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Tampa's Cuban History
Hernando de Soto,
Governor of Cuba, sailed from the island and landed at Tampa Bay
in 1539, thus establishing a connection between Cuba and Florida that would bring thousands of Cuban émigrés for the next 400 years.
In 1884, railroad magnate Henry B. Plant revolutionized the transportation and
communication systems when he linked Tampa to the rest of Florida
with his new railroad. It was about this same time that Vicente Martínez Ybor was looking to relocate his cigar factory due
to a decline in the economy and labor unrest in Key West.
In 1886, he built the world's largest cigar factory in Tampa,
helping to transform a swampland into a booming manufacturing community. By the turn of the century, there were about 150
cigar factories in West Tampa and Ybor City
producing more than 111 million cigars annually.
Several months after arriving in Tampa, Martínez Ybor established a steamboat route from Havana to Tampa via Key West bringing hundreds
of Cuban workers on the SS Hutchinson. They were among the first to settle in Ybor
City, which was originally known as "Cuba
Town." Cubans, who became the largest ethnic group in Ybor City, were soon joined by Spaniards, Italians
and Germans. The population in Tampa grew rapidly as the cigar
industry grew. It is in this unique multicultural enclave where one can still find La Gaceta, the only trilingual newspaper
in America.
The immigrant communities established
mutual aid clubs as a way to preserve their native cultures and traditions. Spaniards built El Centro Español, and then a
splinter group formed Centro Asturiano of Tampa, a charter of the original Centro Asturiano
in Havana. Italians built L'Unione Italiana which is today
one of the few fully functioning clubs in Ybor City. Cubans formed their own club, El Círculo Cubano, which today provides medical
services to its members and sponsors cultural and political events. Although white and black Cubans were initially part of
the same club, Florida's laws against integrated social
clubs required them to separate. Thus, La Unión Martí-Maceo was established by Afro-Cubans in 1907.
Tampa became the "cradle of Cuban independence" where Cuban leader José Martí promoted the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Cigar workers pledged a donation of one day's pay every week toward the cause and
many even returned to the island to fight alongside Martí during the war of 1895.
Tampa also became the headquarters for American troops preparing to fight in the Spanish-American
War. Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders departed from Tampa for Cuba
where they led the charge on San Juan Hill. After the war, many Cubans returned to their
homeland but most of the émigrés stayed in Ybor City.
Today, the descendants of these early settlers
are second and third generation Cuban Americans, frequently referred to as Tampeños. Cubans contributed greatly to
the development of Tampa, now a large metropolitan city with
a Latin flair. Although Cubans have assimilated into American culture, many still speak their native tongue, celebrate traditional
festivals and events and enjoy Cuban cuisine as evidenced by the numerous Cuban restaurants in Tampa.
Ybor City's
Cigar Workers
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The men and women of Ybor City who made the hand-rolled cigars earned
good wages for the times and had a certain amount of control over their workday. Because they were paid by the number of cigars
they turned out each day rather than by the hour, they set their own rate of production. These cigar workers were artisans,
and the goal for both the factory owner and the individual worker was to produce perfect handcrafted cigars.
The first step in cigar manufacturing was
to age the filler, binder, and wrapper tobacco under controlled climate conditions. Then they were prepared for blending with
different tobacco types to control the flavor. Next, workers called "strippers" selected and stripped from the tobacco plant
the leaves to carry to the cigar makers. From a supply of leaves beside him, a cigar maker picked up several filler leaves
of tobacco, laying them one by one on the palm of the hand until he could tell by the weight that he had enough for the cigar.
Each of the filler leaves had to be pointed in just the right direction so that the cigar would burn evenly and hold its ash
properly. The filler was then wrapped with a binder to form a "bunch" . Then the wrapper leaf was placed on a wood board and trimmed, the bunch placed on top of it, and the cigar was rolled in
one smooth, flowing motion. The wrapper was sealed with a dab of gum tragacanth, the sap of a tree grown in Iran. The worker then trimmed the finished cigar with his
blade (a thin wedge-shaped steel knife), and it was ready for seasoning (or storage) for up to three years before it was considered
aged enough to be sold. Workers called "pickers" sorted the finished cigars according to color, size, and shade to ensure
that all cigars in a box would look roughly the same. Packers then took the sorted cigars, placed a paper ring on each one
and put them in the boxes that were then ready to be shipped and sold.
