Tampa

Tampa: Impressions of an Emigrant is a translation of Tampa: impresiones de emigrante written by Cuban author Wenceslao Gálvez y Delmonte, published in 1897 in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, translated from the Spanish by Noel M. Smith. Gálvez was an early diaspora writer in the costumbrismo genre, which emphasized the depiction of everyday manners and customs of a particular social milieu. Gálvez emigrated from Havana in 1896 to escape the Cuban War of Independence and join the Cuban exile community in Tampa. Gálvez was a champion baseball player in the earliest years of Cuban baseball, a lawyer/prosecutor/judge, and journalist/author. His charming and opinionated first-person narrative is in four parts. Part 1 begins with the escalation of the Spanish war effort that prompted his sea voyage to Tampa, followed by part 2 and descriptions of Tampa’s people and activities, geography, landmarks, municipal features, and cultural pursuits. Parts 3 and 4 extensively discuss many aspects of the Cuban exile community in Ybor City and West Tampa, including the patriotic pro-independence fervor that gripped the emigrants. He names notable personages in the exile community and describes their efforts to support the war against Spain and recounts his struggles working as a door-to-door salesman and as a lector (reader) in a cigar factory. Thirty historical photographs and newspaper clippings illuminate the text.