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A TRANSNATIONAL
HISTORY OF THE
MODERN CARIBBEAN
POPULAR RESISTANCE
ACROSS BORDERS

KIRWIN SHAFFER
A Transnational History of the Modern Caribbean
 Kirwin Shaffer

A Transnational History
of the Modern
Caribbean
Popular Resistance across Borders
Kirwin Shaffer
Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences
Penn State Berks
Reading, PA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-93011-0    ISBN 978-3-030-93012-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93012-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation,
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any
other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation,
computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with
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Cover Credit: Lost Horizon Images / GettyImages

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For Zohra
 Acknowledgments

I must acknowledge the support of the editors at Palgrave who encouraged me

to conceive of and run with this idea for a narrative “textbook” on transna-
tional modern Caribbean history. Anonymous readers were vital with their
ideas for constructing the narrative, pitfalls to avoid, ideas for revisions, and
suggestions for sources. And to those sources: well, this book would have been
impossible without them. Here is a hearty “thank you” to my fellow historians
past and present whose work I have relied on to write this book. Finally, a
thank you to the never-ending joy and inspiration from our children (Hannah,
Imane, Malick, Nathaniel, and Sarra) and the fast-rising number of grandchil-
dren (Ada, Harper, Hattie-Anne, Kilian, Lucía, and Zeno). Cheers!

vii
 Contents

1 A Popular History of Resistance across Borders  1

Thinking About “Resistance”   3
If It’s Not Rebellion, Is it Just Another Form of Accommodation?   4
Culture and Resistance   6
Transnational Resistance and Alternative Geographies   7
Women and Resistance   9
Some Cautionary Asides About Hero Worship and Resistance  10
The Chapters Ahead  12
Works Cited and Further References  15

2 Dèyè mòn gen mòn: The Haitian Revolution Throughout

the Caribbean 17
Indigenous and Slave Resistance before the Haitian Revolution  18
On the Eve of the Haitian Revolution  21
The Revolt of the Enslaved  22
Threats from Napoleon and Citizen Toussaint  24
Resisting Toussaint’s State  26
The French Invasion and the Declaration of Independence  26
The New Country of Ayiti  28
The Transnational Impact of the Haitian Revolution  30
Inspiring Revolts around the Caribbean  30
Haiti and Caribbean Political Radicalism  34
Revolutionary Privateering  35
Conclusion  36
Works Cited and Further References  38

3 Liberating Ourselves: Slave Resistance and Emancipation 41

Motherhood and Resistance  42
Transnational Religion and Resistance  45

ix
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x Contents

Caribbean Resistance and Its Transnational Impact on the United

States  48
Transnationalism, Resistance, and Abolition in the French West
Indies  48
Resistance in the Spanish Caribbean, 1790s–1840s  49
Rebellious Market Women of the Caribbean  51
Conclusion  52
Works Cited and Further References  53

4 Liberating Ourselves: Freedom Fighting after Slavery 57

Haiti and Resistance during the Boyer Years  58
Resisting British Apprenticeship  60
Resisting Spanish Apprenticeship  61
Free Worker Revolts, Protests, and Strikes  61
Resisting Indentured Servitude  64
Intra-Class Resistance: Workers Fighting Workers  66
Morant Bay, Jamaica, 1865  67
Cultural Resistance  69
Conclusion  71
Works Cited and Further References  72

5 Anti-Colonial Awakenings: The Dominican Republic, Puerto

Rico, Cuba, and Panama, 1820s–Early 1900s 75
Early Anti-Spanish Efforts in the Caribbean: El Águila Negra
and Filibusters  76
The 1860s War for Restoration in the Dominican Republic  77
Transnational Anti-Colonialism: The Antilles for Antilleans  78
Cuba’s Ten Years War, 1868–1878  79
The Little War in Cuba, 1879–1880  82
The Cuban War for Independence, 1895–1898  82
Banditry, Baseball, and Resistance  84
Transnational Support for Independence  86
The Spanish-American War and Its Aftermath  86
Panamanian Independence  88
Conclusion  89
Works Cited and Further References  90

6 Working-Class Resistance and Anti-Imperialism, 1900–World

War II 91
Transnational Anarchism Confronts US Expansion  92
Resisting US Imperialism in Haiti, 1915–1934  94
Resisting US Imperialism in the Dominican Republic, 1916–1924  96
Caribbean Anti-Imperialist Leagues in the 1920s and 1930s  98
Transnational Radical Support for Sandino’s Anti-Imperialism  99
 Contents  xi

