Cuban American - Early Migrations

Early Migrations

Prior to the Louisiana Purchase and the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, all of Florida and Louisiana were provinces of the Captaincy General of Cuba (Captain General being the Spanish title equivalent to the British colonial Governor). Consequently, Cuban immigration to the U.S. has a long history, beginning in the Spanish colonial period in 1565 when St. Augustine, Florida was established by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, and hundreds of Spanish-Cuban soldiers and their families moved from Cuba to St. Augustine to establish a new life. Thousands of Cuban settlers also immigrated to Louisiana between 1778 and 1802 and Texas during the period of Spanish rule.Since 1820 the Cuban presence is more than 1000 people. In 1870 the number of Cuban immigrants increases to almost 12,000, of which about 4500 residing in New York, about 3000 in New Orleans, and 2000 in Key West. The causes of these movements were both economic and political. The problem is intensified after 1860, when the political factor facing the predominant role in departures to outside, as a result of deteriorating relations with the Spanish metropolis.

The year 1869 marked the beginning of one of the most significant periods of emigration from Cuba to the United States, with center in Key West. The exodus of hundreds of workers and businessmen linked to the manufacture of tobacco. The reasons are many: the introduction of more modern techniques of elaboration of snuff, the most direct access to its main market, the United States, the uncertainty about the future of the island, which had suffered years of economic, political and social the beginning of the Ten Years' War against Spanish rule. It is an exodus of skilled workers, precisely the class and the labor sector in the island, had succeeded in establishing a free labor sector amid a slave economy.

The manufacture of snuff from the Cuban labor force, became the most important source of income for the Key West between 1869 and 1900.

Tampa is added to such efforts, with a strong migration of Cubans, which goes from 720 inhabitants in 1880 to 5.532 in 1890. However, the second half of the nineties of the nineteenth century marked the decline of the Cuban immigrant population, as an important part of it returns to the island to fight for independence. To War accentuates the Cuban immigrant integration into American society, whose numbers were significantly: more than 12 000 people.