T-HROUGHOUT the final half of the nineteenth century, Cuban emigre communities in New York, New Orleans, Key West, Tampa, and numerous other cities in the United States served as guardians and adherents of the separatist ideal. They maintained the political viability of separatism even when on the island the movement seemed dormant and unpopular. Most of the primary separatist leaders at one time or another traveled to or resided in the United States, and many of the movement's ideological formulations emerged from these communities. While the importance of the expatriate centers in maintaining and developing separatist thought has been noted in the historical literature on the Cuban independence process, few studies have examined in detail the emigre centers and the dynamics of their ideological evolution.' This is particularly surprising since it was in the emigre centers-and not Cuba-that separatist debates were conducted freely and publicly. And although it is not possible to argue that emigre thinking exactly paralleled separatist thought in Cuba, the exile centers did represent an important segment of the Cuban separatist community that cannot be ignored if we hope to advance our understanding of the Cuban independence process in general. The study of emigre opinion is of particular interest for gaining an understanding of the dynamics of change in separatist thought between