Resumen de The Paths of Unfreedom: Indentured Labor from Yucatán to Cuba
This article centers on an understudied aspect of Yucatán’s Caste War (1847-1901): the network of indentured labor between Yucatán and Cuba designed as a repressive measure to contain the region’s massive indigenous rebellion. The ar-ticle focuses on the debates that surrounded it. Concretely, it explores the contested notions of humanitarianism as evoked by prominent politicians who attempted to either legitimize or counter the selling of Mayan men, women, and children to plantation owners in Cuba. Within the confines of the Mexican nation, this project propelled the dispossession of communally-owned lands, appropriating them for the booming henequen economy. Internationally, it intersected with global networks of racialized coerced labor. The connections between indenture and slavery have received substantial scholarly attention, but this article instead reads indentured deployment as a penal practice.
