La patria que nace de lejos: Cuba y lo cubano en la vanguardia de Martí

This essay discusses the historical root of the concept "Cuban immigration" to the United States and the significant negotiation of politics and identity that took place in South Florida from the time of the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) till the decade before the Cuban Revolution, which triggered another wave of immigration that started in 1960. There were small Cuban communities in the United States since the early nineteenth century, in cities such as New York, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Charleston, and Cuban nuclei or individuals since before then. Yet, the settlement of the first large groups of Cubans, workers who crossed the Florida Straits to continue living as Cubans abroad, occurred after 1868, in Key West and Tampa. They arrived and transplanted their culture and ideology to their new immigrant and exile communities, enclaves that participated in a crucial way in the creation and refinement of the concept "Cuba libre," or Free Cuba. After the much-desired yet mediated independence of Cuba became a reality in 1902, this community continued to manifest Cuban culture. Cigar worker ideology, when seen through the perspective of certain traditions, like the cigar factory reader, the political and social club, after-dinner conversations in cafés and small restaurants, and popular theater, reveals not only a strong nationalist, independence-loving, democratic and criollo bent but also highlights the ambiguities of living as Cubans in a country that Martí once described as "the Monster." But at the root of all things Cuban in Ybor City and West Tampa was the sense that to be Cuban was to have embraced many traditions and nationalities, democracy, and the future. To be Cuban was not only their past and present; it was their future. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]