Imagining an Independent Cuba from Abroad, 1878–95

In 1868, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes freed his slaves and announced the beginning of the Cuban independence movement.  After ten years of war against the Spaniards and massive loss of life and property, however, a compromise was reached between the Cuban freedom fighters and the Spanish, ending the war and sending Cubans scurrying throughout the Western Hemisphere.  Some settled in Honduras, some in the Dominican Republic, and others ended up in the United States.  All of them refused to live in a Cuba which did not coincide with their imagined Cuba – an independent republic free from Spain, free from the United States, free from slavery and free to do business with whomever she pleased. 

In the seventeen years that passed between the end of the Ten Years War and the start of the War of Independence, this Cuban diaspora, created by a group of “ideologue exiles” fleeing the heavy hand of Spain, settled in and around New York City, as well as other locations throughout Latin America and created an imagined Free Cuba using words, discourse and a communal memory. 

The movement was led by journalist and political activist José Martí, who arrived in NYC in 1880 as a 27-year old, having been deported from Cuba twice by Spanish authorities.  His immigrant experiences, particularly in the United States, would play a role in the development of his revolutionary ideology as he and his fellow expatriates expressed their allegiance to the “imagined” Republic of Cuba in letters and published articles.

This paper will argue that this diasporic memory of an imagined Cuba for more than ten years sustained the hardships imposed by an ideological and forced exile, fueling an independentist movement which culminated in the creation of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and the beginning of the War of Independence.