CUBANS IN THE UNITED STATES  

Preface
Cuba: The Key to The New World
Cuba and North America: The First Contacts
Pioneering Cuban Exiles: A Poet and A Priest
The Nineteenth Century Cuban Exodus
The Chronicler and the Revolutionary
Cubans in America
Nineteenth Century Cuban-Americans
The Republic
Cuban Artists
Cuban Athletes
Cuban M
Cubans of Today

If our suffering homeland could see the care with which her absent children are preparing to serve her, if the country could see the work her émigrés are doing to save her; if our homeland could see the tenderness with which she is loved by her children in exile, the joy of their faith and her pride at once would give her strength to break her chains at last.

Preface

The purpose of this study is to lay the groundwork for a history of Cubans who came to this country before 1959. Those who arrived later are not included because it is still too early to assess their impact, and the impact this country has had on them, since they are still very much in the process of shaping their lives here. The prominent Cubans whose names appear in this survey came at various times during a period of 200 years, and in numerous cases their experiences in the United States left a mark on their lives.

These pages are dedicated to those men and women who enhanced Cuba's reputation in this country, and to the Americans who helped them generously during their exile.

Cuba: The Key to The New World

Fifteen days after landing in the New World, Christopher Columbus discovered the island of Cuba. On October 28, 1492, he put ashore in a bay off the northern coast and, surprised at the natural beauty, he exclaimed, "This is the most beautiful land that eyes ever beheld." Since then, the same qualities that inspired Columbus have led others to call the island "the Pearl of the Antilles," "the Summer Isle of Eden," "Garden of Delight," "the Garden of the West" and "the Promised Land", among other such laudatory names. Natives of the island called it Cubanacán, which roughly translated means "the Center of Paradise."

Columbus thought he had reached the Asian continent, so he sent some of his men to look for the Great Khan, about whom Marco Polo had spoken. Naturally, they did not find him, nor did they find the abundant gold they so eagerly sought, and they did not realize that there was more wealth in the dry leaf the natives smoked than in all the gold they would find. The leaf, of course, was tobacco. A year after discovering Cuba, Columbus brought the island its other great source of wealth, sugar cane, which, along with tobacco, has had significant influence on the destiny of Cubans.

Cuba consists of many islands, the main one being Cuba, which extends approximately 750 miles from east to west and has an average width of 60 miles. Millions of years ago, four mountains rose from the depths of the ocean and, through erosion, gradually formed one large island, which after the Glacial Age, became the area discovered by Columbus. The largest island in the Antilles, Cuba is situated only ninety miles south of the United States, and quite near to Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas and the Yucatán peninsula. Because of its climate, birds emigrate to Cuba from both north and south: mockingbirds, warblers and buzzards are but a few of the more than 700 species that have been counted, and of them only 100 are native to Cuba. The birds' preference is nature's confirmation of the island's strategic position at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico.

Cuban Indians, the true discoverers of Cuba, seem to have come from the northern coast of South America. The first to arrive, some 2,000 years before Columbus, were very primitive cave dwellers. Eventually they were forced by more aggressive peoples to migrate westward and probably north to the peninsula that the Spanish explorers would call Florida. If this movement actually took place, as certain coincidences of custom and language suggest, it was a forerunner of the numerous waves of Cubans who were later forced north to seek refuge from persecution.

When Columbus arrived in Cuba, there were approximately 100,000 inhabitants on the island. The most advanced among them practiced agriculture, fashioned ceramic idols, lived in huts and danced to the music of drums; others lived in a savage state and hunted and fished for food. The Spaniards realized very quickly that the Indians were not robust workers, and ten years after discovering the island they brought over blacks from Africa. Cuba's natives did not long survive the disease and hard labor introduced by the Spaniards.

