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Sociedad Libanesa: Transnational Identity Formation and Associational Life among Lebanese and Syrian Migrants in Twentieth-Century Cuba
Abstract
“Sociedad Libanesa” demonstrates that Cuban laws and legal culture, specifically in regard to religion, gender, and family, shaped how Lebanese and Syrian migrants interacted with native Cubans and integrated into the island’s socio-racial tapestry. In the early twentieth-century, Cuba, Lebanon, and Syria underwent concurrent but incomplete transitions to independence that mixed strong nationalist identities and dependence. This paper will investigate the legal cultures and behaviors through the associational life of mahjaris in mid-twentieth-century Cuba and the ways these dynamics influenced the development of transnational and diasporic identities. When they arrived, Lebanese and Syrian migrants in Cuba emphasized their similarities with Cubans as transitional subjects in shifting colonial regimes and capitalized on their religious proximity to Cuban Catholics through displays of civic virtue, participation in associational life, and intermarriage with mostly white Cubans. In doing so, they asserted their whiteness and cubanidad (Cubanness) amidst large populations of Chinese contracted laborers and recently freed slaves of African descent. Yet, crucially, they also maintained distinct cultural practices and diasporic networks with compatriots in the Levant and abroad. Law and legal processes managed this dual process of semi-belonging; Cuban legal frameworks for associational life, citizenship, and immigration—many dating back to Cuba’s colonial period—accommodated transnational identities and, for a few privileged migrants, permitted national belonging and whiteness to coexist with other identities.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Lebanon
North America
Syria
Sub Area
None