Abstract
Exile and Revolution: José D. Poyo, Key West, and Cuban Independence, written by Gerald E. Poyo
Highlights
Gerald Poyo does not present a romanticized portrait of this remarkable leader. He notes “a certain authoritarian manner, stubbornness, and inflexibility” that underlay his forefather’s “persistence and resilience” (p. 7)—characteristics that allowed José Poyo to sustain his nationalist vision amid economic depressions, military failures, and ideological battles
A rich scholarship already exists on Cuban history and economy, as well as exile communities in the United States and the class, race, and gender dynamics within Cuba and among exiles
The fire in tandem with widespread cigar strikes led several manufacturers and thousands of workers to build a new exile community in Tampa, which drained resources from Key West even as it provided another center of radical organizing
Summary
Poyo has excavated and analyzed histories of Cuban exile communities in the United States in the nineteenth century. He has traced their formation and the shifting dynamics among exiles with distinct visions: autonomists, annexationists, nationalists, liberal elites, radical tobacco workers, exhausted refugees, labor organizers, anarchists, advocates of independence, revolutionary theorists, politicized bandits, and military leaders. Exile and Revolution brings his wealth of knowledge—augmented by newlydiscovered Spanish sources—to the life of José Dolores Poyo (1836–1911), his great-great-grandfather and a leading advocate of Cuba Libre.
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