Transnational Resistance in Imperial Black Contact Zones:

Central America and Cuba  99
Transnational Resistance in Imperial Black Contact Zones: The
Great War and at Home 100
Organized Labor and Resistance to British Rule 101
Trinidad 1937 102
Jamaica 1938 104
Conclusion 105
Works Cited and Further References 106

7 Fighting Tyranny, Colonialism, and Imperialism at Mid-

Century109
Resisting Dictators: Machado in Cuba 109
Resisting Dictators: Trujillo in the Dominican Republic 111
The Caribbean Legion Wages Transnational War Against Dictators 113
Puerto Rican Nationalists and Anti-Colonial Resistance,
1930s–1950s 114
Anti-Americanism at Mid-Century 117
Anti-Colonialism and Decolonization in the British West Indies 118
Fighting a Different Form of Colonialism in the French West Indies 120
Resistance in the Dutch West Indies 121
Conclusion 123
Works Cited and Further References 124

8 A Caribbean “Black Lives Matter”: Black Consciousness and

Black Power, Early 1900s–1970s127
Afro-Cuban Politics and the Partido Independiente de Color
in the Early 1900s 127
The UNIA and Transnational Black Consciousness, 1910s–1920s 129
Black Consciousness Meets Marxism, 1920s–1930s 132
The African Blood Brotherhood, 1919–1922 134
Black Consciousness and Cultural Resistance, 1920s–1950s 135
The Cultural Politics of Noirisme in Haiti: The Rise and Rule of
Papa Doc 137
Rastafari and Black Consciousness in Jamaica, 1930s–1970s 139
Rasta and the Cultural Politics of Reggae Music in the 1970s 141
Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Walter Rodney: Intellectual
Roots of Black Power 143
Black Power across the Caribbean 146
Black Power and the 1970 Trinidad Revolution 147
Conclusion 149
Works Cited and Further References 150
xii Contents

9 Hasta la Victoria Siempre: The Cuban Revolution Throughout

the Caribbean, 1950s–1980s153
Urban and Rural Resistance Against the Batista Dictatorship 154
Building the New Socialist Cuba 157
Resisting the Revolution: Counterrevolutionary Violence 159
Resisting Revolutionary Policies: The Politics of Childhood in the
Early 1960s 160
The Revolution Didn’t Go Far Enough: Being Too Radical for the
Revolution 162
Against the Revolution, Nothing: Cuban Cinema and
Revolutionary Politics 163
Spreading Revolution 165
The Grenadian Revolution, 1979–1983 166
The Sandinista Revolution, 1979–1990 168
Conclusion 169
Works Cited and Further References 170

10 Masses vs. Massa: The Ongoing Antiauthoritarian Struggle173

Fall of the Duvaliers and Transition to People’s Rule in Haiti,
1980s–1990s 174
Puerto Rican Nationalists, 1970s–2000s 175
The Maroon War in Suriname, 1986–1992 176
Abu Bakr and Trinidad’s Muslim Revolt, 1990 177
Colombian Revolutionaries, 1960s–2010s 178
Transnational Chavismo and the Multipolar Axis Against
Washington 178
Dissent during Cuba’s “Special Period,” 1990s–2010s 180
The 2009 Labor Uprisings in the French West Indies 182
Resistance to Political and Natural Disasters in Haiti and Puerto
Rico 182
Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance 184
Resisting Sexual Violence 185
LGBTQ Resistance to Homophobia and Injustice 185
Reparations 187
Works Cited and Further References 189

Index191
 About the Author

Kirwin Shaffer is Professor of Latin American Studies at Penn State

University—Berks College. He teaches courses on Latin American and
Caribbean History, Latin American Studies, Global Terrorism, Tyranny and
Freedom, Globalization, and Global Cinema. Shaffer has received multiple
teaching awards, including being named a Penn State University Teaching
Fellow. When not teaching, he continues research on transnational anarchism
in the Americas. He has published four books on anarchist politics and culture
in the Caribbean and Latin America: Anarchism and Countercultural Politics
in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba (University Press of Florida, 2005) and reis-
sued as Anarchist Cuba: Countercultural Politics in the Early Twentieth Century
(PM Press, 2019); Black Flag Boricuas: Anarchism, Antiauthoritarianism, and
the Left in Puerto Rico, 1897–1921 (University of Illinois Press, 2013/2020);
In Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History (University
Press of Florida 2015/2017) coedited with Geoffroy de Laforcade; and
Anarchists of the Caribbean: Countercultural Politics and Transnational
Networks in the Age of US Expansion (Cambridge University Press, 2020/2022).

