Why Cubans migrated and how were they received in U.S.?
Cuban immigration to the U.S. began in an era of peaceful coexistence between the two nations. In the latter part of the 19th century, workers moved freely between Florida and the island, and the trade in sugar, coffee, and tobacco was lucrative. Cigar companies soon began relocating from Cuba to avoid tariffs and trade regulations, and Cubans came by the thousands to work in the factories. Soon the towns of Key West and Ybor City were the capitals of a tobacco-scented empire, and also became the centers of new Cuban enclaves. Even as these communities grew, Cuban workers continued to shuttle across the Straits of Florida as work allowed. At the beginning of the 20th century, between 50,000 and 100,000 Cubans moved between Havana, Tampa, and Key West every year. (Portes, pp. 632-635)
When Fidel Castro led his revolutionary army into Havana in January of 1959, he ushered in a new era in Cuban life. He also launched a new era of mass emigration from his country to the United States. In the decades that followed, more than one million Cubans would make their way to the U.S., and thousands more would try and fail. Once the new Cuban government allied itself with the Soviet Union, the U.S. and Cuba became open enemies, and prospective emigrants were at the mercy of international politics. Through the years, as relations between the countries improved or deteriorated, the door of emigration would be opened and closed again and again. As a result, Cubans arrived in the U.S. in several distinct phases, each of which had a distinctly different reception.
Cuban Americans also predominately are first- and second-generation Americans, but they are part of a much older migration stream..............
