Beginnnings in 19th century
From The Peopling of NYC
The first immigrants came as entrepreneurs, setting up commerce between the island and the US with cigar factories owned and operated by Cubans within Key West and New York. Cuban businessmen and intellectuals traveled from them homeland to the US and back, for business and leisure, facilitating communication and familiarity among the two lands. With the onset of the First War for Cuban independence, these “exiled elites” left their homeland on a more permanent basis and found themselves in a now somewhat familiar land, continuing their financial ties and setting up communities around their businesses and intellectual associations. It is these communities that other Cubans of different socio-economic standing would later join – their common interest in the politics of their homeland binding them.