xiii
 Abbreviations

ABB African Blood Brotherhood, United States and Caribbean

ALBA Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Bolivarian
Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), Caribbean
ANERC Asociación de Nuevos Emigrados Revolucionarios Cubanos
(Association of New Cuban Revolutionary Emigrants), Mexico
ANLC American Negro Labor Congress, United States
ANR Acción Nacional Revolucionaria (Revolutionary National
Action), Cuba
BLM Black Lives Matter
BWIR British West Indian Regiment
CANF Cuban-American National Foundation, United States
CARICOM Caribbean Community
CIA Central Intelligence Agency, United States
CPUSA Communist Party of the United States of America
DR Directorio Revolucionario (Revolutionary Directorate), Cuba
FARC Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia)
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States
FBM Free Beach Movement, US Virgin Islands
FMC Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (Federation of Cuban Women)
FSLN Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista Front for
National Liberation), Nicaragua
ICAIC Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográfica (Cuban
Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry)
IMF International Monetary Fund
INTERPOL International Criminal Police Organization
IWW Industrial Workers of the World, United States and Caribbean
LGBTQ/I Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Queer/Intersexual
LKP Lyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon (Alliance against Profiteering), Guadeloupe
M-26-7 Movimiento de 26 de Julio (26th of July Movement), Cuba
MBR—200 Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario—200 (Revolutionary
Bolivarian Movement—200), Venezuela

xv
xvi ABBREVIATIONS

MLCE Movimiento Libertario Cubano en el Exilio (Cuban Libertarian

Movement in Exile), United States
NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
United States
NJAC National Joint Action Committee, Trinidad
NJM New Jewel Movement, Grenada
NUFF National United Freedom Fighters, Trinidad
NWCSA Negro Welfare Cultural and Social Association, Trinidad
PIC Partido Independiente de Color (Independent Party of Color), Cuba
PPP People’s Progressive Party, Guyana
PRC Partido Revolucionario Cubano (Cuban Revolutionary Party)
RBA Red Barrial Afrodescendiente (Afrodescendant Neighborhood
Network), Cuba
TWA Trinidad Workingmen’s Association
UDAD Unión Democrática Antinazista Dominicana (Dominican Antinazi
Democratic Union)
ULM Unión Laborista de Mujeres (Union of Women Workers), Cuba
UMAP Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción (Military Units to Aid
Production), Cuba
UNIA Universal Negro Improvement Association, United States and
Caribbean
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 The Modern Caribbean Basin (United States Central Intelligence
Agency (1990); Central America and the Caribbean [Washington,
D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency] [Map]; retrieved from the Library
of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/90683938/) 2
Fig. 2.1 Collage of the Haitian Revolution (WikiMedia Commons) 24
Fig. 3.1 Mural of Sam Sharpe and Nanny of the Maroons (Creative
Commons/David Drissel) 47
Fig. 5.1 Battle of Desmayo—multiracial mambises fighting Spanish troops
(Getty Images) 83
Fig. 7.1 Mural of Lolita Lebrón crucified in life among other Puerto Rican
nationalist martyrs (Creative Commons/Seth Anderson) 117
Fig. 8.1 Black Power and the 1970 Trinidad Revolution (Creative Commons/
Angelo Bissessarsingh) 148

xvii
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 CHAPTER 1

A Popular History of Resistance across Borders

In the Caribbean—where history is filled with crimes of slavery, tyranny, exploi-