Because of its geographic position, at the outset of the Conquest Cuba, and the port of Havana in particular (which was then called "the Key to the New World"), became the point of departure for various expeditions. The one led by Pánfilo Narváez set out from there in 1528 to conquer Florida. One of the members of the expedition, which disembarked at Tampa Bay, was Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who became lost and traveled throughout the entire southern region of what today is the United States. Eight years later he arrived in northern Mexico. Hernando de Soto too left from Havana on his expedition, which led him across Florida in 1539 and on to what is today's Georgia and the Carolinas. From there be proceeded to cross the Mississippi, until he reached the region today comprising Arkansas and Oklahoma. In 1518, the first exploratory mission to Mexico, headed by Juan de Grijalba, also set off from Cuba, from the southern coast. It was followed three years later by the expedition of Hernán Cortés.

Cuba and North America: The First Contacts

Although Spain enjoyed a trade monopoly with Cuba, after the English colonies in North America were established trade in contraband began: the Cubans sold sugar, alcohol and leather to the North and purchased flour, cloth and tools. From the middle of the sixteenth century through the end of the seventeenth, first French and then English and Dutch privateers and pirates scourged the Cuban ports. They were drawn there by ships loaded with merchandise destined for Spain. In 1628, for example, a convoy of ships about to set sail for Spain was surprised on the northern coast of Cuba by the Dutch pirate, Pieter Heyn, who seized all the silver they carried. As a result, fortresses were constructed in Havana and other Spanish territories. In St. Augustine, Florida, the work was overseen by Laureano de Torres y Ayala (1640-1722), a native of Havana, who was governor of Florida from 1693 until 1700.

Cuban trade received a boost when the English, at war with the Spanish, took over the island's capital in 1762. During their rule over Havana, the English decreed free trade, and from that time on the Cubans remained interested in increasing their commercial activity with Europe, and, of course, with their neighbors to the north. During the eleven months that the English remained in Havana, more than a thousand boats entered the harbor. This foreign occupation of Cuban territory thus awakened commercial interests that gradually separated the Cubans more and more from the Spaniards. It also resulted in the exile of Bishop Pedro A. Morell de Santa Cruz (1694-1768), who, for his unwillingness to submit to the laws of the British rulers, became the first in a series of notable exiles from Cuba to settle in Florida. Like many who would follow in his footsteps, Bishop Morell de Santa Cruz devoted himself to teaching during his exile in North America, and upon his return to Cuba, his experience proved useful; he introduced apiculture as an industry, which soon became one of the island's sources of wealth.

Another Cuban priest who left many fond memories in North America and who took back with him various technical advances was Luis Peñalver (1719-1810). Peñalver went to New Orleans in 1793 not as a political refugee but as the city's bishop. In Havana he had held positions of importance in both intellectual and ecclesiastical life, and in New Orleans he built hospitals, girls' schools and churches. With the same thirst for knowledge, the same curiosity that motivated Morel de Santa Cruz— a seemingly inherent quality of Cubans, perhaps a result of their insular psychology— Bishop Peñalver became  interested in the farm equipment that was used in Louisiana to harvest cotton. He introduced it in Cuba to improve agriculture and to help the charitable projects he had established on the island.

Half a century before the Boston Tea Party, Cuban tobacco growers rose up in arms to protest the Spanish monopoly on tobacco. The colonies of England and Spain were gradually building the foundations for establishment of their independence at the same time.

Cuban sympathy for the rebellious North Americans was clearly demonstrated during the American Revolution. When the Continental Army, commanded by George Washington, was in need of supplies in 1781, France sent its fleet to the Antilles to fight the English. From Newport, Rhode Island, the French general, Rochambeau, wrote the commander of the French fleet, Admiral De Grasse: "I must not conceal from you, Monsieur, that the Americans are at the end of their resources, that Washington does not have half of the troops he is reckoned to have, and, I believe, though he is silent about it, that at present he does not have 6,000 men; that M. de Lafayette does not have 1,000 regulars with the militia to defend Virginia." Under the circumstances, he urgently requested 1,200,000 livres. Since De Grasse had no way of obtaining such a large sum, he sent an aide by boat to Havana. Only five hours after arriving, the French had already obtained the desired amount: the Spanish authorities gave a portion, and another was contributed by businessmen, but the most important part was donated by the ladies of Havana, who handed over their jewels to help the cause of the revolutionaries. This money made possible the decisive battle of the war at Yorktown, where the British forces under the command of General Cornwallis were defeated. As an American historian has stated, that money, donated by the ladies of Havana, "may, with truth, be regarded as the bottom dollars upon which the edifice of American Independence was erected." Besides, Cuba supported the battle for independence with more than money; both black and white volunteers sailed in expeditions from Havana to attack the English in their territory, and their success in taking some two thousand prisoners helped to undermine the morale of the British troops. One of the Cubans was Colonel José Manuel Cagigal (1738-1814), who seized Pensacola and Nassau from the British in armed expeditions from Havana.

