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The Cuban Experience in the United States, 1865–1940: Migration, Community, and
Identity

Author(s): GERALD E. POYO

Source: Cuban Studies , 1991, Vol. 21 (1991), pp. 19-36

Published by: University of Pittsburgh Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24485700

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/24485700

GERALP E. POYO

The Cuban Experience in the
United States, 1865-1940:

Migration, Community, and Identity

ABSTRACT

Contrary to popular perception, the Cuban experience in the United States is
not an exclusively post-1959 phenomenon. Cubans have lived in the United
States since at least the 1820s, and well-defined integrated communities emerged
during the 1870s. This article provides an overview of the Cuban experience
from 1870 through 1940, tracing the migration process, community formation,
and changing identity. While the initial characteristics of Cuban community life
in the United States reflected an exile status (1870-1900), after Cuba’s separa
tion from Spain emigre communities increasingly became immigrant centers
with a Cuban-American identity.

RESUMEN

Muy al contrario de las percepciones populäres, la experiencia cubana en los
Estados Unidos no es un fenömeno con origenes exclusivamente después de
1959. Cubanos han vivido en los Estados Unidos desde los 1820s y comunidades
integradas y definidas surgieron durante los 1870s. Este articulo resena la expe
riencia cubana en los Estados Unidos desde 1870 hasta 1940, rastreando el

proceso migratorio, la formaciôn de comunidades y los cambios de identidad. Si
es verdad que las caracterfsticas iniciales de las communidades en los Estados
Unidos reflejaron su realidad como exiliados (1870-1900), es también el caso
que después de la independencia de Cuba las comunidades en los Estados Unidos
pasaron a ser centros de inmigrantes con una identidad cubanoamericano.

Contrary to popular perception, the Cuban experience in the United
States is not an exclusively post-1959 phenomenon. Cubans have resided
in the United States since the 1820s, and well-defined and integrated
communities emerged during the 1870s. For the most part, however,
scholars dedicated to the study of Cuban Americans have considered
this early experience colorful and exotic, but essentially irrelevant to the
contemporary scene. In fact, Cubans in the United States have them
selves been generally unaware of the longstanding migratory tradition

19

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20 : Gerald E. Poyo

that has linked Cuba to the United States. Perhaps this is true because
the history of Cubans in the United States has never been synthesized in
a readable fashion for a scholarly or general audience.
After three decades of preoccupation with their homeland, however,

comtemporary Cubans in the United States are viewing themselves in
creasingly as integral members of North American society. Within the
scholarly community, social scientists have recently suggested that Cu
bans in the United States during the 1970s were ready to change their
self-imposed identity as “exiles” and to assume their place within the
world of North American ethnicity.1 They have lacked, however, a con
sciousness of the historical context of their experience.
This essay contends that the Cuban experience in the United States

should be understood from its origins in the nineteenth century. The
broad historical context of Cuban migrations north during the last 150
years needs to be understood in a holistic fashion despite the sometimes
dramatic differences in the various stages of emigration. The popular
impression that the Cuban-American experience represents a conserva
tive elite tradition does not stand up to close examination. Contempo
rary stereotypes should not usurp an entire historical tradition. As with
all other immigrant groups to the United States, Cubans are a hetero
genous group, and generalizations are not always useful.

Migration

During the final third of the nineteenth century, socioeconomic changes
and political turbulence in Cuba, together with developments in the
United States, gave birth to a Clear Havana (100 percent Cuban to
bacco) cigar industry in New York, Key West, and Tampa. This created
pressures for emigration from Cuba, a situation that continued until the
second decade of the twentieth century.

Changes in the international cigar market during the mid-nineteenth
century precipitated Cuban migration to the United States. Until the late
1850s, Cuban cigar exports expanded throughout Europe and the
United States. Havana cigars established a solid reputation that seemed
unassailable in the open market. Beginning in the 1850s, however, Cuba
began to lose export markets. Protectionist pressures in France and
Germany led to tariffs that caused an overall decrease of Cuban cigar
exports. To compensate, Cuban manufacturers increased exports to the
U.S. market on which they became highly dependent.2

Cuban cigar exports to the United States increased through the 1880s,
but signs of trouble for the island’s manufacturers emerged during the
U.S. Civil War when tariffs began to rise.3 Increasing tariffs on cigars

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The Cuban Experience in the United States 1865-1940 : 21

and relatively low duties on tobacco leaf enabled entrepreneurs to recre
ate a genuinely Cuban industry within the borders of the United States.4

Many Cubans who arrived in the United States during the Ten Years’
War took advantage of this favorable economic situtation. With the
outbreak of the insurrection. Cubans emigrated to New York, New Or
leans, and Key West. A Spanish cigar entrepreneur, Vicente Martinez
Ybor, built a factory in New York, and later in Key West, but he appears
to have been the only Havana-based manufacturer to transfer to the
United States at this early date.5 Cubans entering the business in the
United States tended to be middle-class, with no substantial experience
as cigar manufacturers. Some cigarworkers also became manufacturers
by first establishing small storefront operations employing two or three
workers. Many of these shops prospered during the 1880s, and several
eventually employed 200 and more workers. Using Cuban tobacco leaf
and employing Cuban workers, these factories produced the so-called
Spanish-style cigars. For the first time, a U.S.-manufactured cigar com
peted with the Cuban product.

The opposition of U.S. manufacturers to President Chester Arthur’s
effort in 1884 to enact in Congress a reciprocal trade agreement with
Spain illustrates their reliance on the tariff. Tallahassee’s Weekly Flori
dian described their reaction: “Cigar makers in New York City have
decided to hold a mass meeting to protest the 50 percent reduction on
duty on Spanish cigars, as provided by the contemplated treaty with
Spain. . . . There is much anxiety in Key West on the subject, as the
reduction of the duty would tend to break down the manufacture of
cigars, the principal industry in the city and chief source of its prosper
ity.”6 The reciprocal trade agreement never passed Congress, ensuring
the continued growth of the domestic Spanish-style industry. But if the
tariffs were not prohibitive to the Cuban industry during the 1870s and
1880s, they became so with the passage of the McKinley Tariff in 1890.7
Even higher duties gave U.S.-based Clear Havana factories a distinct
edge which they maintained until changes in tastes and cigar production
techniques after 1915 initiated changes in the industry. A fairly inte
grated cigar-related labor market emerged that extended from Havana
to New York, and workers migrated freely in response to periodic eco
nomic fluctuations in local markets.