tation, and colonialism—not everybody accepted the cultural, physical, and
structural violence imposed on them. Some fought back using machetes and
guns, others with religion, song, and verse. Many resisted by fleeing to differ-
ent realms to start life anew. Still others used the structural mechanisms of
repression to assert their rights in schools, courtrooms, and elections.
“Resistance” is central to Caribbean history, deserving an elevated place in
understanding its peoples’ pasts. As Richard Gott notes, when we focus on
resistance, we are “challenging not just the traditional, self-indulgent view of
empire, but also the customary depiction of the colonized as victims, lacking in
agency or political will” (Gott 2011, p. 3) (Fig. 1.1).
I deeply appreciate historians from around the Atlantic World who have
studied Caribbean resistance. In this modest volume, I bring together this
wealth of research to illustrate various forms of resistance since the eve of the
Haitian Revolution to the early twenty-first century. People stood up against
authoritarianism, exploitation, and injustice. Some fought to better their indi-
vidual lives or the lives of their families. Others fought to free whole colonies
or countries, to free whole races, or even to free humanity. In addition, many
resisted revolutionary changes taking place in their societies either because they
disagreed with radical changes or because they did not think that the radical
changes went far enough.
This book also illustrates the transnational dimensions of resistance.
“Transnational” here is different from “international.” The latter generally
reflects relations between countries and their governments. “Transnational” is
broader, encompassing relations between states as well as the roles of nonstate
actors agitating across geographical expanses. Men and women traveled across
open seas and narrow passages between islands where they took up arms or
spread revolutionary messages. Ideas about anti-imperialism, national libera-
tion, racial or economic justice, and more traveled the seas too through

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
K. Shaffer, A Transnational History of the Modern Caribbean,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93012-7_1
2 K. SHAFFER

Fig. 1.1 The Modern Caribbean Basin (United States Central Intelligence Agency
(1990); Central America and the Caribbean [Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence
Agency] [Map]; retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/
item/90683938/)

newspapers and pamphlets, via word of mouth from passengers and stowaways,
among exiles, and from those fleeing rebellion or authoritarianism. People
learned about acts of resistance elsewhere in the Caribbean, often replicating
those acts in their own lands. Individuals engaged in these pursuits might be
government emissaries or militaries, but just as often they were nonstate actors
like enslaved peoples fleeing servitude to other lands, political radicals engaged
in cross-border acts of rebellion, or activists sending messages, images, and
stories about resistance around the region that inspired people in different
lands. In short, acts of resistance rarely happened in isolation and had implica-
tions beyond local settings.
There is a larger mission to this transnational approach: to see the Caribbean
as more than a collection of linguistic or imperial “silos” where one studies the
Francophone, Anglophone, Hispanophone, and so on Caribbean. Such a silo
approach privileges the dominating empires. A transnational focus on resis-
tance illustrates the commonalities of experiences across linguistic and imperial
boundaries, while showcasing the sharing and influencing of ideas around the
Caribbean Basin.
 1 A POPULAR HISTORY OF RESISTANCE ACROSS BORDERS 3

So, how should we understand what comprises the “Caribbean”? A univer-

sity search committee once asked me about teaching Caribbean history. I talked
about the importance of understanding the Caribbean as more than just the
islands and as more than just the English-speaking West Indies (the job was at
an English-speaking Caribbean university). One interviewer said that students
would only be interested in the English-speaking islands. I did not get the job.
That conversation shaped how I encourage people to think about the
Caribbean—or what some more accurately call the “Greater Caribbean.” This
includes the islands stretching from Cuba in the north to Trinidad and Tobago
in the south, from Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in the west to Barbados in
the east. Yet, the Caribbean is more than its islands and includes lands where
Caribbean waters touch their shores: the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, the
eastern shores of Central America, and the northern coasts of Colombia and
Venezuela. Too often, these Latin American regions are overlooked in discus-
sions of the Caribbean, but a transnational approach illustrates how the islands
and these mainland cousins impacted each other’s histories. For instance,
Mexican revolutionaries sought to free Cuba from Spanish control in the
1820s; the Haitian Revolution sparked conspiracies and revolts by enslaved
peoples across the Greater Caribbean; privateers (think of them as government-­
funded pirates) from Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Cartagena sailed the region,
attacking Spanish and British vessels; South American revolutionary Simón
Bolívar depended on aid from revolutionary Haiti; West Indian laborers joined
a global workforce building the Panama Canal; Cuba assisted revolutionaries in
Grenada and Nicaragua; several island nations joined Venezuela to form a
regional political and economic challenge to the United States and globaliza-
tion. Plus, the Caribbean is more than those places touched by the Caribbean
Sea. After all, Caribbean waves do not touch the Guianas of South America,
Barbados, or Havana. Yet, historically we think of all these as “Caribbean”
locations—and rightly so as their histories are interconnected. Lastly, we can-
not forget that when people migrated to Europe and North America, they
created new Caribbean communities, so it is also reasonable to think of New
York, Miami, and more as “Caribbean” cities. Thus, I ask the reader to be gen-
erous in thinking about what comprises the “Caribbean.”

