Cuban Emigre Communities in the United States and the Independence of Their Homeland, 1852-1895

Résumé du livre

Throughout the final half of the nineteenth century, Cuban emigre communities in the United States served as guardians and propagandists for the Cuban separatist ideal. Between midcentury and 1895 the movement to eject Spain from Cuba underwent a radical political and social transformation. While Cubans rejected Narciso Lopez in the 1850s, they greeted enthusiastically Jose Marti, Maximo Gomez, and Antonio Maceo in 1895. Politically, emigre separatism evolved from a conservative, annexationist, and diplomatically oriented thinking in the 1840s and 1850s, to a populist, pro-independence, and self-reliant force in the 1890s. This reflected a change in the social composition of the movement. While during the forties and fifties expatriate separatism was led by Habana "aristocrats" and the island's liberal socioeconomic elite, during the eighties and nineties its leadership was of middle-class and working-class extraction.