Besides conditions in international markets, a variety of local social
and economic developments in Cuba contributed to dislocations and
migration. The Ten Years’ War weakened sugar production during the
1870s. Destruction of sugar plantations in Cuba and the growing beet
sugar industry in Europe led to a reduction of exports and loss of mar
kets. These troubles were compounded by decreasing sugar prices dur

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22 : Gerald E. Poyo

ing the mid-1880s. Cuba fell into depression. Rural workers wandered in
search of employment; some became day laborers and others bandits.
Still others moved to the cities where they contributed to the growing
unemployment problem. Many left the country. Caught in the general
economic decline, and affected by the protected and growing cigar indus
try in Florida and New York, production in Cuban cigar factories de
clined in the late 1880s. Cuba’s general economy plummeted further as a
result of the McKinley Tariff in 1890 and the outbreak of the war of
independence against Spain in 1895.8 As a result, during the 1890s emi
gration from Cuba increased dramatically
Preferential treatment for Spanish immigrant workers in the Havana

factories between the late 1880s and early 1900s created additional pres
sure forcing Cuban workers to migrate. Spaniards owned and managed
many of the factories in Cuba and preferred to hire compatriots as
employees. Throughout the 1880s, the Cuban émigré press in Florida
criticized these discriminatory policies and, in fact, demanded that Flor
ida’s factories hire only Cubans in retaliation. During the early 1890s,
Cuban vigilantes patroled the docks in Key West to prevent Spaniards
from disembarking.9
After the establishment of the republic, Spanish immigration to Cuba

increased. Once again, Spaniards received preferential employment.
Many Cuban émigrés returned home form the United States after inde
pendence, but could not find jobs since the managers and foremen in the
factories continued to be Spanish.10 Although Cuban workers demanded
equal employment opportunities and one union program declared, “Cu
ban workers in general should enjoy the same advantages and guaran
tees enjoyed by foreigners in different industries in the country,”11 most
Cubans who had been cigarmakers in the United States found little
opportunity in Havana. Additional thousands of workers left Cuba dur
ing the first decade of the century.
Labor strife in the cigar factories also kept workers on the move.

Militant anarchist labor organizations appeared in Cuba in the mid
1880s and, after the turn of the century, Marxist-oriented unions pro
tected workers interests.12 Unions also formed in Cuban communities in

Tampa, Key West, and New York. Solidarity was strong. During strikes
in one locality workers in the other centers customarily provided eco
nomic and moral support.13 In fact, strikers usually left their homes en
masse for one or another of the cigar centers. As one cigarworker in
Tampa remembered, “I arrived in Tampa in August, 1912. A strike
among cigarworkers in Havana forced me to leave Cuba in search of
work elsewhere.” He vowed he would return to Cuba within a year, but

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The Cuban Experience in the United States 1865-1940 : 23

he never did.14 Labor unrest contributed to the highly mobile character
of the cigar industry work force.

The penetration of the North American tobacco trust into Cuba dur
ing the late 1890s and the early twentieth century was the final factor
spurring emigration from the island. The McKinley Tariff had initiated
the collapse of cigar exports, a phenomenon aggravated by the indepen
dence war. As a result, many large Cuban cigar establishments sold out
to North American tobacco interests, which were able to consolidate
their position during the U.S. occupation of Cuba. The American To
bacco Company bought up tobacco lands and many cigar and cigarette
factories, including the most prominent such as La Corona, Cabanas y
Carvajal, Henry Clay, Murias, and La Legitimidad. After an initially
rapid expansion between 1902 and 1905, Cuban cigar exports to the
United States began a decline from which they never recovered. The
Cuban industry failed to compete with the U.S. factories, which were
controlled by the same trust. Slowly, the trust transferred production for
the U.S. market to Florida, causing Cuban workers to seek work in the
United States in record numbers until the early 1910s.15

This accelerated migration did not last long in the new century, how
ever. Technological changes in the North American cigar industry, as
well as shifts in fundamental market demand for cigars, reduced migra

tory pressures. After World War I, mechanization revolutionized the
U.S. cigar industry. Machine operators replaced the skilled cigarmakers;
the traditionally highly regarded workers from Cuba were no longer
needed. Moreover, consumer tastes shifted dramatically: cigarettes in
creasingly displaced cigars. As demand for cigars declined, so too did
production and employment. The longstanding North American cigar
labor market closed down, and by the 1930s migrations of workers from
Cuba had slowed considerably.16

These trends in the United States also affected the Cuban industry.
Cigar exports from Cuba declined, plunging the industry into crisis and
retrenchment. Increased U.S. productivity led to a cheaper cigar, which
displaced the Cuban product on the international market. While Cuban
cigar exports declined, exports of tobacco leaf used to produce competi
tive products in the United States increased. At the same time, orga
nized labor in Cuba successfully combated mechanization of the home
industry, and cigarmakers on the island continued to work in their tradi
tional manner, albeit for a much restricted domestic market. Indeed, the
number of cigar and cigarette workers in Cuba declined by more than
half between 1899 and 1944. Formerly a world leader in cigar manufac
turing, Cuba was reduced to providing leaf to a highly mechanized and

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24 : Gerald E. Poyo

productive North American industry with which it could not compete.
The vibrant labor markets for handmade cigars that encompassed Ha
vana, Key West, Tampa, New York, and other cities no longer existed.
The traditional workers not only lost jobs in the United States, dramati
cally altering the nature of Cuban communities there, but lost jobs in
Cuba as well.17

Migrations from Cuba to the United States between 1865 and 1940,
then, reflected the socioeconomic dynamic that converted Cuba from a
cigar manufacturing center to a net exporter of tobacco leaf. This process
culminated in the obsolescence of hand-rolled cigars for mass markets
that slowed the migration of cigar workers to the United States after 1910.
The decline in migration was a temporary phenomenon, however. The
immediate postwar period brought about a resurgence of Cuban migra
tion to the United States, a subject not yet adequately studied. Cubans
traveled to New York and, increasingly, to Miami, as a result of a new set
of socioeconomic relationships unconnected to cigar markets, but clearly
within the economic framework that tied Cuba to the United States.18

Cuban Exile Communities in the United States

Cuban communities emerged during the nineteenth century as a result
of both the rise of the U.S. hand-rolled cigar industry and Cuba’s eco
nomic and political problems. By the 1870s the first integrated communi
ties, with distinct leaders, institutions, and economic traditions, reflect
ing the class and racial composition of Cuban cities, had appeared in
New York, New Orleans, and Key West. Although Cubans arrived and
lived in the United States before the Civil War, they probably did not
number more than about 1,000 and did not generally reside in distinct
communities. Instead, they were scattered primarily in New Orleans,
Mobile, Savannah, Philadelphia, and New York and were, for the most
part, white professionals, businessmen, and students, many of whom
were exiles who interacted primarily within a political context.19 In the
mid-1870s an estimated 12,000 Cubans lived in the United States; some
4,500 in New York, 3,000 in New Orleans, 2,000 in Key West, and
perhaps another 2,500 in other cities such as Jacksonville, Savannah,
Washington, Boston, and Galveston.20