Each worker in the factories' large workrooms
contributed about 25 cents per week for the services of lectors (readers). A lector sat on a platform above the workers and
in a loud, clear voice, read through several daily newspapers, often commenting on their contents. He also might read aloud
from Spanish poets, or from the works of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of novels, plays, and tales. Cervantes' Don
Quixote has long been one of the world's best-loved books (perhaps better known now from the musical, Man of La Mancha).
Because they listened to the reader for several hours a day, the workers probably were better informed than most Americans
of the time. These readers were talented, well-paid men who commented on the news with wit or irony and who used their voices
to indicate different characters in the poems and novels they read.
After work hours, most cigar workers took
advantage of Ybor City's
mutual aid societies. Different ethnic groups founded these social and cultural organizations to help members adapt to a new
land while retaining their ethnic traditions. Mutual aid society members could gather at their clubhouse to socialize over
dominoes or cards, attend a performance or dance, or participate in a variety of other recreational activities. However, these
societies provided more than entertainment. For a small fee collected weekly from their members, clubs contracted with doctors
and hospitals to provide medical care. The societies also operated pharmacies and provided burial services for their members.
The Spanish-speaking population founded four of these clubs. Italian and German immigrants each established a club as well.
El Centro Espanol, founded in 1891, was the
first mutual aid society in Ybor City.
To join, applicants had to be either Spaniards by birth or loyal to Spain.
Members paid 25 cents a week to enjoy social privileges as well as death and injury benefits. In 1975 the club still had some
2,000 members who used its restaurant and coffee shop, and attended movies during the week and live performances on weekends.
El Centro Espanol has been vacant, however, since the mid-1980s. Three of Ybor
City's mutual aid society clubhouses, El Centro Asturiano, El Circulo
Cubano, and L'Unione ltaliana, have remained in continuous use since they were constructed in the first quarter of the 20th
century. By providing everyday services such as recreation and medical care, Ybor
City's mutual aid societies successfully helped immigrant residents maintain
their ethnic identity while adapting to life in a new country.
Want to know more? Check this article from "Smoke" magazine - YBOR: the Town that Cigars Built
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Ybor City:
Cigar Capital of the World
Walk down Seventh Avenue in Ybor City (now a section of Tampa, Florida)
and feel yourself transported to a place in another time. Brick streets are lined with sidewalks of hexagonal concrete pavers
and old-fashioned, cast-iron street lamps. Buildings present ornate porticos, decorative brickwork, handmade wrought-iron
balconies, and ornamental tile work. A few small, plain workers' cottages, once home to Ybor City's cigar workers, have been preserved.
Mutual aid society clubhouses indicate the importance of benevolent organizations to Ybor
City's immigrant population. On a quiet corner lies a small park dedicated
to Cuban poet and revolutionary José Martí. The park is a reminder of Martí's efforts to gain support for the cause of Cuban
freedom in the 1890s. These historic sites speak of Ybor City's intriguing past.
The History of Ybor City
Ybor City, a section of the large metropolitan area of Tampa, Florida, owes its beginning to three Spaniards who came to the
"New World" in the 19th century: Gavino Gutierrez, Vicente Martinez Ybor, and Ignacio Haya.
Ybor immigrated to Cuba in 1832, at the
age of 14. He worked as a clerk in a grocery store, then as a cigar salesman, and in 1853 he started his own cigar factory
in Havana. Labor unrest, the high tariff on Cuban cigars,
and the start of the Cuban Revolution in 1868 caused Ybor to move his plant and his workers to Key West, Florida. While his business there was successful,
labor problems and the lack of a good fresh water supply and a transportation system for distributing his products led him
to consider moving his business to a new location.
Gavino Gutierrez came to the United States from Spain
in 1868. He settled in New York City, but he traveled often–to Cuba,
to Key West, and to the small town of Tampa, Florida, searching for exotic fruits such as mangoes and guavas. During a visit to Key West in 1884, he convinced Ybor and Ignacio Haya, a cigar factory owner from New
York who was visiting Ybor, to travel to Tampa
to investigate its potential for cigar manufacturing. That same year Henry Bradley Plant, a businessman from Connecticut,
had completed a rail line into Tampa and was in the process
of improving the port facility for his shipping lines. These methods of transportation would make it easy to import tobacco
from Cuba as well as distribute finished
products. Tampa also offered the warm, humid climate necessary
for cigar manufacturing, and a freshwater well.
