Barrio Chino: Havana's Chinatown

by Nathaniel Hoffman | May 24, 2007 -- 6:30 PM

In 1847, some Spanish landowners in Cuba hired a group of Cantonese laborers to work their sugarcane plantations. After several years of toiling to pay off their contracts, the Chinese immigrants were allowed to leave the fields, and many of them moved to Havana. It was the beginning of one of the oldest Chinatowns in North America.