Pioneering Cuban Exiles: A Poet and A Priest

With the United States and Haiti as examples, Latin Americans fought for their freedom from Spain. Cuba, less fortunate than the other colonies, did not win her independence until the end of the nineteenth century, although conspiracies began much earlier. Among those opposed to Spain were many of the early Cuban political refugees.

One of the most illustrious was the poet José María Heredia (1803-1839). He had been implicated in a conspiracy and had to go into hiding and flee for his life. Shortly after his arrival in Boston in the winter of 1823, he settled in New York, where he taught Spanish, did some translations, and published his poetry. Heredia was the first literary figure to write in Spanish about the United States; his articles were published in magazines that Cubans on the island read with great interest. He was also the first of his compatriots to give literature a political content; several of his poems denounced the abuses committed by Spain in Cuba. But Heredia is best known by North Americans for his famous ode to Niagara Falls, written during his visit there in the summer of 1824. A translation of the last stanza of the poem, long believed to have been done by his friend, William Cullen Bryant, was placed on a bronze plaque overlooking the falls. The verses express the unhappy exile's longing for his homeland.

Soon after, when he was barely 21, Heredia published his poems in New York. The special edition, also prepared as a text for his students, was praised by well-known English and Spanish-speaking critics. The following appeared on the first page of the volume: "A profusion of accents will be noted in this book; they were needed, however, so that the work would be used to Americans who study Spanish and want to acquire better pronunciation." In this way, and through the classes that he taught, Heredia contributed to the study of the Spanish language in this country, thus following the recommendation of Jefferson and Franklin that knowledge of Spanish be promoted in North America.

Heredia left New York for Mexico at the behest of the Mexican government. He held various important posts there before his death, at 36, in 1839, by which time he was heralded as one of the great romantic poets of the Spanish language.

A few days after Heredia's arrival in Boston, Father Félix Varela (1787-1853), another great Cuban and political refugee, arrived in New York. In Cuba he had been the country's most noted intellectual; a professor of philosophy in Havana's most prestigious learning center, the Colegio Seminario de San Carlos, he was also elected to represent Cuban interests in the Spanish parliament, the Cortes. While in Madrid, he and his companions, Tomás Gener (1787-1835) and Leonardo Santos Suárez (1795-1874), spoke out against slavery and the Spanish monarchy until persecution by the authorities forced them to flee through Gibraltar to settle in the United States.

Without neglecting his duties as a priest or his writings, Father Varela joined with other Cuban exiles in this country—powerful businessmen and young writers, some of whom had been his students in Cuba—to conspire against Spanish rule. His efforts included the publication of revolutionary newspapers and an intense political campaign in favor of Cuban independence. He also founded two churches, a hospital and three schools in New York. In Cuba he had taught the rich; in the United States he taught the poor. To assist the new Latin American republics, he also translated Thomas Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Procedure and published various of his own books on philosophy, which served as textbooks in Latin American universities. He also contributed articles to several North American Catholic newspapers.

Father Varela became Vicar General of New York and, had it not been for Spanish opposition, he would have become bishop. He was a model of virtue and charity, beloved by all, but as a Cuban historian has written, Father Varela was also the first truly revolutionary intellectual. He taught the world that the role of the intellectual is to be committed to his ideas and to spread them among his contemporaries. He could have returned to Cuba under a general amnesty but did not, because like a good apostle, he was always ready to serve as an example through his own sacrifice. In his words, "He who does not know how to make sacrifices for his country, or who requires compensation for them, is not a patriot."

