Havana鈥檚 Chinatown dreaming of regeneration
Print Edition
Nestling alongside Havana鈥檚 old town, surrounded by colonial buildings and swept by the exhaust trails of passing 1950s American convertibles, stands a large arch with an ornate roof.
It鈥檚 the entrance gate to Havana鈥檚 Chinatown, once the biggest in Latin America, whose residents are now dreaming of recovering its past glory.
These are some of the last remaining Cuban residents who are 100 percent Chinese. Their descendants have embraced the local culture and are more Cuban than Chinese.
The first wave of Cantonese migration arrived in 1847 to work as 鈥渃oolies,鈥 agricultural laborers who replaced African slaves in the sugar plantations.
The next wave, though, had money and were fleeing discrimination and an economic crisis in California. They built a thriving neighborhood as well as restaurants and theaters.
But the migratory flow dried up with Cuba鈥檚 1959 communist revolution.
鈥淐alculating the number of descendants is impossible. There are first-to-fifth-generation Chinese. Those fully Chinese, there are 121 in the whole island,鈥 Maria Teresa Montes de Oca Choy, Asian history professor at Havana University, said.
Marking 500th anniversary
The influx of rich Chinese migrants from California provided a boost to Cuba鈥檚 gross domestic product, but in 1959 Castro鈥檚 鈥渘ationalization law affected all Chinese. Small businesses had considerable Chinese capital,鈥 said Montes de Oca. But once the Soviet Union fell and Cuba spiraled into an economic crisis in the 1990s, some old Chinese restaurants reopened, although they remain run down.
With Havana celebrating its 500th anniversary, authorities have committed to restoring many parts of the city, including Chinatown. Nearby, at a printer鈥檚, the next edition of the bilingual Kwong Wah Po daily newspaper, which began as a monthly 80 years ago, is being prepared.
Until recently it was printed on an 1849 American press 鈥 one of the oldest in the world 鈥 that was even equipped with Chinese characters. The latest edition will be printed with modern methods, while there are no longer any fully Chinese members of the editorial team.
Professor Montes de Oca admits renovating a 鈥淐hinatown without Chinese people鈥 could be a fallacy, but she insists that the locals 鈥渇eel proud of having had a Chinatown and would love to have one again.鈥
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