When you think of Cuban-American culture, your brain probably jumps to Miami and its internationally-known beaches and always-booming salsa music. But way before the Castro Revolution made Miami the unofficial Cuban capital in the United States, there was another Florida city full of the island\u2019s flavors. That place? Tampa. Specifically, a neighborhood called Ybor City, an industrial, cigar-scented melting pot where Cuban immigrants helped roll both cigars and history. And the latest person to remind us of that rich legacy? Cameron. Freakin\u2019. Diaz.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family \u2026 went to Tampa and were cigar rollers,\u201d Diaz explained.\u00a0 \u201cThat was the first Cuban settlement before Miami, outside of Cuba, was in Tampa, Florida, in a place called Ybor City.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, this is the same Cameron Diaz who head-butted Tom Cruise in the movie \u201cKnight and Day\u201d<\/a> and danced in her underwear in the iconic film franchise \u201cCharlie\u2019s Angels.\u201d<\/a> The star casually dropped a genealogy bomb in an interview currently making the rounds on YouTube and Instagram. \u201cMy father was Cuban,\u201d she said in the decade-old interview<\/a>. \u201cSpanish via Cuba to Tampa, Florida, where my family came many generations ago, back at the turn of the century, (during the) Spanish American war.\u201d<\/p>\n Wait, what? Tampa? Cubans? Cigar rollers? Let\u2019s roll back the history.<\/p>\n Ybor City<\/a> (that\u2019s pronounced \u201cEE-bor\u201d) was founded in the 1880s by cigar manufacturers and quickly became the heart of the American cigar industry.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the turn of the 20th century, nowhere in the United States was as famous for its cigars as Tampa\u2019s Ybor City, which was once known as the \u2018Cigar Capital of the World,\u2019\u201d the National Park Service (NPS) writes<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thousands of Cuban immigrants, along with Spanish, Italian, and German workers, flocked there to work in the booming cigar factories. By 1900, it was the spot for high-quality, hand-rolled cigars. The factories were so central to the city\u2019s identity that they operated like mini-civilizations. They had highly educated readers, called lectores<\/a><\/em>, who sat in the factories reading newspapers and novels out loud while the workers rolled cigars, an early version of an audiobook-slash-union meeting.<\/p>\n And Cameron\u2019s family? They were part of it.<\/p>\n \u201cMy family were cigar rollers,\u201d she said. \u201cI have all of my great-grandfather\u2019s cigar presses and choppers and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not a metaphor. She literally owns the tools her ancestors used to make a living and shape a city.<\/p>\n While Miami\u2019s Cuban identity largely emerged after the 1959 Castro revolution, Tampa\u2019s Cuban roots stretch back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt and yellow fever. And Diaz\u2019s Cuban-American story is one of labor, tradition, and the grind of daily life in a factory town now preserved by the U.S. government.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ybor City Historic District is a National Historic Landmark located northeast of Tampa\u2019s downtown, NPS writes. \u201cThe district contains more than 950 historic buildings and structures built during its peak industrial years. Ybor City\u2019s vibrant character, preserved best in the 7th Avenue Commercial Strip, is defined by the community\u2019s blend of cultures from European, Asian, and Cuban immigrants who settled there to support the region\u2019s once-booming cigar industry brought to Tampa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n The city boomed as a result of a government policy making headlines lately: tariffs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was new American tariffs on imported cigars and political trouble in Cuba that compelled Cuban cigar manufacturers to build factories in the United States in the latter part of the 19th century,\u201d NPS explains.<\/p>\n RELATED POST: How the Cuban Cigar Became Elusive<\/a><\/p>\n And Diaz\u2019s family was part of it. \u201cI grew up with the Cuban heritage, the Cuban culture, the food, the language,\u201d Diaz said. \u201cAlthough I don\u2019t speak Spanish \u2026 I can barely speak English, honestly,\u201d she joked.<\/p>\n Classic Cameron Diaz, mixing reverence with self-deprecating charm. But her words shine a light on a broader truth: you don\u2019t need to be fluent in a language to feel the heartbeat of your culture. And now, millions of fans know that her cultural upbringing has roots in the cigar town of Ybor City.<\/p>\n Until the 2011 interview started making the rounds on social media, most people didn\u2019t even know Cameron Diaz was Latina. But that\u2019s not a surprise. The Hollywood landscape, especially that of the 1990s and early 2000s, often erased, or overlooked, multiracial and multiethnic identities. But now, Diaz\u2019s story reminds us of just how diverse Latin American stories in the U.S. really are. There\u2019s so much history lying under the surface. Plus, her newly-revealed story also re-centers Tampa in the Cuban-American narrative.<\/p>\n For decades, Tampa\u2019s Ybor City was the quiet heartbeat of Cuban life in the U.S. There were Cuban newspapers, mutual aid societies, and domino games happening way before they popped up on Miami\u2019s Calle Ocho. Even today, Ybor City still has a few cigar factories where hand-rolling remains an art form. <\/p>\n So next time someone says \u201cCuban Americans,\u201d and you hear them start to say \u201cMiami,\u201d kindly interrupt with: \u201cActually, did you know Cameron Diaz\u2019s family helped roll cigars in Tampa at the turn of the century?\u201d Then casually sip your cafecito<\/em> and pretend you\u2019ve always known this. Because thanks to Cameron, now you do.<\/p>\n Feature images of Cameron Diaz and Ybor City courtesy of Deposit Photos<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n The post Wait, Cameron Diaz Is Cuban?! And Her Family Helped Build Tampa\u2019s Ybor City With Cigars?<\/a> appeared first on Nuestro Stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When you think of Cuban-American culture, your brain probably jumps to Miami and its internationally-known beaches and always-booming salsa music. But way before the Castro Revolution made Miami the unofficial Cuban capital in the United … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nYbor City: The Cuban-American Story You Never Learned in School<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Before Miami\u2019s Mansions, There Was Ybor\u2019s Sweat, Tobacco, and Heritage<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Why Cameron Diaz\u2019s Story Matters<\/strong><\/h2>\n