The global reach of Florida agriculture has established the state as an important gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean. Ybor City, a neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, is a key gulf-coast location where migrant tobacco workers from Hispanic and Italian backgrounds developed a vibrant culture of mutual aid and ethnolinguistic diversity. Newspapers, labor manifestos, policy documents, and other ephemera outline lived experiences of Ybor Cubans and the sustained tobacco linkages connecting them to the island of Cuba. The United States’ dynamic foreign relations with Cuba during the Castro regime and following the 1962 embargo set off economic and political shockwaves that were felt throughout Florida’s cigar industry. The state holds an important space in Cuban history and consciousness, functioning first as an elite vacation destination before coming to embody a place of refuge to be occupied until a Cuba libre could be fully realized. The agricultural, ethnic, and labor landscapes of historic Ybor City and contemporary Florida continue to play an important role in characterizing international political realities of the Caribbean.
The Tobacco Laborers of Ybor City
The tobacco used in Ybor City factories was sourced from Cuban growers and transported via steam ship to Floridian ports. Ybor cigar production reached its peak in 1929, when the number of cigars rolled by the hardworking hands of migrant workers per year climbed to about 500 million. The 1962 embargo of Cuban imports to the US would deal the lethal blow to the tobacco industry in Ybor, causing the closure of most remaining factories. Currently, Cuban tobacco production is expanding and the main recipients of Cuban exports include China and the European Union whereas the US now relies on imports from Brazil, Canada, and Cuba’s close neighbor the Dominican Republic.
Labor Literature
In order to share information, labor unions and mutual aid organizations in Ybor City released updates on current issues, meeting times, and manifestos asserting their visions for the work environment in Tampa. With an intimate understanding of the international connections that their audience retained, publishers of papers like El Internacional and Diario de las Américas included sections on current regional and global issues.
Aviso a los obreros y todos ciudadanos de Tampa, Ybor City y West Tampa
El Comite Ciudanos was a local group that monitored and reported on issues concerning residents of Ybor and Tampa. Like many labor publications from this time period, the citizen committee references a sense of community solidarity that transcends interpersonal differences. In order to share information, labor unions and mutual aid organizations in Ybor City published intellectual articles on key topics, regular updates on salient labor issues, upcoming events, and manifestos asserting their visions for the work environment in Tampa. Small leaflets and one-page announcements like this one would be slipped into other news publications to be distributed throughout the Ybor City community. This brief aviso, or notice, guarantees absolute protection to all workers in the Ybor and Tampa area, both at work.
Centro Asturiano in Ybor City – Tampa, Florida
El Centro Asturiano, or Asturian Center, de Tampa is a historic site in Ybor City. The name Asturiano refers to its initial purpose as a meetingplace and social club for migrants from Asturias, Spain. Designed by architect M. Leo Elliott, the building is on the National Register of Historic Places as a protected historic site. It exists as a 501c3 non-profit and can be rented out for weddings, dinners, and other events. Dedicated efforts in preserving Hispanic heritage in Ybor City have enabled important historic spaces like el Centro Asturiano to maintain a continued socio-cultural importance.
Tampa, Fla., Ybor City, 7th Avenue looking East.
This postcard scan gives an accurate street-view of what Ybor City would have looked like in the early 20th century. 7th Avenue exists to this day and is a critical road running through Historic Ybor. The area is known for its historic places, popular Spanish restaurants, and the unique presence of free roaming roosters on the city streets.
Liquid Language
Labor interactions promoted the adaptation of language to meet the needs of its speakers. The sounds of Ybor City combined colloquial Cuban Spanish and slang with English and Italian. This is evidenced by labor articles, headlines, and other print media distributed at the time. While technically divided by language, these cultural groups were united around shared labor in the tobacco industry and a consequential, vibrant culture of mutual aid. So the workers of Ybor adapted language to encapsulate the intermingled English, Spanish, and Italian pronunciations, manifestations, trials and tribulations they heard on a daily basis. The following table attempts to explain some of the common variants I noticed throughout UF’s Digital Collections.
