Sugar, Cigars, and Revolution: The Making of Cuban New York

by Lisandro Perez

Overview

Winner, 2020 Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in New York history

Honorable Mention, 2019 CASA Literary Prize for Studies on Latinos in the United States, given by La Casa de las Américas

The dramatic story of the origins of the Cuban community in nineteenth-century New York.

More than one hundred years before the Cuban Revolution of 1959 sparked an exodus that created today’s prominent Cuban American presence, Cubans were settling in New York City in what became largest community of Latin Americans in the nineteenth-century Northeast. This book brings this community to vivid life, tracing its formation and how it was shaped by both the sugar trade and the long struggle for independence from Spain. New York City’s refineries bought vast quantities of raw sugar from Cuba, ultimately creating an important center of commerce for Cuban émigrés as the island tumbled into the tumultuous decades that would close out the century and define Cuban nationhood and identity.

New York became the primary destination for Cuban émigrés in search of an education, opportunity, wealth, to start a new life or forget an old one, to evade royal authority, plot a revolution, experience freedom, or to buy and sell goods. While many of their stories ended tragically, others were steeped in heroism and sacrifice, and still others in opportunism and mendacity. Lisandro Pérez beautifully weaves together all these stories, showing the rise of a vibrant and influential community. Historically rich and engrossing, Sugar, Cigars, and Revolution immerses the reader in the riveting drama of Cuban New York.

Lisandro Pérez analyzes the major forces that shaped the community, but also tells the stories of individuals and families that made up the fabric of a little-known immigrant world that represents the origins of New York City's dynamic Latino presence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814767276
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	07/10/2018
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	1,251,714
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Lisandro Pérez is Professor of Latin American and Latina/o Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is the author, with Guillermo Grenier, of The Legacy of Exile: Cubans in the United States (Allyn & Bacon, 2003).

Table of Contents

Introduction: New York Stories 1

Part I Sugar: 1823-1868

1 The Port 19

2 Exiles, Sojourners, and Annexationists 40

3 An Emerging Community and a Rising Activism 78

Part II War: 1868-1895

4 War and Exodus 121

5 Cuban New York in the 1870s 147

6 Waging a War in Cuba … and in New York 185

7 The Aftermath of War and a Changed Community 242

8 José Martí, New Yorker 270

Epilogue: "Martí Should Not Have Died" 301

Acknowledgments 323

Notes 327

References 371

Index 385

About the Author 399

Editorial Reviews

05/28/2018
In this colorful and scrupulously researched history, Pérez, a professor of Latin American studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, traces the 19th-century origins of Cuban New York, a vibrant community that developed long before the 1959 Cuban revolution. He vividly narrates the rise of the Cuban sugar trade with the U.S. and the formation of the 19th-century “sugarocracy”—the Cuban-born descendants of the Spanish who became Cuba’s elite. They went to New York not only for business but to plot their independence from Spain, invest in real estate, gain a valuable network of social contacts, and send their boys to boarding school. Perez discusses New York Cubans’ thwarted hopes for annexation by the U.S., the failed war of independence (1868–1878) that spurred a massive exodus of intellectuals and aristocracy, and the New York Cuban community’s changing demographics as craftsmen, cigar makers, and laborers gradually outnumbered the moneyed class. Pérez introduces readers to generals, writers, cigar workers, Freemasons, and many other 19th-century Cubans, including Father Varela, who founded two downtown Catholic parishes that still exist today, and Emilia Casanova, who used the vaults under her father’s house in the Bronx to store arms before smuggling them to Cuba. Perez’s engrossing work showcases a little-discussed facet of New York City’s rich history. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"En prosa clara y precisa, Lisandro Pérez cuenta la historia de los cubanos del siglo XIX en Nueva York con rigor y una dosis exacta de empatía hacia los protagonistas. Este libro académico, sin duda un aporte incalculable a la historiografía cubana, se lee, sin embargo, como si fuera una novela."-Uva de Aragón, El Nuevo Herald