After visiting Tampa in 1885, both Haya and Ybor decided to build cigar factories in the area. Gutierrez
surveyed an area two miles from Tampa, even drawing up a map
to show where streets might run. Ybor purchased 40 acres of land and began to construct a factory. He continued to manufacture
cigars in Key West as well, until a fire destroyed his factory
there in 1886. Afterwards, Ybor spent all of his time on his operations in the Tampa
area. At age 68, Ybor began developing a company town "with the hope of providing a good living and working environment so
that cigar workers would have fewer grievances against owners."
There had been Spanish and Cuban fishermen
in the Tampa region before Spain ceded Florida to the United States
in 1819, but the city had grown slowly. As late as 1880, the population was only about 700. In 1887 when the city of Tampa incorporated Ybor City into the municipality, the population increased to more than 3,000. By 1890 the
population of Tampa was about 5,500. Most residents made their
living from cigar making, while the occupations of many other workers revolved around the cigar trade. For example, some workers
made the attractive wooden cigar boxes in which the hand-rolled cigars were shipped and which, in most American homes, came
to be used for holding keepsakes. Other workers made cigar bands, pieces of paper around each cigar denoting its brand, which
once were collected by children all over the country.
Ybor City
developed as a multiethnic community where English was a second language for many of its citizens. Cubans made up the largest
group; about 15 percent of them were African Cubans. Next were the Spaniards, who came in large numbers after 1890. Together
these two groups dominated the cigar industry and set the cultural tone for the community. Ybor
City also attracted Italians, mostly Sicilians, who had first come to work in the
sugar cane fields in Louisiana. Some Italians worked in
the cigar industry, but many operated restaurants and small businesses or farmed for a living. Most became bilingual in Italian
and Spanish. Other immigrants included Germans, Romanian Jews, and a small number of Chinese. The Germans contributed to the
cigar industry through their superb cigar box art. The lithographs incorporated into their cover designs were considered the
best in the world. Romanian Jews and Chinese immigrants worked mainly in retail businesses and in service trades
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Ybor City eventually out produced Havana as a manufacturing center of quality cigars. Both Ybor and Haya offered plant sites
and other incentives to lure other major cigar factory owners away from Cuba
and Key West. There were also hundreds of small cigar-making
shops. By 1900 Tampa's Ybor City had become known as the "Cigar Capital of the World." Nearby West Tampa also profited
from Ybor City's
success. By 1895 it had 10 cigar factories of its own, and it also supported additional box making and label printing factories.
Ybor City
continued to grow and prosper through the 1920s and into the 1930s. Several factors soon converged to bring about hard times,
however. Cigarette consumption began to grow, a major depression struck the nation, and improved machinery for rolling cigars
began to produce a product comparable in workmanship to the hand-rolled variety. At first, these machine-produced cigars could
find little market because the hand-rolled "Havana" type cigar
had such a good reputation. Then the producers of the machine-made cigars launched a notorious "spit" campaign. In their advertisements
they falsely claimed that human saliva played a major role in the production of hand-manufactured cigars.
The combined effect of the "spit campaign,"
the Great Depression, and the growing popularity of cigarettes finally changed Ybor
City. Large factories either mechanized or went out of business. As machines
took over for people, many of Ybor City's
residents moved elsewhere in Tampa to find work. Between 1930
and 1940, some Cubans left the city and returned to their homeland.
In the 1960s Ybor City was split apart by an urban renewal
project. Seventy acres of the old city were leveled, including several hundred houses, one mutual aid society building, and
a fire station. An interstate highway took up part of the leveled ground, but the rest was never redeveloped because federal
funds and private investments did not materialize. This destruction did have one positive effect, however. Years later, it
prompted a number of civic organizations to band together to preserve what remained of the city's historic buildings and ethnic
heritage.
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| Ybor Square, originally a cigar factory |
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