Pa’ Construir y Deconstruir un Diccionario
Table Caption
| Word/Variant | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| Havana vs. Habana | In Spanish Havana is written as Habana, la Habana to be exact. |
| Pa’ | This is urgent! We do not have time for Para! Just Pa’, which tells us onward, forward to a better future for tobacco laborers. |
| Martí City | Referring to Ocala, Florida as “Martí City”. No me ha escuchado antes de esta investigación. |
| El loco dice | “The madman says”, this is one of many attention-grabbing headlines I saw featured in the labor publications of Ybor City’s Tobacco community. |
| Patria, Patria y Vida | Patria goes beyond pais (country) to capture the more ephemeral sense of homeland or native territory. Patria y Vida is the slogan or lema of the July 2021 protest movement witnessed in Cuba. The slogan modifies the official motto of the Cuban government patria o muerte, meaning homeland or death. The adapted slogan turns the fatalistic government motto into a progressive and abundant envisioning of Cuban futures. |
| Tabaco vs. Puro vs. Cigarillo | Various forms of smokable tobacco were produced by the tobacco industry. Tabaco can refer to the actual tobacco plant or, often in Cuban contexts, to an individual cigar. Puro can also be used in this context, however this can refer to smoking non-tobacco products as well. Cigarillos, al otro lado, are more comparable to cigarettes. |
| Despalilladoras and Torcedores | Despalilladoras or de-stemmers, a subcategory of workers (think de- espalda/back but in the sense of a tobacco plant). These specialized factory workers would remove the hard stem from the tobacco leaves to prepare them for rolling by the Torcedores (think tort like contortion/ twisting) |
| Ag | Anybody who knows anything about the agriculture industry knows that the common English shorthand for this field (pun intended) is “Ag”. |
| Boletín | Friendly cognate word, Boletín refers to bulletins, reports, and news. Tampa cigar labor unions regularly published boletines para diseminar informaciòn por Ybor. |
| Gran Tabacalero/a | Searching for the best way to refer to what we, in English, call “Big Tobacco”. While tabaqueros are the individuals working in tobacco, las tabacaleras son las compañías en que fabrican los cigarros y cigarrillos |
| Obra, Obrera | To refer to deeds, acts, works of art, and work in a more conceptual way, the word obra is used in place of other options like trabajo o tarea. The derivative word, obrera, refers to the working class (clase obrera) or an individual worker (obrero). |
Embracing multilingualism in labor and policy environments is a necessary shift to be made in a globalizing world. The environment of Ybor City is one of many unique language landscapes in Florida that exhibit a unique fluidity in order to best serve their communities.
Language Comparison
These headlines from tobacco labor literature in Ybor City evidence the multilingual audience each publisher sought to reach with their messaging. UF’s unprocessed digital collections of tobacco worker newspaper manifestos uncovered during a newspaper digitization project feature an intermingled array of Spanish, English, and Italian documents all with shared messages of labor solidarity in Ybor City. Other scholarship on Ybor affirms the uniquely multiculturally supportive environment’s manifestation in the local restaurant culture and mutual aid societies.
The Gulf Dividing La Florida y La Habana
At its southernmost point, the Floridian peninsula is only about 90 miles off the coast of Cuba. The agricultural, economic, and cultural links between Ybor and Havana were not severed by the 1962 embargo. Archival materials evidence the impact of the Castro regime on the formerly permeable, almost liquid boundary between Floridian and Cuban experiences. The foreign policy and agronomic relationship between both nations became a less than penetrable barrier that laborers, families, migrants, and corporations continue to grapple with to this day.
“Florida insinuated itself deeply in Cuban historical senses and was early incorporated into those realms by which came to define their well-being. In profound existential ways Florida came to belong to Cuba….the history of Florida could hardly be imagined without the presence and participation of Cubans.”
Louis A. Peréz, “Between Encounter and Experience: Florida in the Cuban Imagination” Florida Historical Society.
