severe economic depression in the mid-
1880s compounded Cuban woes. Jobs
were scarce, and abolition of slavery meant
that 200,000 former slaves were now com-
peting for existing jobs. Under these con-
ditions, thousands of Cubans immigrated
to the United States. Some came as revo-
lutionary exiles, regrouping and planning
for the next war of independence—one
they hoped would be successful; some
came mainly in search of work. Cuban
émigrés traveled as far as New York City,
but most settled in Florida, where the cli-
mate was similar to home and the proxim-
ity to Cuba afforded an ideal launching
ground for revolution. Cuban immigrants
settled in many parts of Florida: Key West,
Jacksonville, St. Augustine, the Martí City
quarter of Ocala, and Tampa. But they
made their greatest mark at this time in the
district of Tampa known as Ybor City.
Ybor City was a company town
named for Vicente Martínez Ybor, who
founded it and built the first cigar facto-
ry in the Tampa area in 1886. Within a
decade, more than a hundred cigar facto-
ries had been constructed in the vicinity.
Cigar making was a traditional Cuban art,
one that dated back to the island’s pre-
Columbian Taino and Ciboney inhabi-
tants. Under Spanish rule, Cuba’s cigar
makers had established a worldwide rep-
utation for excellence. In Ybor City,
incorporated into Tampa in 1887, they
established a new center of cigar-making
prestige.
Known as the Havana of America,
Ybor City in the late 19th century became
a place of Cuban social clubs and cafés,
Spanish-language newspapers, and gro-
cery stores called bodegas that catered to
Caribbean tastes. Its factories maintainedA TIME OF TRANSITION 113The Ten Years’ War in Cuba, 1868–1878
On October 10, 1868, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, “El Padre de la Patria” (The Father of the Country), freed the slaves on his
plantation at Bayamo—an act of sedition against Spain that led to an armed revolt. In the resulting Ten Years’ War, Céspedes
proclaimed Cuba’s independence and was named president by the rebels. The Spanish managed to confine the revolt to the
eastern provinces of Camagüey and Oriente by building a fortified trench the width of the island. Dissension among the rebels
led to Céspedes’s dismissal in 1873, and the war ended in truce in 1878. Although the war did not win independence for Cuba,
it did lead to the abolition of slavery in Cuba in 1886.