At every cross-roads in Cuba and on every corner in the country towns there is a bodega. It is always a grocery, often a general store. Nine times in ten the proprietor is a Spaniard. His place may be a dingy, dilapidated shack. His stock may consist of little more than a barrel of the inevitable bacalao,—salt cod,—a few strings of onions, and a dozen bottles of aguadiente. But it is safe to wager that he is making money at a handsome rate of interest on his little investment.
Why is the Chinaman, who is the most inoffensive of beings, disliked more universally than any other? It may be because he is such an unsociable, self-contained, enigmatical fellow. In Cuba, as in the States, he lives in the midst of the community and far apart from it, restricting his intercourse with the natives to the necessities of business. He may have been born in the country, and intend to die in it, but, unless his mother was a native, he will never be anything else than a Chinaman, even though he adopt a frock coat and a silk hat. He works hard, lives frugally, and accumulates money by fair and square methods. His sole indulgences are fan tan and the opium pipe. He figures but seldom in the police records, and then, as likely as not, through the fault of someone else.
In the early part of the last century a number of Chinese were imported under contract as
A CUBAN MILKMAN.
laborers in the cane-fields. Each one had a metal tag strung round his neck, with a number and the expiry date of the contract on it. Once received on the sugar-estate, the coolie was reduced to a state of slavery, measurably worse than that in which the negroes were held. He had no privileges whatever, was miserably housed, insufficiently fed, and received less consideration than the cattle and horses. When the legal date of his release approached, his identification check was frequently changed to make him appear to be another man with a considerable period of service in prospect.
This condition of things went on for many years, until at length knowledge of it reached the Chinese Government. A commission was sent from China to investigate the matter, with the result that exportation of laborers from the Celestial Kingdom to Cuba was stopped. Nowadays, there is an insular statute against the importation, but they come in, nevertheless, and find their way to the sugar-houses of the interior, apparently without enquiry or interference.
There are more than ten thousand Chinamen in Cuba at present. A considerable number are engaged as merchants and shop-keepers in Habana, and many work truck-farms in the suburbs with much profit.