In New York a broad cross section of Cuba’s urban population took
hold. Among those living in New York during the 1870s were members
of Havana’s criollo elite, middle-class entrepreneurs and professionals,
and a significant multiracial (white, mulatto, black, Chinese) working
class employed in the tobacco factories.21 After the Ten Years’ War in
1878, many middle-class Cubans returned home and more workers ar

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The Cuban Experience in the United States 1865-1940 : 25

rived, strengthening the community’s working-class character. During
the 1880s, the Cuban population fluctuated between 2,000 and 3,000,
but increased with the outbreak of the war of independence in 1895.22

Cuba’s political problems and the difficulties in the cigar industry also
gave rise to a Cuban community in Key West. Exiles and migrant ci
garworkers quickly gave the town a national reputation for its anti
Spanish political agitation and high-quality Havana cigars. While the
first cigar factories in Key West belonged to non-Cubans, during the
1880s many Cubans entered the trade and soon dominated it. By 1885
almost 100 Key West cigar factories of various sizes employed some
3,000 workers. At the end of the 1880s, Key West produced some 100
million cigars annually. In 1885, some 5,000 Cubans resided on the isle.

The cigar industry employed the mass of Cubans in Key West. Of
employed Cubans fourteen years of age and over in 1880, 79 percent
worked in the cigar establishments. Of these, some 18 percent were
black and mulatto and 9 percent were women. The remaining 21 percent
of working Cubans included unskilled laborers, service workers, arti
sans, and professionals. The Cuban social structure in Key West in
cluded a wide variety of occupations, but it was an overwhelmingly
working-class community that relied heavily on the cigar industry.23

Until 1886, Key West contained the only important Cuban community
in Florida, although a small colony of some 300 Cubans lived in Jackson
ville, which also focused on the cigar trade.24 The second major Cuban
center in Florida appeared in Tampa during 1885 when a powerful labor
movement in Key West prompted Martinez Ybor to search for an alter
nate site for his cigar operations. He and Ignacio Haya, a Spanish manu
facturer from New York, obtained tracts of land on the town’s outskirts
where they constructed their factories in 1886. But it was a fire in Key
West during the closing days of March that launched the Tampa cigar
industry toward becoming the most important cigar center in the United
States. The fire destroyed eighteen cigar factories and forced hundreds
of homeless Cubans to migrate again in search of work—to Havana, but
mostly to Tampa. During its first decade as a manufacturing center,
Tampa grew from less than 1,000 inhabitants to almost 20,000, surpass
ing Key West’s population. Factories moved there from Key West, New
York, and Philadelphia. By 1900 Tampa had clearly supplanted Key
West as the primary producer of Havana cigars in the United States and
was home to a vibrant Cuban community.25

While the Cuban communities in New Orleans, New York, Key West,
and Tampa developed separate identities, leaders, and institutions, they
all operated within the context of the cigar industry labor market. Cuban
families usually had economic and social ties in more than one commu

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26 : Gerald E. Poyo

nity, and connections with Havana were often strong since political dis
turbances, strikes, and economic cycles produced considerable move
ment in both directions across the Straits of Florida. Indeed, for many
Cubans, Key West and Tampa were mere extensions of Havana.
At the inception of Cuban enclaves in the United States, émigrés were

concerned more with developments in Cuba than with the North Ameri
can society around them.26 Their daily routines intersected with Cuba’s
struggle for independence from Spain. Despite the fact that many Cu
bans arrived in the United States primarily to seek employment, they
were influenced by the nationalist ambience that characterized the com
munities. Throughout the nineteenth century, opponents to Spanish co
lonialism assumed leadership in Cuban centers. As one activist noted in
1886, “A man that is occupied with the grand task of freeing his nation
[cannot] at the same time become involved in questions of another
diverse country which require special attention. . . . Our politics here,
as long as we struggle for independence,” he argued, “should be that of
our revolution.”27 Despite the fact that the political activists were in the
minority, they usually controlled community organizations and pub
lished the newspapers. Accordingly, Cubans who arrived in the commu
nities seeking employment, but without a general political awareness
regarding Cuba’s colonial situation, often were politicized and enrolled
in the independence cause.

Cubans born in the United States were also raised with a similar

awareness. Tampa-born writer José Yglesias notes in his autobiographi
cal novel that after the Ten Years’ War many veterans moved to Florida
where they recounted their experiences and exhorted émigrés to support
the idea of Cuba Libre. This inspired his grandfather, who as a child
spent many evenings at the Sociedad de Cuba: “The notion that there
was an island called Cuba ninety miles from their pebbly shore deter
mined to be an independent nation, that he was a Cuban by virtue of his
parents and the language he spoke, was a revelation he owed to these
men who did not play dominoes but sat on the balcony on the second
floor and relived old campaigns and speculated about new ones. He was
a Cuban. This sudden knowledge became one with his experience of
working in the factory.

In Key West, the most important community institution, Institute San
Carlos, served not only as a mutual aid society, educational facility, and
social club, but also as a center of nationalist activity. The Instituto
provided moral and financial support to dozens of patriotic organizers
who passed through Key West during the final thirty years of the cen
tury. When Cubans founded Ybor City, similar nationalist organizations

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The Cuban Experience in the United States 1865-1940 : 27

appeared. In New York, El Ateneo Democrâtico, La Sociedad Republi
cana de Cuba y Puerto Rico, and the clubs Liga Patriötica, Artesanos de
Cuba, La Auxiliadora de Cuba, La Sociedad de Independencia, func
tioned primarily to promote Cuban independence from Spain during the
1850s through the end of the century.29

A more important source of influence in the community was the exile
press. The newspapers served broad community interests to be sure, but
their primary purpose was to further the cause of Cuban independence.
Newspaper titles were a poignant reflection of the émigrés’ fundamental
concern: El Eco de Cuba (1850s), El Filibustero (1850s), El Cubano
(1850s), La Voz de América (1860s), La Independencia (1870s), El Re
publicano (1870s), La Voz de la Patria (1870s), El Separatista (1880s),
La Repûblica (1880s), El Yara (1880s-1890s), El Porvenir (1880s
1890s), Cuba (1890s), Patria (1890s). These newspapers played a central
role in developing and defining nationalist thought and in identifying the
communities with these ideas.30

So intense was the nationalist sentiment among Cubans in the United
States that it dissipated only slowly after the termination of the war with
Spain in 1898. Cubans who participated in the struggle and remained
abroad continued to identify with their homeland after it had become a
republic. The important role of the émigré communities in cultivating
nationalist thought and promoting the insurrection assumed legendary
proportions as the history of the Cuban insurrection was written. Key
West and Tampa became known as the “cradles of Cuban indepen
dence,” and Cubans from those towns, the progenitors of that tradition.
Cubans in Florida were justifiably proud of their history, which they
associated more with Cuba than the United States.