His works in the United States, the friendships he developed and the affection he won while here led Varela to consider himself an American. "I am in my feelings a native of this country," he wrote. And here he died in 1853, in poverty and almost blind, in St. Augustine, Florida, where he had lived as a child. His parishioners, familiar with his deeds, distributed his priestly habits as though they were the relics of a saint. Proceedings for his beatification were recently begun in Rome.

When the church he founded in New York, the Church of Christ, celebrated its centennial, the priest officiating at the ceremonies said of Father Varela: "Few men have accomplished so much good; few have left behind a record of such pleasant memories. Félix Varela was indeed 'All things to all men.' To the scholar he was a scholar, to the poor he was poor, to those who suffered he was ever in sympathy. Whether we view him in the light of Professor of Philosophy, or as a member of the Spanish Cortes, or as a priest laboring earnestly for the salvation of souls, his great liberal spirit must ever stand in the foreground."

The Nineteenth Century Cuban Exodus

Of all the countries on this continent, Cuba paid the highest price in terms of time, effort and blood for its right to be free. Throughout the nineteenth century, almost without interruption, there were uprisings, conspiracies, executions, imprisonments and exiles. From North America, Cuban refugees organized numerous armed expeditions. One, which was organized in 1850, involved 600 men who set out from New Orleans under the command of General Narciso López (1798-1851). They landed on the north coast of Cuba, occupied a city, and for the first time unfurled in Cuba the flag with a single star, which was later to become the national emblem of the republic and had been designed with the help of other Cuban exiles living in New York. But López and his men did not win the people's support, so, persecuted by the Spanish, they took refuge in Key West. Not long afterwards, General López organized another expedition, of 500 men. This time he was captured and executed in Havana, along with his companion, Colonel William L. Crittenden, a nephew of the Secretary of State of the United States, and 50 other North Americans.

Little by little, the American people began identifying with Cuba's fight for independence, because of both their friendship for Cubans who were living in the United States and the ill-will that Spain generated here through its abuses in Cuba. One of the events that greatly discredited the government of Havana was the execution of the black poet Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (1809-1844), who wrote under the pseudonym Plácido. He was unjustly accused of having participated in a conspiracy and was condemned to death without being given the opportunity to defend himself. Numerous translations and biographies of the unfortunate poet made him very popular among readers in this country, and at the same time increased awareness of the political situation in Cuba.

Every rash revolutionary attempt, every conspiracy, increased the number of Cubans who fled the country, the majority of them to settle in the United States. When the so-called Ten Years' War for Independence broke out on October 10, 1868, a tenth of Cuba's population was forced to emigrate. Professionals, businessmen and workers established themselves in New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Charleston, Baltimore and Key West. Before the influx, the population of Key West was approximately 3,000; it quickly soared to 18,000. More than three-quarters of the workers became involved in the tobacco industry.

In order to organize the exiles and interest the U.S. government in the cause of Cuba's independence, the patriots who were fighting in Cuba sent General Francisco Vicente Aguilera (1821-1877), one of the island's richest Cuban land-owners, to New York. Having devoted his entire fortune to the cause, he lived in extreme poverty. To demonstrate what the Cubans had come to signify to the North Americans, when Aguilera died New York's City Council held funeral services for him in City Hall, an honor which had never before been conferred on a foreigner.

To end the Ten Years' War, the Spanish government was forced to make concessions to the rebels. As a result, many of the exiles returned home in 1878. However, the time they had spent living in the United States served significantly to strengthen the ties between the two peoples, and the ties continued to develop since some Cubans remained in the U.S.

Cigar manufacture had been a thriving business in Cuba, so many exiles arrived here with years of experience in the industry, as workers and entrepreneurs. They settled in Key West and quickly turned that small island into the cigar center of the United States. They also founded welfare organizations, revolutionary clubs, newspapers and schools in Key West. San Carlos, which endures to this day in a new building, was the first integrated school in the southern United States. Later Tampa became the country's center for cigar production: in 1888, one hundred million of the world-famous clear Havana cigars were produced in the burgeoning city, whereas three years earlier, Tampa had fewer than a thousand inhabitants.

