ABSTRACT
Much of the scholarship on nineteenth-century Cuban migration to the United States has focused on the several generations of Cuban men involved in the movements to reform or overthrow Spanish colonialism-the New York circle of activists such as Félix Varela in the 1820s and 1830s, various annexationists in the 1840s and 1850s, and José Martí and the Florida communities of laborers in Tampa and Key West who supported independence from the 1860s onward.1 The writings and actions of these men have become the main sources for the study of the construction of Cuban identity and nationalism in the colonial era.
