Peer Review 3-1

Thesis : The lives of migrant factory workers in traditional industries in Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics were impacted by American histories of industrialization, revealing the conflict between traditional values and modern life values.

The industrialization impacts the economic lives of migrant factory workers in Anna in the tropics by emphasizing the efficiency of machinery production rather than the working environment of workers revealing the tension between Cuban traditional worker culture and American mechanical worker culture. In the play, on the one hand, Santiago and Ofelia, the owner of the factory insisted that lector is an old and traditional profession to enrich the working environment of workers. “ We learn things. And the words he reads are like breeze that breaks the monotony of this factory” (Cruz 41). In the play, Marela's words show that they employ lector to help them relieve the monotonous work of the workers in the factory and improve the working conditions of the workers, which is what traditional Cuban culture believes and insists on. However, what Cheche represents in the play is the American culture of mechanized production, they focus on production efficiency rather than workers. “ I’m not joking. I’m talking about the modern world. Modernity. Progress. Advancement. //There are machines that tobacco stuffing at the speed of light: bunching machines, stripping machines” (Cruz 40). “ The lectors are being fired from all the factories, because nobody can hear them read over the sound of the machines…. but I’m not interested in giving any more money from my pocket, from my wages to listen to a lector read me romantic novels” (Cruz 41). In Cheche's words, it can be seen that under the influence of American mechanization culture, workers abandoned the traditional way of working, operating machines beside the rumbling machines, and could no longer hear lector’s voice. There was only the rumbling of machinery, boring work and money-hungry capitalists around. “Simply, the working conditions were terrible during the Industrial Revolution. As factories were being built, businesses were in need of workers….However, the majority were unskilled workers, who only received about $8-$10 dollars a week, working at approximately 10 cents an hour” (Poddar). Although industrialization will improve the production efficiency but the culture brought by American industrialization is an aggressive culture. The beneficiaries of this reform will be factory owners. In the play, Santiago and Ofelia, the owners of the factory, would benefit if they followed Cheche's advice and mechanized the cigar factory. The workers would lose lector and preserve traditional Cuban culture. And workers' lack of familiarity with the mechanics reduces their income, as Poddar says. So workers suffered the most in this process of industrialization because their low class could only passively accept the work and could not make their own demands. The tension between workers' passive acceptance of American industrial culture and the loss of their own culture.

Work cited

Poddar, Ankur. “Working and Living Conditions.” The Industrial Revolution, firstindustrialrevolution.weebly.com/working-and-living-conditions.html