Instituto San Carlos continued as the primary community institution in
Key West, which gained official recognition in Cuba for its contributions
to the independence war. In fact, the Cuban legislature appropriated
funds to rebuild the institution when a hurricane destroyed it in 1919. The
legislature had earlier approved a monthly stipend for the San Carlos
school, which was used to pay its teacher. Furthermore, San Carlos’
identity became even more closely linked with Cuban nationality when it
occupied its new Cuban-owned building that also served as the Cuban
consular office. Travel between Key West and Havana was frequent, and
through the 1930s, the Cuban community in Key West maintained its deep
sense of cubanidad. In Tampa, Cuban organizations also maintained a
strong nationalist flavor. The Clrculo Cubano and Uniön Martl-Maceo,
two of the most important community organizations in Ybor City, re
flected a similar pride and commitment to a Cuban identity.31

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28 : Gerald E. Poyo

From Exiles to Immigrants

When Cuba finally separated from Spain, émigrés in the United States
faced the critical decision of whether or not to return to their homeland.

Political exiles generally returned and usually found a place within the
new republic. The absence of employment opportunities in Cuba, how
ever, meant that most Cubans employed in the cigar industry had little
choice but to remain in the United States. Those who stayed, and their
descendants, slowly shed their exile identity. The nationalist intensity
that had historically molded community identity and values dissipated as
Cubans turned from patriotic endeavors to the challenge of carving out a
permanent livelihood in their immigrant communities. Along with oth
ers who arrived in subsequent years, Cubans in the United States be
came immersed in what became a Cuban-American experience.

This process of refocusing from an exile to an immigrant identity is
evident in the experiences of Tampa and Key West. Many who lived
through the pre-1900 experiences remained committed to their national
ist feelings, but the end of the war also removed the factors that had
traditionally sustained nationalist fervor. The separatist press ceased to
exist, patriot clubs disbanded, and the romanticism associated with the
desire for self-rule declined as the political realities of the Cuban repub
lic caused disillusionment.

The veterans of expatriation wrote books and memoirs to recount
their experiences and transmit their nationalist feelings to the next gen
eration, but personal experience, not the reminiscenes of the elders,
formed identity. By the 1920s the first and second generation of Cubans
in Key West found themselves having to lecture a new generation regard
ing the merits of the patria. “To place the fatherland in second position,
to repudiate it, forget it … is a felony and treason,” wrote Raoul
Alpi’zar Poyo, the son and grandson of Key West patriot leaders, in
1920. “It may not be as grand as we would have liked, perhaps its sons
have defects as well as virtues, but it is our nation.” Alpi’zar concluded
by reminding his fellow Cubans what Jose Marti had declared: “Our
wine may be bitter, but it is our wine.”32 Despite their efforts, however,
they failed to inculcate the same nationalist intensity into their children.

One prominent Cuban, Juan Perez Rolo, noted in the late 1920s that
financial gain had superseded patriot sentiment in the functioning of the
San Carlos Institute. “And in this way the spirit of cubanidad de
clined . . . because the mentors of our people, those who so often with
their beliefs infiltrated the hearts of their compatriots with the love of
patria . . ., no longer exist.”33 José Yglesias tells a poignant story of this
process of “de-Cubanization.” The central historical figure for Cubans

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The Cuban Experience in the United States 1865-1940 : 29

in the United States was the independence leader José Marti. “He was a
simple, great man,” Yglesias’s grandfather had told him often. “Before I
started grammar school in Tampa,” Yglesias noted, “I used to think . . .
that everyone knew about José Marti. [But] Martf’s name was not men
tioned in junior high or in high school either, and one of the things I
learned in shcool was that there were many things you were expected to
forget. . . . My father was born in Spain and my mother was wholly of
Cuban descent,” he added, “but I claimed neither. I was stubbornly
intent on being American, a singular view of myself that no one in or
outside that anomalous southern community shared.”34

A WPA report on San Carlos Institute offers another illustration of
what Cubans underwent: “The most significant thing about San Carlos
at the present is that its students are taught to be good Cuban
Americans—to become Americanized and yet to maintain their cultural
identity as Cubans and Spanish-speaking people. They are taught to be
proud of their race, language, and culture.” But, the report also noted,
“San Carlos cannot compete with the public schools in moulding [sic] the
present generation of Cuban children in Key West. For the public
schools are intent upon a program of complete Americanization; their
only concern with Cuban culture is to obliterate it entirely.”35

At the same time that increased interaction with U.S. society weakend
the émigré sense of cubanidad, socioeconomic realities threatened the
viability of the communities and intensified radicalism, which had strong
roots in the communities. Cuban centers had evolved in the nineteenth

century within an environment of class differences and antagonisms.
From the 1870s, when Cubans first entered the Key West cigar factories,
until the 1930s when Tampa’s hand-rolled cigar industry entered a crisis,
a working-class, and often radical, culture associated with the tobacco
industry was an inseparable aspect of Cuban identity in the United
States. Just as with nationalism, community institutions, newspapers,
and activities reflected this cultural and ideological reality. On arriving
in Key West during the early 1870s, workers from Havana did not find
established labor organizations. They created their own, based on experi
ences and traditions from home; and once established, they had no need
to embrace North American unionism when it finally arrived in Florida
after 1880. Workers from Cuba in Florida maintained their own perspec
tives and looked to their homeland for values and ideas.36 They em
braced anarchism, socialism, and, later, communism, as tools for defend
ing their interests in the evolving industrial communities.37

One of the central institutions which promoted this radical identity
was the lectura, a practice in the cigar factories whereby workers hired
individuals to read to them while they labored. As Abelardo Gutiérrez

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30 : Gerald E. Poyo

Diaz, a lector in Tampa explained, “We continued in Tampa the system
that had accompanied the cigar industry from Cuba. … It was a verita
ble system of education dealing with a variety of subjects, including
politics, labor, literature, and international relations.”38 The lectura
served as one of the important vehicles through which radical thought
was disseminated and became associated with the Cuban experience in
the United States.

