Chapter 7- The Southern Bypassed .... to "Cuba"

U.S.A - Cuba

Key West is inextricably defined by its Cuban origins and as the initial point of social, political and economic interactions between Cuba and the United States. The United States infrastructure starts at the Florida Keys (U.S. 1 mile marker zero in Key West) and Cuban-United States extensive interrelationships also have an origin in Key West.
The name Key West is often explained as a mispronunciation of the original Spanish. Numerous early American skeletal remains on the island provided the image for the naming of Cayo Hueso, bones that apparently mark another process of inter-island migration and armed confrontations. These bones mark a history of human sentiment and purpose and families in motion. My family was part of the emigration from Cuba to Key West that took place in the middle of the nineteenth century.
From the 1840s to the end of the nineteenth century, immigrants from Cuba and their tobacco enterprises were major historical actors in the history of Key West. Numerous small shops called chinchales (some of which became large tobacco factories) began operating in Key West, creating a significant industry that towards the end of the nineteenth century produced 100 million cigars annually. In 2001 Cuba manufactured approximately 160 million cigars. Tobacco became in Key West and Tampa the backbone of Florida development, an economy built by Cuban criollos in a complex political situation. Tobacco shops were also cultural enterprises, where professional readers read choice literary works out loud for the benefit of the workers. They also constituted a context for Cuba's long struggle, a national liberation that was yet to be won. Many criollos initially favored annexation of the island by the United States, an annexation vigorously supported by slave-owner states that considered Cuba as another area for economic development based on slave labor. Cuba was targeted as the next slave state. The 1868 War of Independence, marked by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes' abolitionist mood, repositioned the Cuban struggle in favor of total independence based on independent ideals that originated with Father Félix Varela. The "Ten-Year War" united Cubans of all races and formed a revolutionary movement that thrived among Cuban workers in tobacco factories across the United States, from Key West to Philadelphia and New Jersey. My family came to Key West in 1854 and was present at what could be called the "mile zero" of a movement in search of Cuban political and economic independence.