Diario las Américas is a Spanish-language newspaper published in South Florida. Headquartered in Miami, Diario las Américas had a distinct international focus and reported on global issues and regional updates in North, South, and Central America. In this edition alone there is mention of Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Chile, and Puerto Rico alongside perspectives sourced from Washington D.C., Jerusalem, and Paris. Although not founded until 1953, this publication tracked the international implications and the Miami Hispanic community’s reactions towards the Castro regime in its early stages. This edition highlights the emerging Cuban exile situation and denunciation of Castro, among other ongoing issues.
This edition of international publication Diario de la Marina was published on the year anniversary of the consolidation of power of the Castro regime in Cuba. Daily-issue papers like these reflect the rapidly evolving situation in Cuba that pushed many Cubans to flee to places of cultural and political refuge, including Ybor City. The article asserts that, even in the wake of political upheaval, the publication will maintain its purpose of fighting for Cuban interests and promoting what they assert to be “Cuban values of Christian family, liberty, and rights”. El Diario de la Marina was published in exile from Miami Beach until 1961.
The 20th century gulf parallels between Ybor City and Havana have a strong basis in the labor networks, agronomic relationship, and migration patterns that defined the United States-Cuban relationship. Evidently, the seizure of power of the Castro Regime would completely reshape the physical and cultural boundaries between la Florida y la Habana. The map below, created using ARCGIS, uses soil science and labor literature data from the LACC collections to highlight important regions of tobacco cultivation, the ports connecting the pre-Castro tobacco trade, and some of the additional pockets of Hispanic culture and tobacco history that remain firmly rooted in Tampa Bay, South Florida, and beyond.
Labor, Ag*, and Policy
The Labor Rights Landscape of Cigar City
This edition and some others from El Internacional feature copies of tobacco labels under the front headlines. These labels were included to familiarize the audience of laborers with the packaging of union-made cigar products so tobacco workers could be sure they only supported union-friendly companies. Beyond its headline and labeling, this article affirms a humanitarian need to dignify tobacco manufacturing and agricultural labor and fight for workers’ rights. The article asserts solidarity with strikes occurring among communities of Hispanic migrant workers in New York and Chicago, a desire to replicate these strikes in Tampa, and promises to report on the ongoing situation.
This labor manifesto from the popular strike committee is an exemplar of the types of language and focal issues seen throughout Ybor City labor publications. The manifesto emphasizes appeals to a shared brotherhood that draws from unifying experiences within the tobacco industry. The paper is pervaded by consistent references to a “Frente Unico” or single front that transcends other identifying differences like race and ethnicity. Division within the working class is referred to as a sickness that plagues society, almost a socioeconomic health concern to be addressed by Tobacco workers.
Tobacco Agriculture
Tobacco agriculture played a key role in the early industrial development of Florida cities, beginning with the tobacco boom of the late 1800s. The suitability of Florida’s climate for growing tobacco, proximity to Cuba, and the labor influences of urbanization fundamentally changed Ybor City and Tampa Bay. Today, agriculture contributes over $160 billion to Florida’s economy, supplying citrus, tomatoes, watermelon, floriculture, and sugarcane to domestic and international markets (FDACS 2024). While Ybor City is now a site of historic preservation, agribusiness is alive and well in Florida cities like Homestead, Apopka, and Quincy. This multibillion dollar industry is still largely dependent on the labor of farmworkers from South and Central America. Further, current data has demonstrated that over 35% of these workers are of Haitian or Caribbean descent. The parallels between Florida and the Caribbean continue to be a critical theater of agribusiness in America that is laden with historical, cultural, and linguistic nuances.
Image 10: From the UM Libraries
Habana, Secando Tabaco, Drying Tobacco
Postcard of tobacco drying in Havana, Cuba.
Image 11: From UF Map & Imagery Library
A Survey of the Island of Cuba (1853)
Published in the book Cuba in Old Maps by Emilio Cueto.
Image 12: From the UF LACC
Boletin de Exportación, Mercantile Review
From the Braga Brothers collection.