In fact, Cuban radicalism in the United States had transformed nation
alism from an initially liberal ideal in the early 1870s to one relevant to a
popular audience by the 1890s. The immigrant unions succeeded in
organizing the workers in defense of their economic interests and in
placing a socioeconomic agenda before the nationalist community. Work
ers remained nationalist, but they also motivated the political leaders to
evolve a popular nationalist ideal that spoke to the social concerns of the
workers.39

After 1900, with the exodus of the patriot leaders to Cuba, radical
activists took the place of the nationalists as Tampa’s primary immigrant
leaders. “Let me say it right out—” reminisced José Yglesias in 1977,
“Ybor City was a radical, trade-union town.” So much so, Yglesias
insisted, that with the onset of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 “most
Latins in Ybor City were fidelistas. . . . For the old-timers the embargo
was further proof of the barbarity of americanos—the ‘crackers’ with
hair on their teeth who once broke up their union meetings and called
them ‘Cuban niggers.’ ‘,40 Cubans organized to defend their traditional
prerogatives and they acted in solidarity with Spanish and Italian radi
cals, producing a dynamic immigrant community that was in periodic
conflict with their Anglo-American neighbors through the 1930s.41

While Cubans turned to radical concepts to defend their communities
against the ravaging forces of change, they were eventually over
whelmed by developments that undermined the cigar industry and thus
the traditional framework of their community. The seeds that eventually
destroyed the hand-rolled cigar industry in Tampa gestated in the 1910s,
matured in the 1920s, and flowered during the Depression. Changing
tastes and mechanization eliminated jobs, forcing tobacco workers to
return to Cuba or to find work in environments where social solidarity
was of little importance. Furthermore, the educating and unifying roles
of the lectura were lost in 1931, when the cigar manufacturers abolished
the practice despite a bitter strike over the issue.42 Finally, the economic
crisis in tobacco loosened the traditionally close ties between the Cuban
center in Tampa and Havana. United States-based unions with conserva
tive ideologies increasingly displaced the radical labor organizations that
had traditionally set the agenda for Cuban workers in Florida. The dis

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The Cuban Experience in the United States 1865-1940 : 31

ruption of traditional employment patterns and, thus, processes of ideo
logical socialization, in addition to the inevitable effects of public school
education on longstanding value systems, led to a dissipation of the
radical culture that had influenced tobacco workers in Key West, New
York, and Tampa for a generation.

The end of the nationalist era in 1900 also brought changes that deeply
influenced the centers’ racial dynamics. Since their foundation, Cuban
communities in the United States reflected the multiracial character of

Cuban society, which included whites, mulattos, blacks, and an occa
sional Chinese. While the various races understood the reality of racial
differences and the political and socioeconomic implications of being
one race or another, they all recognized that Cuba was, in fact, a multira
cial society. This would seem self-evident, except that earlier in the
century many white Cubans interpreted cubanidad to be a white phe
nomenon. As far as they were concerned, being Cuban meant participat
ing in a Hispano-Cuban cultural tradition. Criollo nationalism was
deeply racist, highly exclusive, and did not easily accommodate the
island’s mixed racial character. In fact, one dimension of the criollos’
opposition to the slave trade and encouragment of Spanish immigration
in the 1830s and 1840s was their fear of black influence, which threat
ened to undermine their interpretation of Cuban culture.43

In time, Cubans accepted the inclusion of nonwhites and non
Europeans in notions of cubanidad. Cuban communities in the United
States, and particularly Florida, were in the Vanguard of accepting and
promoting a multiracial version of cubanidad. The emigre centers’ guid
ing ideologies, in fact, required the building of unified communities. The
defeat of the Spanish could never be accomplished without the support of
an overwhelming number of the island’s inhabitants. This was recognized
by Cubans in New York during the mid-1860s, who called on slaves and
mulattos to join in the creation of the Cuban nation-state. Two decades
later, José Martf called on compatriots of all races to build a nation devoid
of harmful distinctions. These ideas persuaded Cubans in the United
States that they were all Cuban, regardless of race.

This process was not, of course, exclusive to the Cuban communities
in the United States. A similar process was occurring in Cuba. The
relatively small size of the emigre communities, engulfed as they were by
North Americans and other various ethnic groups, acted to highlight
their cubanidad, despite racial differences. Nationalist solidarity cut
across racial lines in the Cuban centers.44

Racial attitudes of Cubans in the United States, particularly in Flor
ida, appear to have changed after 1900. The acceptance of a multiracial
identity in theory and in practice before 1900 gave way to a dichoto

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32 : Gerald E. Poyo

mized racial identity, as Cuban whites and blacks adhered to the institu
tionalized racism of the U.S. South. While racism and discrimination

existed in the communities between 1870 and the end of the century,
formal and required separation between the races did not. Black Cubans
did establish their own organizations, but, for the most part, the commu
nities were integrated.45 With the advent of the South’s Jim Crow laws
toward the end of the century, however, white Cubans went along with
the new racial restrictions. After independence and the dissolution of
the traditional patriot organizations, new clubs formed and from their
inception allowed only white Cubans to join.

The Sociedad Cuba in Key West and the Cfrculo Cubano in Tampa
both opened its doors only to whites. Black Cubans in Tampa estab
lished the Union Martf-Maceo as the central institution of their group
and slowly they became detached from the larger white émigré commu
nity. Moreover, as black Cubans increasingly joined U.S.-based unions,
they faced discrimination and marginalization, which they had not faced
in the immigrant unions. Unwilling to lose their identity within the North
American black community and unable to share fully in the life of the
larger white Cuban community, Afro-Cubans in Tampa faced special
problems of involvement and belonging in the United States. The
broader significance, of course, was that the Cuban community and its
identity became fragmented. The dynamics of race changed as Cubans
sought to accomodate to a new social reality.46

The change in Cuba’s political status after 1898 also altered the internal
dynamics of the Cuban centers in the United States. Issues of local origin
replaced concerns for the island. Emigré strategies, individual and collec
tive, began to reflect conditions in the local communities. Indeed, chil
dren raised in a different environment identified more with the United

States than Cuba, from which emerged a new Cuban-American identity.

Conclusion

This brief interpretative synthesis of Cubans in the United States between
1865 and 1940 suggests the existence of a dynamic exile and immigrant
experience prior to 1959. Historical research on the formation and evolu
tion of Cuban communities during this period is still in its formative stage,
and future research will no doubt modify many of the generalizations
offered in this essay. New perspectives will emerge as the histories of the
individual communities come to light. Nevertheless, the current state of
research makes it abundantly clear that the tendency to view the Cuban
American experience as solely a post-1959 phenomenon is a distortion of

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The Cuban Experience in the United States 1865-1940 : 33

history and a promotion of an inaccurate view of the experience of Cu
bans in the United States.

