Sugar, Cigars, and Revolution
The Making of Cuban New York
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- $34.99
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- $34.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this colorful and scrupulously researched history, P rez, 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. P rez 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.