The first freedoms suppressed by tyrannies are those of speech and thought. In some of Cuba's cigar factories, it had become customary for someone to read aloud to the workers at their posts, but Spain banned these readings when the war broke out. As might be expected, the factories established in the United States renewed the custom of reading aloud. Thus the workers attained a certain degree of learning and heightened their patriotic fervor. Indeed, much of the financing for expeditions against Spanish rule came from these workers. Life was quite inexpensive for them: they could rent a house for one dollar a week, and buy a pound of meat for less than ten cents and a meal for a nickel. Thus, with wages of from twenty to forty dollars a week, a tobacco roller could live with relative comfort even if he contributed to the war against Spain.

At the close of the 1880's, Cuban exile groups in the U.S. were powerful. Among them there were wealthy Cubans who wanted independence for their country but who were scattered and lacked a concrete program for building Cuba's future. Responsibility for formulating a plan and organizing the war would fall on José Martí (1853B1895), the greatest Cuban of all time.

The Chronicler and the Revolutionary

There is good reason why a statue of Martí occupies a prominent place in New York City, at the point where the Avenue of the Americas meets Central Park, between the statues of the two most prominent figures of Latin American independence, Bolívar and San Martín. Martí was born in Havana of Spanish parents. He was fifteen years old when the Ten Years' War broke out in Cuba and quickly found himself caught up in the conflict; as a result of his activities, he was imprisoned and then deported to Spain. There, at the University of Saragossa, he completed his studies. He then left to live in Mexico, where his parents had emigrated. Over the following years, he was forced to flee Mexico, Guatemala and Venezuela because of his opposition to dictatorial governments, and he finally settled in New York, where he earned a living as a translator, a journalist, a Spanish teacher and a diplomatic representative for various Latin American countries. His stay in New York lasted for fifteen years, until 1895, when he left for Cuba to participate in the war for independence which he had organized.

Neither before nor after Martí has anyone contributed so much to familiarizing Latin America with the United States. His brilliant, talented writings acquainted Latin Americans with the most diverse scenes of North American life. Martí understood the importance of the United States to Latin America, and he devoted himself to the study of U.S. political institutions, history, customs and culture. He lived here during a very dynamic period for the American experiment in self-government and free enterprise, and he was keen to observe and learn from the successes and failures of the experiment. Martí roundly censured the materialism, prejudice, expansionist arrogance, and political corruption of the time, just as he enthusiastically applauded what he believed to be standards that would survive those flaws: the love of liberty, the tolerance, the egalitarian spirit and democratic practices of the country. Thus, in October 1885, contrasting the opulence with the poverty in New York, he warned his Latin American readers: "It is necessary to study the way this nation sins, the way it errs, the way it founders, so as not to founder as it does. One must not merely take the statistics at face value but hold them up to examination and, without being dazzled, see the meaning they contain. This is a great nation, and the only one where men can be men, but as a result of conceit over its prosperity and of its inability to satisfy its appetites, it is falling into moral pygmyism, into a poisoning of reason, a reprehensible adoration of all success."

In the numerous collections of Martí's speeches, letters, essays and other writings, those dealing with the United States are divided into two groups, "North Americans" and "North American Scenes." The first group includes masterful portraits of patriots, artists, writers, politicians and other important figures. He identified strongly with Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, because, like the sage of Concord, Martí placed great stock in virtue, duty, nature and tenderness. He studied Emerson's work and referred to him often in his writings. The following is a passage written in 1882, when Emerson died. It comes from a lengthy piece published in a Venezuelan newspaper: "Emerson is dead, and sweet tears fill our eyes. We feel not anguish, but envy. The death of a just man is like a celebration where everyone watches the heavens opening. He who did good to others and gave fully of himself rests at last.... He spoke as a prophet, not a mediator. Everything he wrote is a maxim.... Never did he hire his mind, his tongue, or his conscience. He gave forth light as if from a star. In him humankind attained its fullest dignity."