A recent collaborative project between the University of Florida and University of Miami seeks to highlight the underrepresented and unarchived perspectives of farm workers and transform the way we view food systems. This interdisciplinary project is shedding light on the largely unseen laborers responsible for feeding the world. The primary issues impacting migrant farmworkers include immigration concerns, healthcare access, education, and housing insecurity, with women at an increased risk.
“The “Archiving Farmworkers’ Histories” project, made possible through an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership Grant, aims to create safe, cooperative spaces to archive and access oral histories, bringing together partners from community-based organizations, library specialists, graduate students, farmworkers, extension officers, and others to make archival practices more equitable.“
Daniel Fernández-Guevara for UF’s Latinamericanist Newsletter.
Policy Impacts
International Trade
This document is an official government publication detailing the best course of action in the evolving Cuban situation. By 1946, young Fidel Castro had begun playing an active role in the student protests against the Grau government. The document explains different forms of acceptable passage to and from Cuba at the time, starting what would become a long and complicated history of unique migratory status for Cubans and Cuban exiles. Cuban economic practices are analyzed in comparison to US companies, codes, and commercial law.
“Cane sugar, molasses, tobacco, and coffee were the four leading U.S. agricultural imports from Cuba during FY 1956-58.5”
Economic Research Service, “U.S.-Cuba Agricultural Trade: Past, Present, and Possible Future.” USDA.
“In the absence of new legislation that modifies these provisions, U.S. agricultural imports from Cuba remain at zero, even though Cuba still produces many of the agricultural commodities that it formerly exported to the United States, such as sugar and tobacco.”
Economic Research Service, “U.S.-Cuba Agricultural Trade: Past, Present, and Possible Future.” USDA.
Language Diversity in the Workplace
The language diversity employed within the official communications and publications of the Ybor City tobacco workplace has since become enshrined in Florida Law. Embracing multilingualism in labor and policy environments is a necessary shift to be made in a globalizing world. Ybor City is one of many unique language landscapes in Florida that exhibit a unique fluidity in order to best serve their communities. Today, all Florida counties provide election materials and other official documents in Spanish thanks to its recognition as a minority language under Section e of the Voting Rights Act (52 USCA 10303 (e).
Conclusion
Digital archives held by Florida libraries and universities contain the manifestos, publications, postcards, and maps that tell a parallel story of two cities: Ybor y la Habana. Both tobacco towns in their own right, these locations have been historically bound by shared economies of agricultural products, labor, and culture. Tobacco has been extensively explored from a manufacturing perspective, however a deep dive into the agronomic policy documents and cultural ephemera from Cuba and Florida gives way to an even more compelling story of multiculturalism, mutual aid, and policy evolution. Recently discovered publications by migrant laborers from Italy, Spain, and Cuba provided me with an exciting opportunity to acquaint myself with the linguistic hybridization and labor rights goals of Ybor City’s tobacco workforce. In the wake of the rise and fall of the Batista government and Ybor tobacco industry, Cubans forged a sustained sense of identification and association with Florida. Migration, agriculture, and labor experiences in our state will continue to influence contemporary political realities of Latin America and the Caribbean, evidencing the need for dedicated efforts in archiving primary materials related to the region and ensuring resource accessibility through the digital humanities.
Positionality and Acknowledgements
Positionality Statement
Noelle Matthias is a rising senior at the University of Florida pursuing a B.A. in International Studies with a concentration in Latin America and the Caribbean. Noelle is an aspiring law student with an interest in law, policy, and migration at the international level. The focus on Ybor City for this project was inspired by Noelle’s personal experience moving to the Tampa Bay area from the midwestern U.S. In 2007. In high school, Noelle went on to investigate international studies topics related to Cuba through the International Baccalaureate program and sought to continue this exploration of Cuban histories at the university level. Raised en una familia angloparlante (in an English-speaking family), Noelle’s understanding and command of Spanish has come from long-term classroom study and real-world interactions with Spanish speakers in Florida and Belize. With this exhibition, Noelle hopes to explore the unique linguistic and cultural diversity in Ybor City and across Florida. Further, the state’s agricultural and labor influence establish it as an important linkage to Latin America and the Caribbean that can help characterize past and present policy interactions with the region. Through an investigation of the University of Florida’s abundant Latin American and Caribbean Collections, Noelle seeks to highlight one of many examples of Florida’s remarkable diversity and the legal considerations it necessitates.