Thinking about “Resistance”

How do people imagine who they are? How do they imagine the world around
them? How do they imagine a better world for which they are striving? Brian
Meeks suggests resistance is “forged at the margins of the real and the imagi-
nary” where people carve out “an alternative social universe” to shape and
control their own lives and destinies. This might be done through a head-on
confrontation with authority, or it might be something on the margins where
people create an alternative world for themselves. This latter is not “an avenue
of evasion” but “a powerful incubator to nurture and reshape” one’s life in the
4 K. SHAFFER

here and now as well as to prepare for “frontal resistance, if and when it does
come” (Meeks 2001, p. 94).
Not all resistance sought to demolish and replace institutions. After all,
destroying oppressive cultural, economic, or political institutions takes a large,
dedicated, and generally armed force. While we see attempts and successes in
destroying institutions and creating new revolutionary alternatives throughout
this book, we also see examples of people pursuing what some have referred to
as “masterlessness” or “ungovernability.” Individuals attempted “to fashion a
life outside the scrutiny of Caribbean officialdom” (Julius Scott 2019, p. 37).
Thus, people formed maroon communities, formerly enslaved people refused
to work on plantations and instead pursued their own individual and small
community endeavors, Rastafari worshippers organized communes, and more.
The goal was to become one’s own master.
Relatedly, some people resisted authority with the desire to become “ungov-
ernable” and thus free from imposed authority. This often meant they sus-
tained themselves on the margins of official society. For instance, ordinary
people resisted the Haitian revolutionary state that abolished slavery. This was
not because people liked slavery. Just the opposite. Recently freed people
resisted Haitian government efforts to tie workers to newly revived sugar plan-
tations. People had fought to gain and work their own lands and, in doing so,
rejected their government’s policies. Jean Casimir refers to this as the “counter
plantation” and reflects what Michel Trouillot calls the “nation vs. the state,”
that is, the people resisted governmental authority—even in a revolutionary
context—because they believed their resistance to the state continued the revo-
lution’s true essence (Trouillot 2000, pp. 44–5). The case of the Cuban
Revolution is illustrative. The new revolutionary government that came to
power in 1959 created new waves of animosity, violence, sabotage, and resis-
tance by many Cubans who saw new Communist policies reaching unaccept-
ably into people’s personal and daily lives.

If It’s Not Rebellion, Is it Just Another Form

of Accommodation?

Some might argue that if people resisted without intending to overthrow the
dominant order and create a more just world for everyone, then it was selfish,
conservative, and even accommodating to those in power. Thus, using “pas-
sive” or everyday forms of resistance to be “ungovernable” did little to free the
larger collective of people. From this viewpoint, “active resistance” uses vio-
lence to overturn an exploitative order (armed revolt being the best example),
while “passive resistance” (cultural retention, music, temporary flight) merely
aims to help people be “ungovernable,” carve out some separate identity, or
achieve better conditions in the short term while keeping the overall repressive
system in place.
However, instead of thinking of “passive” and “active” resistance as oppo-
sites—an “either/or” dichotomy—it is more useful to envision a “sliding scale”
 1 A POPULAR HISTORY OF RESISTANCE ACROSS BORDERS 5