Two Cuban poets had preceded Martí in the study and dissemination of knowledge about North American literature. Domingo Delmonte (1804-1853) was the first to write on the subject in Spanish, in a work published in Cuba and later in Seville. Shortly afterwards, Juan Clemente Zenea (1832-1871), who had lived in New Orleans and New York, published in Madrid a comprehensive study "On literature in the United States." Those efforts to make the works of North American authors known in Spanish-speaking countries culminated in Martí. In the work he did for Latin American newspapers, he wrote of James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, Edgar Allan Poe, Longfellow, Thoreau and many others. He presented the poet Walt Whitman in a long study published in 1887 simultaneously in Mexico and Buenos Aires, an account of a lecture Whitman gave in New York on Abraham Lincoln. Martí presented Whitman through the poet's description of himself in "Song of Myself," in Leaves of Grass: "Walt Whitman, a Kosmos, of Manhattan the son,/ Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,/  No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them." Martí emphasized the poet's style, which was characteristic of a new age on a new continent, and his vocabulary and the way in which his sentences were arranged, which Martí compared to the form which predominates in nature. And Martí recommended Whitman to his Latin American readers: "Let us hear what this hardworking and contented people are singing, let us hear Walt Whitman." Above all, Martí admired Whitman for his love of democracy and of humble people and for his declaration of individual freedom.

Martí's writings on "North Americans" also include pieces on military men, like Grant and Sheridan, and wealthy philanthropists, like Peter Cooper. Martí's reservations regarding the abuses of excessive capitalism did not prevent him from acknowledging the merits of the rich who helped the needy. For example, of Peter Cooper, who founded Cooper Union in New York to provide education in the sciences and the arts for the poor, Martí wrote in 1893, on the occasion of Cooper's death: "I was not born in this country, nor did I ever meet him, yet I loved him as a father. He loved, he produced and he relieved people from distress. He lived peacefully because he lived without sin. He was so gentle that he seemed bland or weak; but he had the striking energy of gentle men. He regarded life as a priesthood and the selfishness of materialism as an apostasy. He considered himself as manager of his wealth, not its owner."

The second group of Martí's writings on the U.S., the "North American Scenes," includes masterful descriptions of such events as the inauguration of the Statue of Liberty and the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, and of everyday life in a snowstorm or on a summer day at the beach in Coney Island. In describing the latter, he wrote: "The amazing thing in Coney Island is not the way people go bathing, nor the booths on the sand, nor the majestic beach. The amazing thing there is the size, the quantity, the sudden explosion of human activity, that huge valve of pleasure open to an immense crowd, that continuous outpouring of a portentous people onto a portentous beach." And at nightfall, when this colossal crowd returns to New York, Martí sees it "like a monster emptying its entrails into the open mouth of another monster." At the inauguration of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, he wrote: "Yesterday, October 28, the United States accepted devoutly the Statue of Liberty; the people of France have donated it to this country in memory of the 4th of July, 1776. The excitement was boundless. There were reflections of the flag and tender love in every face, and a matchless sense of sovereignty brought out in everyone a look of peace and beauty. All these Irishmen, Italians, Poles, Bohemians and Germans, redeemed from tyranny or misery, hail this monument to Liberty because they feel that through it they are also uplifted." In seeing the statue in terms of this country's emigrants, Martí thus concurred with the poet Emma Lazarus, whose well-known verses affixed to the pedestal called the statue the "Mother of Exiles."

Martí interrupted his brilliant writing career to fulfill his revolutionary mission, which was to free Cuba from Spanish rule and to establish a democracy where both liberty and justice would triumph. He had said to the Cubans: "I want the first law of our republic to be the reverence of Cubans for the total dignity of man.... Either the republic is built on the character of each one of its children, on their habit of working with their hands and thinking for themselves, on the full exercise of their abilities and respect for the right of others fully to exercise theirs, as if it were a matter of family honor, on a passion, in short, for the dignity of man, or the republic is not worth a single tear from one of our women, a single drop of blood from one of our brave men." With this platform, Marti's efforts to organize an independence movement gained the support of Cuban workers, businessmen and professionals who were living in this country. Shortly after the fighting began in 1895, Martí landed on the island. In mid-May he was killed in battle in one of the early encounters with the Spanish troops.

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