Collection Acknowledgments
Thank you to the following collections for supporting my archival research.
- UF Latin American & Caribbean Collection
- Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
- UF Digital Collections (UFDC)
- Florida Memory
- Chronicling America
Bibliography
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Florida Division of Elections. “Division of Elections Reference Guide 004 Minority Language Requirements in Florida .” Florida Department of State, 2022.
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Peréz, Louis A. “Between Encounter and Experience: Florida in the Cuban Imagination.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 82, no. 2, 2003, pp. 170–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30149472. Accessed 28 July 2024.
Pérez, Louis A. “Cubans in Tampa: From Exiles to Immigrants, 1892-1901.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 57, no. 2 (1978): 129–40.
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The Columbia Restaurant. “Ybor City, Tampa.” Columbia Restaurant, 2022, www.columbiarestaurant.com/ybor-city-tampa.
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Image Citations
- Image 1: El Comite Ciudanos (n.d.). Aviso a los obreros y todos ciudadanos de Tampa, Ybor City y West Tampa. Tobacco Worker Newspaper Manifestos, Microfilm Scan, Latin American and Caribbean Collection, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 2: Centro Asturiano in Ybor City – Tampa, Fla.(n.d.) Florida Memory, State Archives of Florida.
- Image 3: Tony Pizzo Collection (1900). Tampa, Fla., Ybor City, 7th Avenue looking East. Special Collection, University of South Florida.
- Image 4: Comite Consultivo Conjunto (n.d.) ¡Basta Ya! Tobacco Worker Newspaper Manifestos, Microfilm Scan, Latin American and Caribbean Collection, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 5: Joint Advisory Board (n.d.) Had Enough! Tobacco Worker Newspaper Manifestos, [Microfilm Scan], Latin American and Caribbean Collection, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 6: Diario las Américas. (Miami, Fla.), 12 May 1961. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
- Image 7: Diario de la Marina. (Miami Beach, Fla.) 06 May 1961. Digital Library of the Caribbean.
- Image 8: El Internacional. (Tampa, Fla.), 02 June 1916. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
- Image 9: El Comité Popular de Huelga (n.d.) A Los Trabajadores de la Industria del Tabaco en General. Tobacco Worker Newspaper Manifestos, Microfilm Scan, Latin American and Caribbean Collection, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 10: Edición Jordi. No. 117 (n.d.). Habana, Secando Tabaco, Drying Tobacco. [Postcard]. Digital Library of the Caribbean.
- Image 11: John Stephenson (1853). A Survey of the Island of Cuba. Cuba in Old Maps, Engraving, Map and Imagery Library, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 12: Vidal, Hermanos and Co : Boletin de Exportacion, Mercantile Review
- Image 13 & 14: Enrique Gay-Calbo, Herminio Rodriguez von Sobotker (1946). A Statement of Cuban Law in Matters Affecting Business in its Various Aspects and Activities. Digital Library of the Caribbean, University of Michigan Law Library.
- Image 15: Karl E. Holland (1965). Historical reenactment of the Ybor City invasion during the Gasparilla Carnival in Tampa. Department of Commerce Collection. Florida Memory, State of Florida Archives.
About the Internship
This research project was made possible through the Bob Graham Center (BGC) and Latin American & Caribbean Collection (LACC) 2024 Summer Internship. The internship, coordinated by Dr. Onursal Erol (BGC) and Melissa Jerome (LACC), offers a 10-week experiential learning opportunity, where the intern will dedicate 10 hours per week to hands-on experience at LACC. The internship’s primary goal is to produce a digital project that highlights a selected theme, demonstrates the intern’s skills (such as archival research, foreign language proficiency, analytical and communication abilities, and digital curation), contributes to an ongoing project at the Smathers Library, and concludes with an analysis that ties the project’s findings to contemporary issues.