NOTES

I would like to thank Louis A. Pérez, Jr., and an anonymous reader for their comments
and criticisms.

1. See Rafael J. Prohias and Lourdes Casai, The Cuban Minority in the U.S.: Prelimi

nary Report on Need Identification and Program Evaluation (Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic
University, 1973); Andrés R. Hernândez, ed., The Cuban Minority in the U.S.: Final
Report on Need Identification and Program Evaluation (Washington, D.C.: Cuban Na
tional Plannning Council, 1974); and Lourdes Casai and Andrés Hernândez, “Cubans in
the U.S.: A Survey of the Literature,” Cuban Studies!Estudios Cubanos 5 (July 1975), 25
59. Useful overviews that give little or only marginal treatment to the historical context
include Antonio Jorge and Raul Moncarz, “Cubans in South Florida: A Social Science
Approach,” Metas 1 (Fall 1980), 37-87; Silvia Pedraza-Bailey, “Cuba’s Exiles: Portrait of a
Refugee Migration,” International Migration Review 19 (Spring 1985), 4-34. 1\vo recent
full-length studies that compare Cubans and Mexicans in the United States also do not
consider the Cuban historical experience: Alejandro Portes and Robert L. Bach, Latin
Journey: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1985); and Silvia Pedraza-Bailey, Political and Economic
Migrants in America: Cubans and Mexicans (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). The
most current bibliography on Cuban Americans, which also excludes the historical dimen
sion, is Lyn MacCorkle, Cubans in the United States: A Bibliography for Research in the
Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1960-1983 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1984).

2. Jean Stubbs, Tobacco on the Periphery: A Case Study in Cuban Labour History,
1860-1958 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 76-77. For general informa
tion on the United States and Cuban cigar industries, see Willis N. Baer, The Economic
Development of the Cigar Industry in the United States (Lancaster, Pa., 1933); and José
Rivero Muniz, Tabaco: su historia en Cuba, 2 vols. (Havana, 1941-1965).

3. Baer, The Economic Development of the Cigar Industry, pp. 106-07.
4. Stubbs, Tobacco on the Periphery, 18-21; Baer, The Economic Development of the

Cigar Industry, pp. 106-07.
5. For background information of Martinez Ybor, see “Don Vicente Martinez Ybor.

The Man and His Empire: Development of the Clear Havana Industry in Cuba and
Florida in the Nineteenth Century,” Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1977.

6. Weekly Floridian (Tallahassee), December 9, 16, 1884; January 13 and February 3,
1885. See also Tom Terrill, The Tariff, Politics and American Foreign Policy (Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973), pp. 72, 85.

7. Stubbs, Tobacco on the Periphery, p. 23.
8. Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Cuba Between Empires, 1878-1902 (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Univer

sity of Pittsburgh Press, 1983), chap. 1.
9. Gerald E. Poyo, “With All, and for the Good of All”: The Emergence of Popular

Nationalism in the Cuban Communities of the United States, 1848-1898 (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1989), pp. 106-09.

10. José Rivero Muniz, “La primera huelga general obrera en Cuba republicana,” Isias
(May-August 1961).

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34 : Gerald E. Poyo

11. Stubbs, Cuba on the Periphery, p. 111.
12. Ibid., pp. 97-123; José Antonio Portuondo, “La Aurora” y los comienzos de la

prensa y de la organizaciôn obrera en Cuba (Havana: Imprenta Nacional de Cuba, 1961);
Aleida Plasencia, ed., Enrique Roig de San Martin: Artlculos publicados en elperiôdico El
Productor (Havana: Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1967); José Rivero Muniz, El movi
miento obrero durante la primera intervenciôn (Santa Clara: Universidad de Las Villas,
1961); El movimiento laboral cubano durante el periodo 1906-1911 (Santa Clara: Uni
versidad de las Villas, 1962); and El primer partido socialista (Santa Clara: Universidad de
Las Villas, 1962).

13. Gerald E. Poyo, “The Impact of Immigration from Cuba on Labor Organizing in
Florida,” Journal of American Ethnic History 5 (Spring 1986), 46-63; and “The Anarchist
Challenge to the Cuban Independence Movement,” Cuban Studies!Estudios Cubanos 15
(Winter 1985), 29-42.

14. Quoted in Louis A. Pérez, Jr., “Ybor City Remembered,” Tampa Bay History 7
(Fall/Winter 1985), 170.

15. Leland H. Jenks, Our Cuban Colony (New York: Vanguard Press, 1928), pp. 157—
58; Stubbs, Tobacco on the Periphery, pp. 30-32.

16. Baer, The Economic Development of the Cigar Industry, 145-274; W. D. Evans,
Mechanization and Productivity of Labor in the Cigar Manufacturing Industry, U.S. De
partment of Labor, Bulletin 660 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1939).

17. Stubbs, Tobacco on the Periphery, pp. 28-42; Martin Duarte Hurtado. La mâquina
torcedora de tabaco y las luchas en torno a su implantaciôn en Cuba (Havana: Editorial
Ciencias Sociales, 1973); José E. Perdomo and Jorge J. Posse, Mecanizaciôn de la industria
tabaquera (Havana, 1945).

18. See demographic data in Lisandro Pérez, “The Rise and Decline of the Cuban
Community of Ybor City, Florida, 1886-1930,” manuscript, 1983 (in author’s possession),
table 1.

19. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times
to 1970 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1975), 1:117-18.

20. These estimates are based on the following sources: El Pueblo (New York), August
9, 1876; “Expediente por nuestro consul en New Orleans,” Boletin del Archivo Nacional,
1920, p. 66; Aleida Plasencia, ed., Bibliografla de la Guerra de los Diez Anos (Havana:
Biblioteca Nacional José Marti, 1968), pp. 186-231; National Archives Microfilm Publica
tions, “Schedules of the Federal Population Census of 1870,” Monroe County, Fla. U.S.
Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1:117-18; Arturo Cuyas,
Estudio sobre la inmigraciôn en los Estados Unidos (New York: Thompson Y Moreau,
1881), p. 15; Pérez, “The Rise and Decline of the Cuban Community in Ybor City,”
table 3.

21. “Libro indice de cubanos residentes en Nue va York—Documentos procedentes de
la Junta Revolucionaria de New York, 1868-1878,” Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Donativos
y Remisiones, leg. 40, no. 54. See Poyo, “With All, and for the Good of All,” 21-51. Little
is known about the community in New Orleans.

