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.
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