Nelson to Norman, 2 May 1895, enclosed in WPHC 4, 156/1895; minute to Fairfield, 21 October 1895, in CO 225/49/18391.

67 The “internal” labor trades in the Pacific are discussed in Firth, Stewart, “The Transformation of the Labour Trade in German New Guinea, 1899–1914,” Journal of Pacific History, 11:1 (1976), 51–65;Google Scholar Panoff, Michel, “Travailleurs, Recruteurs et Planteurs dans l’Archipel Bismarck de 1885 a 1914,” Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 64 (1979), 159–73;Google Scholar Keesing, Roger M. and Corris, Peter, Lightning Meets the West Wind: The Malaita Massacre (Melbourne, 1980),Google Scholar chap. 3; Bennett, Judith A., Wealth of the Solomons: A History of a Pacific Archipelago, 1800–1978 (Honolulu, 1987)Google Scholar, chaps. 5–8; Shlomowitz, Ralph and Bedford, Richard, “The Internal Labour Trade in New Hebrides and Soloman Islands, c. 1900–1940,” Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 86 (1988), 61–85.Google Scholar

68 Munro, Doug and Bedford, Richard, “Migration from the Atolls: The Gilbert and Ellice Islands,” in Moore, , Leckie, , and Munro, , eds., Labour in the South Pacific, pp. 172–77.Google Scholar

69 Ten Teotiraoi to Murdoch, 26 September 1905, enclosed in CO 225/72/22442.

70 Ten Teotirasi to Murdoch, 9 October 1906 [translation], Murdoch to Campbell, 27 January 1906, and Campbell to im Thurn, 14 February 1906, all enclosed in CO 225/72/22442, and in WPHC 4, 106/1906; Murdoch, G.M., “Remark on Despatches re Repatriation of Gilbert Islanders in Guatemala,” 25 August 1907 Google Scholar [copy], encl. in WPHC 4, 106/1906.

71 See Hervey to Gray, 3 October 1906, enclosed in CO 225/74/40235.

72 Fleischmann to Hervey, 25 August 1906, enclosed in CO 22/74/40235; Fleischmann to Gray, 6 August 1908 [copy], enclosed in CO 225/83/35014.

73 Hervey to Gray, 3 October 1906, enclosed in CO 225/74/40235; Fleischmann to Gray 6 August 1907 [copy], enclosed in CO 225/83/35014.

74 The cost came to L595.10.0, less a payment of L61.6.10 as first installment by Komakaloi. See Foreign Office to Colonial Offices and enclosures, 2 November 1908, CO 225/83/40208; receipt to Hugo Fleischmann, 15 June 1908, and “List of Polynesians who will be repatriated, leaving Champerico (Rep. Guatemala) on June 21, 1907,” both enclosed in WPHC 4, 106/1906.

75 Montgomery to Mcowen, 17 June 1909, enclosed in WPHC 4, 106/1906.