of resistance with active and passive examples on the ends of a spectrum and
other forms of resistance (sabotage, strikes, tax protests) in between. We might
even consider how passive and active forms of violence were interlinked. For
instance, everyday passive resistance laid the groundwork for the 1823
Demerara slave revolt. “It was in daily resistance that slaves’ resentment grew,
that bonds of solidarity were strengthened, that networks and leaders were
formed, and individual acts of defiance were converted into collective protest”
(da Costa 1994, p. 81). Similarly, resistance shy of full-fledged armed revolt
might not have overturned empires, but it could disrupt how empires and
states functioned.
If resistance were about “being free,” then it could just as easily be about
“feeling free.” Throughout Caribbean history, people in dominant positions of
economic, educational, political, and religious power created institutions and
structures to control people. This structural violence did not erase peoples’
desires to be free. As Natasha Lightfoot notes, “despite being mired in poverty,
subject to coercion, and denied even the most basic rights,” people “still found
spaces in their ordinary lives to feel free” (Lightfoot 2015, p. 3).
In fact, we may wish to consider which is more effective: Organized, armed
rebellion or quotidian forms of resistance? Aline Helg argues that in a repressive
context “everyday forms of resistance can be more efficient” (Helg 1995,
pp. 14–5). James Scott argues similarly. For him, rarely is resistance about revo-
lution, but revolution could not happen without resistance. Most resistance did
not overturn structures but instead carved out different levels of autonomy. Did
any of these acts physically harm exploiters? Often, the answer was no, but that
does not mean those who perpetrated such acts were accommodationists. Just
because people resisted in “passive” ways did not mean they allowed exploita-
tion to continue unchallenged. Rather, people used these “weapons of the
weak,” that is, “ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups,” to defend
their “interests against both conservative and progressive orders.” Such strug-
gles effectively preserved one’s freedom and autonomy more than uprisings and
collective action (which were only sometimes successful). In fact, it was “the
vast aggregation of petty acts” that was most successful. As Scott concludes, it
“is no simple matter to determine where compliance ends and resistance begins,
as the circumstances lead many of the poor to clothe their resistance in the
public language of conformity” (James Scott 1985, pp. xvi–xvii and 289).
There is a related issue to consider. While this book explores the famous and
not-so-famous people whose resistance shaped their lives and their communi-
ties, we should also consider a question that Robin Kelley asks: “If we are going
to write a history of black working-class resistance, where do we place the vast
majority of people who did not belong to either ‘working-class’ organizations
or black political movements?” (Kelley 1996, p. 4). It is a great question and
one with which historians grapple, even if the answer is not always satisfactory.
After all, most people did not join unions, political parties, or organizations.
Most did not go on strike, attack overseers, petition for redress of rights at the
courthouse, call for women’s suffrage, or pick up a gun to fight for liberation.
6 K. SHAFFER

There is no shortage of possible reasons for why this was the case: fear, uncer-
tainty, dislike of the goals, belief that nothing really could be accomplished,
and so on and on.
Yet, just because many or even most people did not join organizations or
movements does not mean they failed to resist in their own—often small—
ways. This returns us to the issue of everyday resistance. Maybe people mis-
trusted those who wanted to lead them against authorities, but they still resisted
by doing small things that empowered them with an element of autonomy to
shape their lives—to say that we are more than simply cogs in this death
machine of life. Bob Marley and Peter Tosh wrote, “Get Up, Stand Up. Stand
up for your rights.” Many people did, but more found ways to stand up for
their interests than by joining organizations. So, when we think about orga-
nized opposition, we should remember that these forms of resistance might
grab headlines, but they were not the only game in town. Being a menacing
dragon during Carnival, reading a book on Black Power, giving money to a
cause, practicing a religion outlawed by the state, fighting to keep your family
intact during slavery, and more were equally resistant.

Culture and Resistance

People also resisted through culture such as Carnival and popular celebrations,
religious expression, language, song, literature, and cinema. Residents and out-
siders, scholars and tourists recognize that a central attractive feature of the
Caribbean is the rich, diverse cultural expressions emanating from the region.
Of course, such expression is more than fun and games—even if some of it
today has become commercialized pap devoid of historical context and political
symbolism. Yet, over the last two centuries, Caribbean peoples used cultural
expressions as “weapons of the weak” in homes and on the streets. The imagi-
nation became a place for people “to cast off mental slavery” (as Bob Marley
put it) and envision lives fighting oppression.
The ethnomusicologist Gage Averill notes, “Popular music…is a site at
which power is enacted, acknowledged, accommodated, signified, contested,
and resisted” (Averill 1997, p. xi). Caribbean armed resistance movements
used sound throughout history. Uprisings in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico
and Cuba are known as the Grito de Lares and Grito de Yara respectively—
essentially, “shouts” or “cries” for freedom. As Tanya Saunders concludes, the
“idea of insurrections being named after a sound or a yell in the public sphere
that calls people to arms illustrates the importance of sound in mass mobiliza-
tion, in hailing the subject, or a group of subjects” (Saunders 2015, p. 29). We
see this intercourse of sound-song-resistance throughout the region’s history:
Haiti’s kilti libète musical opposition to the Duvalier dictatorship; reggae musi-
cians attacking racism and capitalism while promoting Pan-Africanism; maroons
using conch shells to announce their enemies’ arrival; the musical instrument
known as abeng that Akan peoples used across the Caribbean during slavery—
and which Black Power activists symbolically used when naming their 1969
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