Puerto Ricans Arrive in Hawai‘i
Depressed economic conditions and a hurricane in 1899 contributed to Puerto Ricans leaving one island home for another, 6,000 miles away. The Hawai‘i sugar industry was seeking labor world-wide, and recruiters promised comfortable accommodations for the trip and good jobs when the emigrés arrived.
In late 1900, 114 men, women and children left Puerto Rico. In the journey by ship to New Orleans, by train across the land to San Francisco, and by ship again to the new Territory of Hawai‘i, the passengers suffered acute shortages of water and food. Many abandoned the trip; only 56 arrived. But eventually 5,100 men, women and children made similar voyages and settled on plantations on Maui, the Big Island, and O‘ahu. Pay was $15 a month for men, and less for women and teen age children, for 10 hours daily labor in the fields and 12 hours in the mills.
What began as “Trabajo y Tristeza”—or work and sorrow—was the basis of a successful community of some twenty thousand. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first voyage, the Puerto Rican government invited Blase Camacho Souza, whose parents made that voyage, to represent Hawai‘i at ceremonies in Puerto Rico. Besides participation in all areas of jobs and professions, Puerto Ricans today keep alive their rich culture in dance, music, food, and religion, and contribute to the unusual multicultural mix of Hawai‘i.