Archaeological remains of coffee plantations Irish migration to Cuba - Giselle González García

Imirce - Migration and Ireland through time
NATIONAL MONUMENTS SERVICE
6th ANNUAL ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE
Archaeological remains of coffee plantations: a history of pre-Famine Irish migration to Cuba - Giselle González García
Hidden in the mountains of La Sierra Maestra in eastern Cuba, the archaeological remains of 171 coffee plantations are the sites of memory of a fascinating history of migration, but not necessarily an Irish one. Their curation for the general public as ‘French’ has obscured Irish migrants’ participation in a historical process of expansion of a plantation economy that, sustained by the enslavement of thousands of West Africans, saw the cultural and economic renaissance of an entire region from the late 1790s until the early 1840s. Specifically, two Irish-born men of Quaker origins, James Jenkinson Wright (1788-1845) and Richard Maxwell Bell (1777-1847), became the biggest landowners, slave-holders and coffee planters in Eastern Cuba, while the main political figure who allowed coffee planters to settle in the first place, Governor Sebastian Kindelan O’Regan (1757-1826), was also of Irish descent. This paper will examine Irish contributions to the material culture of coffee in Santiago de Cuba, and it will explore the archaeological vestiges of this hidden history still inscribed in the land today.
Giselle González García is a third-year Ph.D student at Concordia University’s School of Irish Studies. Her research looks at the history of coffee plantations and Irish migration in Cuba. She has recently published on ‘Coffee plantations and Irish migration to Santiago de Cuba: a historical case study of radical environmental transformation’ (2023).