22. Lisandro Pérez, “The Cuban Community of New York in the Nineteenth Century,”
Manuscript, 1985 (in author’s possession), table 2; and Gerald E. Poyo, “Cuban Communi
ties in the United States: Toward an Overview of the 19th Century Experience,” in Cubans
in the United States, ed. Miren Uriarte-Gastön and Jorge Canas Martinez (Boston: Center
for the Study of the Cuban Community, May 1984), pp. 47-50.

23. Poyo, “With All, and for the Good of All,” pp. 70-94; L. Glenn Westfall, Key West:
Cigar City USA (Key West, Fla.: Historic Key West Preservation Board, 1984).

24. For information Jacksonville’s Cubans, see Gustavo J. Godoy, “José Alejandro

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The Cuban Experience in the United States 1865-1940 : 35

Huau: A Cuban Patriot in Jacksonville Politics,” Florida Historical Quarterly 54 (October
1975), 196-206.

25. George Sânchez, “West Tampa—Pioneer,” Literary Florida, April 1948, 47-49;
José Rivero Muniz, “Los cubanos en Tampa,” Revista Bimestre Cubana 74 (January-June
1958), 5-140; and “Tampa at the Close of the Nineteenth Century,” Florida Historical
Quarterly 49 (April 1963), 332-42; Durward Long, “The Historical Beginnings of Ybor
City and Modern Tampa,” ibid., 45 (July 1966), 31-44; Joan M. Steffy, “The Cuban
Immigrants of Tampa, Florida,” M.A. thesis, University of South Florida, 1975; Louis A.
Pérez, Jr., “Cubans in Tampa: From Exiles to Immigrants, 1892-1901,” Florida Historical
Quarterly 57 (October 1978), 129-40; L. Glenn Westfall, “Don Vicente Martinez Ybor:
The Man and His Empire: Development of the Clear Havana Industry in Cuba and
Florida in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Immigrant World of Ybor City. Italians and
Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985, ed. Gary R. Mormino and George E.
Pozzetta (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

26. The early studies of the Cuban émigré communities focused almost exclusively on
their nationalist character. See Juan J. E. Casasus, La emigraciôn cubana y la inde
pendencia de la patria (Havana: Editorial Lex, 1953); Gerardo Castellanos Garcia,
Motivos de Cayo Hueso (Havana: Ucar, Garcia y Cia, 1935); Manuel Deulofeu Lleonart,
Heroes del destierro. La emigraciôn. Notas histôricas (Cienfuegos, 1904); Rauol Alpi’zar
Poyo, Cayo Hueso y José Dolores Poyo: Dos simbolos patrios (Havana, 1947); Rivero
Muniz, “Los cubanos en Tampa.” See also Gerald E. Poyo, “Cuban Revolutionaries and
Monroe County Reconstruction Politics,” Florida Historical Quarterly 55 (April 1977),
407-22; “Key West and the Cuban Ten Years’ War,” Florida Historical Quarterly 57 (April
1979), 289-307; “Cuban Patriots in Key West, 1878-1886: Guardians of the Separatist
Ideal,” Florida Historical Quarterly 61 (July 1982), 20-36; “With All, and for the Good of
All”; and “Tampa Cigarworkers and the Struggle for Cuban Independence,” Tampa Bay
History 7 (Fall/Winter 1985), 94-105.

27. El Yara (Key West), February 6, 1885.
28. José Yglesias, The Truth About Them (New York: World Publishing, 1971), pp.

32-33.

29. For information regarding specific organizations, see Poyo, “With All, and for the
Good of All. ”

30. For information on the émigré press, see ibid.; and Teresita Batista Villarreal,
Josefina Garcia Carranza, and Miguelina Ponte, eds., Catâlogo depublicacionesperiôdicas
de los siglos XVIIIy XIX (Havana: Biblioteca Nacional José Marti), 1965.

31. For information on the community organizations, especially after the turn of the
century, see “Instituto San Carlos,” and “Sociedad Cuba, Inc.” in Key West Writers
Program papers, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of Florida; and
“Circulo Cubano,” and “Uniön Marti-Maceo,” Tampa writers Program papers, Special
Collections, University of South Florida; see also Gary R. Mormino and George Pozzetta,
“The Cradle of Mutual Aid: Immigrant Cooperative Societies in Ybor City,” Tampa Bay
History 7 (Fall/Winter 1985), 36-58.

32. Raoul Alpizar Poyo, “La patria,” in Cuba: Organo Anunciador de la Inauguraciôn
de la SOCIEDAD CUBA 1 (October 1920).

33. Juan Pérez Rolo, Mis recuerdos (Key West, 1928), 49.
34. Yglesias, The Truth About Them, pp. 40, 60.
35. “Instituto San Carlos,” Key West WPA papers, Yonge Library of Florida History,

University of Florida.
36. For material on labor activism among Cubans, see Poyo, “The Impact of Cuban

Spanish Workers on Labor Organizing in Florida, 1870-1900,” pp. 46-63; Durward Long,

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36 : Gerald E. Poyo

“La Resistencia: Tampa’s Immigrant Labor Union,” Labor History 6 (Fall 1965), 193-214;
“Labor Relations in the Tampa Cigar Industry, 1885-1911,” Labor History 8 (Fall 1971),
551-59; “The Open-Closed Shop Battle in Tampa’s Cigar Industry, 1919-21,” Florida
Historical Quarterly 47 (October 1968), 101-21; George E. Pozzetta, “Immigrants and
Radicals in Tampa, Florida,” ibid., 57 (January 1979), 337-48; Gary R. Mormino, “Tampa
and the New Urban South: The Weight Strike of 1899,” ibid., 60 (January 1982), 337-56;
George E. Pozzetta, “Italians and the Tampa General Strike of 1910,” in Pane e Lavoro:
The Italian American Working Class, ed. George E. Pozzetta (Toronto: Multicultural
History Society of Ontario, 1980); and “Alerta Tabaqueros! Tampa’s Striking Cigar Work
ers,” Tampa Bay History (Fall/Winter 1981), 19-30. See also Mormino and Pozzetta,
“Italians and the Radical Culture: From Contadini to Companeros,” in their The Immi
grant World of Ybor City, pp. 143-174.

37. For information on Cuban labor activism in Florida between 1870 and 1900, see
Gerald E. Poyo, “The Impact of Cuban and Spanish Workers on Labor Organizing in
Florida, 1870-1900,” and “The Anarchist Challenge to the Cuban Independence Move
ment.”

38. Louis A. Pérez, Jr. “Reminiscences of a Lector: Cuban Cigar Workers in Tampa,”
Florida Historical Quarterly 53 (April 1975), 443-49.

