World War I who had settled in the
vicinity of where they had been based.
Like later immigrants, Puerto Ricans on
the mainland retained close ties to their
island home, sending letters and visiting
when possible.
Despite some improvements under
U.S. administration, living conditions in
Puerto Rico remained poor. Although
the mortality rate fell almost 50 percent
from 1901 to 1941, and the illiteracy
rate fell about 60 percent, the population
almost doubled in that period, due in
part to falling mortality. Unemployment
and malnutrition were widespread.
Under the circumstances, agitation for
better living conditions—and in some
quarters, an end to U.S. rule—increased.
In the late 1930s a brief uprising erupted
in Ponce when the police interfered with
a Nationalist Party parade; 19 people
were killed and almost 100 wounded in
the violence.Cuban Americans
Like Puerto Rican migration to the
mainland, immigration of Cubans to the
United States remained small compared
with that of Mexicans. By the 1930s
about 34,000 people of Cuban descent
had immigrated to the United States,
many of them fleeing the island’s chron-
ic political turbulence. Some were
refugees of the violent dictatorial reign of
Gerardo Machado (president 1925–
1933); others came when Machado was
overthrown in an army-supported popu-
lar uprising in 1933, one that led to the
emergence of dictator Fulgencio Batista
y Zaldívar. (Batista’s domination of
Cuban politics from 1933 to 1959 is dis-
cussed in chapter 7.)
Among those who fled to the United
States when Machado was overthrown
was the Arnaz family, which was associat-
ed with Machado’s government. Their
extensive property confiscated, the fami-
ly sought refuge and a new beginning in
Miami in 1943. Desi Arnaz (1917–1986),
a teenager at the time, found work as a
guitarist and singer in one of Miami’s
Cuban bands and soon joined the band of
Spanish-born Cuban orchestra leader
Xavier Cugat (1900–1990). Cugat had
himself immigrated to the United States
from Cuba in 1921. Arnaz went on to
success as a band leader in his own rightand as an actor and television producer,
most notably as coproducer and costar
with his wife Lucille Ball of the classic sit-
uation comedy I Love Lucy(1951–1957).
That Arnaz and Cugat should both
have found success in music was not
unusual in the 1930s and 1940s. At the
time Latin music was gaining main-
stream popularity, largely through the
efforts of Cuban-American musicians like
Cugat, whose orchestra, based in New
York’s Waldorf Astoria, was known not
only for its musical style but also for its
visual style. His band wore flaming red
jackets and featured female dancers.
Another Cuban-American veteran of
Cugat’s band, Machito (1912–1984),
dominated New York’s Latin music scene
from the 1940s onward. Born Frank
Grillo in Tampa, Florida, he was raised in
Cuba and traveled to New York in 1937,
forming his own band in 1940 with
brother-in-law Mario Bauza.
Through the performances of such
artists, Americans became familiar with
Cuban dances like the rumba and with
Afro-Cuban instruments like bongos and
maracas. Afro-Cuban music also influ-
enced American jazz. American jazz
trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, for example,
who blended Cuban rhythms with
American bebop, played in the 1940s
with Machito and with Afro-Cuban per-
cussionist Luciano “Chano” Pozo.148 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
A pro-Republican poster from the Spanish
Civil War (Library of Congress)AFRO-CUBAN
JAZZ
On an ultimately unsuccessful search
for a partner to help him write an
opera, African-American poet
Langston Hughes traveled to Cuba in- In Havana’s cafés, Hughes
encountered a form of dance music
that he had never heard before. It
was, he wrote, “essentially hip-shaking
music—of Afro-Cuban folk derivation,
which means a bit of Spain, therefore
Arab-Moorish, mixed in.” The music,
he said, spoke “of the earth, life burst-
ing warm from the earth, and earth
and sun moving in the steady rhythms
of procreation and joy.” The music
was the rumba, which by the 1940s
would be a popular dance in the
United States.
Music and race linked Cubans and
African Americans. People of African
descent were historically a substantial
minority in Cuba, and their music,
incorporating African rhythms, was
part of Cuban culture. In America, jazz
was developed largely by African
Americans and also incorporated
African rhythms. The two cultural
styles came together in the collabora-
tions of Cuban-American and African-
American jazz musicians like Chano
Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie, beginning in
the 1940s.