Böcker av Gerald E. Poyo

Gerald Poyo provides a comprehensive account of how his great-great-grandfather spurred the working-class community of Key West to transform from supporting cast to critical actors in the struggle for Cuban independence.

Cuban-Americans are beginning to understand their long-standing roots and traditions in the United States that reach back over a century prior to 1959. This is the first book-length confirmation of those beginnings, and its places the Cuban hero and revolutionary thinker José Martí within the political and socioeconomic realities of the Cuban communities in the United States of that era. By clarifying Martí’s relationship with those communities, Gerald E. Poyo provides a detailed portrait of the exile centers and their role in the growth and consolidation of nineteenth-century Cuban nationalism.Poyo differentiates between the development of nationalist sentiment among liberal elites and popular groups and reveals how these distinct strains influenced the thought and conduct of Martí and the successful Cuban revolution of the 1890s.

In the 1960s and 1970s, catholicism offered Cuban exiles in US continuity: a community of faith, a place to gather, a sense of legitimacy as a people. Religion exerted a major influence on the beliefs and actions of Cuban exiles. This work provides insights for this community, and for other faith-based exile communities.