39. See Gerald E. Poyo, “Evolution of Cuban Separatist Thought in the Emigré Com
munities of the United States, 1848-1895,” Hispanic American Historical Review 66 (Au
gust 1986), 485-508; and “José Marti: Architect of Social Unity in the Emigré Communi
ties of the United States,” in José Marti: Revolutionary Democrat, ed. Christopher Abel
and Nissa Torrents (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1986), pp. 16-31.

40. José Yglesias, “The Radical Latino Island in the Deep South,” Tampa Bay History
1 (Fall/Winter 1985), 166.

41. See Mormino and Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor City; and Robert P.
Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes in the New Urban South: Tampa, 1882-1936 (Knoxville: Univer
sity of Tennessee Press, 1988).

42. Mormino and Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor City, p. 131.
43. See Gordon K. Lewis, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolu

tion of Caribbean Society in Its Ideological Aspects, 1492-1900 (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 1983), 286-94. See also José A. Fernandez de Castro, ed., Medio siglo de
historia colonial de Cuba, 1823-1879 (Havana: Ricardo Veloso, 1923), p. 94.

44. This ideology was best expressed by José Martf. See John Kirk, José Marti: Mentor
of the Cuban Nation (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1983), pp. 107-12.

45. For information on Cubans of color in the 1870s-1890s, see Poyo, “With All, and
for the Good of All, ” pp. 70-94.

46. See Susan D. Greenbaum, “Afro-Cubans in Exile: Tampa, Florida, 1886-1984,”
Cuban Studies/Estudios Cubanos 15 (Winter 1985), 77-93; and Afro-Cubans in Ybor City:
A Centennial History (Tampa: University of South Florida, 1986).

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• Contents

p. 19

p. 20

p. 21

p. 22

p. 23

p. 24

p. 25

p. 26

p. 27

p. 28

p. 29

p. 30

p. 31

p. 32

p. 33

p. 34

p. 35

p. 36

• Issue Table of Contents

Cuban Studies, Vol. 21 (1991) pp. i-xii, 1-316

Front Matter

Preface [pp. ix-xi]

The Money and Credit Crisis in Late Colonial Cuba [pp. 3-18]

þÿ�þ�ÿ���T���h���e��� ���C���u���b���a���n��� ���E���x���p���e���r���i���e���n���c���e��� ���i���n��� ���t���h���e��� ���U���n���i���t���e���d��� ���S���t���a���t���e���s���,��� ���1���8���6���5�������1���9���4���0���:��� ���M���i���g���r���a���t���i���o���n���,��� ���C���o���m���m���u���n���i���t���y���,��� ���a���n���d��� ���I���d���e���n���t���i���t���y��� ���[���p���p���.��� ���1���9���-���3���6���]

þÿ�þ�ÿ���S���o���c���i���a���l��� ���A���s���p���e���c���t���s��� ���o���f��� ���C���u���b���a���n��� ���N���a���t���i���o���n���a���l���i���s���m���:��� ���R���a���c���e���,��� ���S���l���a���v���e���r���y���,��� ���a���n���d��� ���t���h���e��� ���G���u���e���r���r���a��� ���C���h���i���q���u���i���t���a���,��� ���1���8���7���9�������1���8���8���0��� ���[���p���p���.��� ���3���7���-���5���6���]

þÿ�þ�ÿ���C���u���b���a��� ���a���n���d��� ���t���h���e��� ���U���n���i���t���e���d��� ���S���t���a���t���e���s���:��� ���O���r���i���g���i���n���s��� ���a���n���d��� ���A���n���t���e���c���e���d���e���n���t���s��� ���o���f��� ���R���e���l���a���t���i���o���n���s���,��� ���1���7���6���0���s�������1���8���6���0���s��� ���[���p���p���.��� ���5���7���-���8���2���]

On Men Reforming the Rights of Men: The Abrogation of the Cuban Adultery Law, 1930 [pp. 83-99]

þÿ�þ�ÿ���A���f���r���o���-���C���u���b���a���n��� ���P���r���o���t���e���s���t���:��� ���T���h���e��� ���P���a���r���t���i���d���o��� ���I���n���d���e���p���e���n���d���i���e���n���t���e��� ���d���e��� ���C���o���l���o���r���,��� ���1���9���0���8�������1���9���1���2��� ���[���p���p���.��� ���1���0���1���-���1���2���1���]

þÿ�þ�ÿ���C���o���l���l���a���p���s���e��� ���o���f��� ���t���h���e��� ���H���o���u���s���e��� ���o���f��� ���L���a���b���o���r���:��� ���I���d���e���o���l���o���g���i���c���a���l��� ���D���i���v���i���s���i���o���n���s��� ���i���n��� ���t���h���e��� ���C���u���b���a���n��� ���L���a���b���o���r��� ���M���o���v���e���m���e���n���t��� ���a���n���d��� ���t���h���e��� ���U���.���S���.��� ���R���o���l���e���,��� ���1���9���4���4�������1���9���4���9��� ���[���p���p���.��� ���1���2���3���-���1���4���7���]

State versus Grass-Roots Strategies for Rural Democratization: Recent Developments Among the Cuban Peasantry [pp. 149-168]

DEBATE

Race and the Cuban Revolution: A Critique of Carlos Moore’s “Castro, the Blacks, and Africa” [pp. 171-185]

More on the Cuban Rectification Process: Whose Errors? [pp. 187-192]

Rectification Round Two: An Answer to Eckstein’s Rebuttal [pp. 193-198]

Reply to Roberto González Echevarría [pp. 199-202]

Reply to Sergio Chaple [pp. 203-204]

Reviews

AFRO-CUBANS

Review: untitled [pp. 207-210]

Review: untitled [pp. 211-212]

Review: untitled [pp. 213-215]

ARMED FORCES AND POLITICS

Review: untitled [pp. 216-218]

Review: untitled [pp. 218-220]

CUBANS ABROAD

Review: untitled [pp. 220-222]

ECONOMICS

Review: untitled [pp. 222-225]

FOREIGN RELATIONS

Review: untitled [pp. 225-228]

Review: untitled [pp. 228-234]

Review: untitled [pp. 234-235]

Review: untitled [pp. 236-238]

Review: untitled [pp. 238-239]

HISTORY

Review: untitled [pp. 239-242]

Review: untitled [pp. 242-243]

Review: untitled [pp. 243-245]

Review: untitled [pp. 246-247]

Review: untitled [pp. 247-249]

LAW AND JUSTICE

Review: untitled [pp. 249-252]

LITERATURE

Review: untitled [pp. 252-255]

Review: untitled [pp. 255-258]

NUCLEAR ENERGY

Review: untitled [pp. 258-262]

RELIGION

Review: untitled [pp. 262-266]

Recent Work in Cuban Studies [pp. 267-314]

Contributors [pp. 315-315]

Back Matter