Cuban Revolutionary Politics in Diaspora

This chapter tells the story of two key and connected institutions of the Cuban Independence movement outside of Cuba: the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC) and the National Association of Cuban Revolutionary Émigrés (ANERC). These institutions and their records have much to teach us about the political culture of Cubans in exile during the second half of the nineteenth century. More specifically, the chapter explores the tension between inclusion and exclusion that marked both institutions during the 1890s and the first few decades of the twentieth century, with a special emphasis on race, class and gender.

Cuban Communities in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico

This chapter closely examines the development of Cuban migrant communities in three Mexican cities: Veracruz, Merida, Mexico City and compares them to Cuban communities established in the United States. Examining migratory patterns, economy, politics, race, culture and interstate and cross regional connections, this chapter posits that shifting our focus away from the United States and centering on Mexico allows us to truly appreciate the breadth and scope of the nineteenth-century Cuban Diaspora.

Nineteenth-Century Cuban Migrants in the Gulf World

This chapter defines and develops the concept of the Gulf World that is at the core of the book, tracing the evolution of the region from the 1600s forward. It then takes a long historical view of Cuban migration in the region from the 1820s through the 1890s focusing on famous figures like José María Heredia and Pedro de Santacilia as well as Antonio Maceo and José Martí and demonstrating that their lives and travels spanned Cuba, Mexico and the United States. The chapter ends with a close look at migration, flight and exile in the context of the War of 1895 waged between Cuban insurgents and Spanish colonial forces, which culminated in the Spanish American war.

Affirming Americanismo

This chapter contextualizes Cuban and Mexican responses to the War of 1895 between Cuba and Spain and to the events of 1898 by situating them in the context of the long story of Cuban and Mexican relations. Looking beyond the binary that pits Spain against the United States in a battle for primacy in the Americas allows for the appreciation of the place and role of Latin America in relation to debates surrounding the Cuban struggle. Ultimately, Cuba Libre came to stand for much more than Cuban independence: it came so symbolize freedom and republicanism across the Americas and beyond. The ideology that bound Cubans and Mexicans as well as other likeminded Latin Americans at the time was neither Pan-Americanismo nor Pan-Hispanism, but americanismo, a concept that drew inspiration from the discourses of both, but was not reducible to either. In fact, as this chapter demonstrates, Cubans in exile rarely expressed anti-Hispanist sentiments, preferring instead to emphasize the distinction between Spanish colonialists who they detested and the anti-colonialist Spaniards who were their friends. Like-minded Cubans, Mexicans and Spaniards believed that Spain needed to be liberated from its imperial past and its colonial present in order to advance as a nation. They were equally critical of U.S. imperialism and thus rejected all U.S. aggressions toward Latin America.

Internationalizing Cuba Libre

This chapter situates Cuba’s long nineteenth-century independence struggle in a wider international context and makes a case for the central role of Cuban migrants in the development of transnational solidarities around the Cuban cause for independence. It argues that the Gulf World was the resonance chamber of the independence struggle and it makes a case for the importance of Latin America broadly, and Mexico specifically, in the evolution of the struggle, but also underscores the importance of the “Cuban Question” to politics in Latin America and Mexico specifically. The chapter ends with a focus on the importance of the press as a space of solidarity making and features a case study of a group of student journalist in Mexico City who adopted the Cuban independence cause as their own forging important and enduring transnational solidarities with Cuban migrants, while using the Cuban cause as a way to refocus their own local and national struggles.

Epilogue

This concluding segment examines the legacies of Cuban-Mexican solidarities by tracing them forward through the Mexican Revolution. Focusing on the work of Cuban journalist and diplomat, Manuel Márquez Sterling, the chapter follows his life story from his earliest travels to Cuba as a boy in the 1880s to his appointment as the Cuban ambassador to Mexico in 1912. More than three decades of travel between Cuba and Mexico convinced Márquez Sterling that the two countries faced the same internal and external problems and must work together to find solutions to them. Yet, such collaboration seemed hard to generate and sustain. Thinking back to Latin America’s official indifference toward Cuban independence in the 1890s, Márquez Sterling, writing in the first decade of the twentieth century, placed his faith in Americanismo and championed the inter-Latin American popular transnational solidarities that defined it. People and not states, he reasoned, were the key to the transnational networks and connections that would inspire the cross-pollination of ideas and bring about social change.

Introduction

This chapter establishes the argument of the book and summarizes the author’s contributions to Cuban and Mexican historiography, as well as to the emergent field of transnational studies. It introduces a new geographical framework, that of the Gulf World, and argues that adopting this framework can give us a new vantage point on Cuban Independence itself and on the impact of Cuban independence beyond the borders of the island of Cuba. Finally, it establishes this book as a work of social, political, intellectual, diplomatic and transnational history.

Spanish Immigrants, the Mexican State, and the Fight for Cuba Española

Chapter 5 shifts attention away from Cubans and their Mexican supporters to examine the mind set and experiences of Spanish immigrants in Mexico and the Mexicans who rallied to the cause of Spanish colonialism, or “Cuba Española.” Starting with an exploration of Spanish ideas about nation and empire in late nineteenth century Spain and Mexico, the chapter goes on to consider the Mexican states’ strategic alliance with Spain and the ensuing verbal and physical battles between Spaniards, Cubans and Mexican in Mexico over the fate of the island of Cuba and Mexico’s allegiances. The chapter ends with a debate between two prominent Mexican intellectuals regarding Mexico’s diplomatic or historical responsibility toward Cuba in the on going crisis, which was intended to quell the passions of all parties involved by making a case for Mexico’s neutrality, but instead made clear the alliance between Mexican conservatives and Spanish immigrants and the links between late nineteenth-century liberalism and Pan-Hispanism.