"Few people are aware that during the nineteenth century, Cubans constituted the major immigrant Hispanic community in New York. Lisandro Pérez, through exhaustive and well documented research, brings into focus the outstanding political, economic and cultural significance of this presence in the history of the city as well as in Cuban history." -Oscar Zanetti,Universidad de La Habana

"A fascinating excursion into nineteenth-century New York . . .
serves as a comprehensive guide to the social, cultural, and political lives of the transnational community of wealthy Cuban plantation owners and their immigrant compatriots . . . Great spiritedness animates the prose . . . a lively and multifaceted record of Cuban communities in New York City."- Foreword Reviews

"In this colorful and scrupulously researched history, Pérez . . . traces the 19th-century origins of Cuban New York. [His] engrossing work showcases a little-discussed facet of New York City's rich history."- Publishers Weekly

"In the 18th century a sugar trade sprang up between New York and Cuba, and with it a Cuban community grew in Gotham. Its evolution down to the 1898 war with Spain has heretofore been only lightly sketched. Now Lisandro Pérez’s splendid study offers a full blown portrait. His research drills down to bedrock, and his absorbing narrative, which focuses on individual actors as well as sweeping historical forces, is engagingly written."-Mike Wallace is a Pulitzer prize winning historian of New York City

"A riveting history of exile and migration. More than a century before the rise of Miami, New York City was home to a vibrant transnational Cuban community. Its members lived in the city, using it to feed their business ventures, their intellectual and artistic pursuits, and their political visions, which were wide-ranging enough to include plots to annex the island to the United States and dreams of nationalist revolution. Lisandro Pérez provides a vivid glimpse into a relatively little-known Cuban and Latino New York in the nineteenth century."-Ada Ferrer,author of Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution

From the Publisher

"Pérez vividly describes how the tightly knit Cuban émigré community reproduced the political cleavages and social mores of its homeland."

Foreign Affairs

"A riveting history of exile and migration. More than a century before the rise of Miami, New York City was home to a vibrant transnational Cuban community. Its members lived in the city, using it to feed their business ventures, their intellectual and artistic pursuits, and their political visions, which were wide-ranging enough to include plots to annex the island to the United States and dreams of nationalist revolution. Lisandro Pérez provides a vivid glimpse into a relatively little-known Cuban and Latino New York in the nineteenth century."

Ada Ferrer

"In the 18th century a sugar trade sprang up between New York and Cuba, and with it a Cuban community grew in Gotham. Its evolution down to the 1898 war with Spain has heretofore been only lightly sketched. Now Lisandro Pérezs splendid study offers a full blown portrait. His research drills down to bedrock, and his absorbing narrative, which focuses on individual actors as well as sweeping historical forces, is engagingly written."

Mike Wallace

"A fascinating excursion into nineteenth-century New York . . . serves as a comprehensive guide to the social, cultural, and political lives of the transnational community of wealthy Cuban plantation owners and their immigrant compatriots . . .Great spiritedness animates the prose . . . a lively and multifaceted record of Cuban communities in New York City."

Foreword Reviews

"With a wealth of new data and illustrations, Pérez provides a fascinating narrative of Cuban migration to New York… Recommended for Latin Americanists and students of New York history."

Choice

"Few people are aware that during the nineteenth century, Cubans constituted the major immigrant Hispanic community in New York. Lisandro Pérez, through exhaustive and well documented research, brings into focus the outstanding political, economic and cultural significance of this presence in the history of the city as well as in Cuban history."

Oscar Zanetti

"A thoroughly researched study on the early history of Cubans in New York… Sugar, Cigars, and Revolution makes an important contribution to Cuban diasporic history in New York and Pérez’s attention to detail and crafting of narrative is impressive."

New West Indian Guide

"En prosa clara y precisa, Lisandro Pérez cuenta la historia de los cubanos del siglo XIX en Nueva York con rigor y una dosis exacta de empatía hacia los protagonistas. Este libro académico, sin duda un aporte incalculable a la historiografía cubana, se lee, sin embargo, como si fuera una novela."

El Nuevo Herald Uva de Aragón

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