The Cubans of Union City: Immigrants and Exiles in a New Jersey Community

1. Introduction

1 Introduction O n March 19, 1968, a few days after leaving Cuba, I arrived with my family at Newark Airport in New Jersey. Like many other Cubans, my family had decided to leave their country after the radical changes brought about by the Revolution of 1959. My uncle was waiting for us at the airport, and after a short ride on the New Jersey Turnpike, we reached Union City, our final destination. My uncle and his family had lived there since the early 1960s and they had seen this city change from a community mostly of European extraction into the second largest concentration of Cubans in the United States after Miami, Florida. Although our relatives helped immensely in our transition to a new country, my adjustment was not easy. I had not wanted to leave Cuba. At twenty-one, it was difficult to leave behind not only my familiar environment , other relatives, and friends, but also the youthful dream, based on my religious beliefs, that I could contribute to a harmonious dialogue among believers, revolutionaries, and all those professing disparate ideologies but committed to creating a more equitable society. Instead, I found myself in another land, honoring my family’s decision to leave a political system under which they did not want my sister and me to live. I could not remain in Cuba by myself. As my father said many times, “We either leave together, or we all stay here.” His undisputed authority as the man 2 Chapter One of the house in a traditional, small Cuban town was stronger than my desire to stay, even though I was an adult. And, independently of how I feel today about our departure, my father’s good intentions did not make the pain of leaving any easier for me at the time. I still shudder when I remember waking up on Saturday mornings in Union City forty-one years ago. The slow pace of the weekend magnified the unfamiliar sounds coming from the street, giving me a sense of unreality, a dreamlike feeling that was not eased by the fact that I knew some English. I can also relive the grief, fear, anticipation, and all the other emotions involved in the experience of migration. Some Cubans had been in Union City since before the 1959 revolution , but the bulk of the community was formed in the 1960s and 1970s by those escaping the revolutionary government. Cubans who migrated after 1959 initially went to Florida, but the magnitude of the migration became too much for the state to handle, and many were resettled in other states. Union City, known as “the embroidery capital of the world” for the number of needlework factories located there, was a logical destination because of the number of jobs available to the newcomers. Within a short time, the adjacent towns of Union City and West New York in northern Hudson County, which overlook the Manhattan skyline along the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, practically became “Cuban towns,” and Union City began to be referred to by many as “the second Cuban capital in exile.”1 This book traces the history of this migration, of which I am a part. Union City Cubans were predominantly of working-class background. Those who had come before 1959 had been in search of economic opportunities , and the exiles left Cuba when economic conditions worsened after the Revolution in the late 1960s. Small entrepreneurs fled when they lost their businesses due to the Ofensiva Revolucionaria or Revolutionary Offensive, which nationalized what was left of private property. A good number of professionals also came to Union City as political refugees. Most medical doctors were able to validate their credentials. Other professionals, such as lawyers, found it more difficult to do so, and they became teachers or social workers. Although many Cubans were from Havana, the majority came from smaller cities and towns, especially in Las Villas, now Villa Clara, a province in central Cuba. This had been true since the 1950s, when people from Fomento and Placetas in Villa Clara constituted the great majority of Introduction 3 Cubans in Union City. Being from Camagüey in eastern Cuba, we were in a minority. But my family fit the typical profile of Union City Cubans. My father had worked in the railroad industry, and my mother, like many Cuban women, had been a seamstress who worked at home. Although...