La Unión Martí-Maceo — Tampa, Florida

La Unión Martí-Maceo, formally the Sociedad La Unión Martí-Maceo, is the Afro-Cuban mutual aid society of Ybor City. It was founded by Afro-Cuban cigar makers at the turn of the twentieth century and is still active in a clubhouse on Seventh Avenue. Tampa Historical calls it the crucible of Afro-Cuban identity in Tampa and lists its current venue at 1226 East Seventh Avenue in the Ybor City historic district.

The society takes its name from two heroes of Cuban independence, José Martí and General Antonio Maceo. Its own history page describes it as a social and recreational society for members of the Afro-Cuban cigar worker community of Tampa. In its first half century it was also an insurance system, a theater and a meeting hall for a group that the other Latin clubs of Ybor City did not admit.

The society grew out of a racial split. Writing in Anthropology News in 2022, anthropologists Susan Greenbaum and Kenya C. Dworkin y Méndez report that about 15 percent of Cubans in Tampa in the 1890s were Black, many of them active in the independence movement that Martí organized from Ybor City. In 1899 Ybor City Cubans formed the racially integrated Club Nacional Cubano, but the authors write that it lasted only one year before Black members were ejected under the pressure of Jim Crow.

The Florida historical marker outside the clubhouse states that the founders had been members of El Club Nacional Cubano and were forced to withdraw in response to racial segregation. USF Libraries reports that the original club divided into two separate societies, Los Pensadores Martí-Maceo and El Círculo Cubano, which became the white Cuban club of Ybor City.

The first official meeting of Los Libres Pensadores, the Freethinkers, took place on October 26, 1900 at the Ybor City home of Cuban immigrants Ruperto and Paulina Pedroso, according to both the society and USF Libraries. The state historical marker erected in 1998 records that Ruperto Pedroso was among the 23 original founders and that meetings began in the parlor of his boardinghouse at 13th Street and 8th Avenue, the present site of Martí Park.

The society reached its present form through a merger with La Unión, an Afro-Cuban club in West Tampa that offered sick benefits. Sources differ on the year. The marker says medical benefits were added in 1904 when the club merged with La Unión, while Tampa Historical and USF Libraries date the merger to 1905. Tampa Historical also gives 1901 rather than 1900 for the founding of the recreational club, a difference the state marker and the society's own account do not share.

The founders included veterans of the independence campaign in Tampa. Greenbaum and Dworkin y Méndez write that Teófilo Domínguez and the merchant Bruno Roig, both active in the revolutionary clubs of Ybor City in the 1890s, stayed in Tampa after the war and were among the founders who met in October 1900 in the Pedroso parlor. Domínguez had compiled Figuras y Figuritas in 1899, a book the authors describe as the only reason the work of several Black Cuban writers and editors in Tampa is known today.

Membership in La Unión Martí-Maceo was a form of insurance for Tampa cigar workers. Tampa Historical reports that the society provided complete medical care and financial compensation during illness in exchange for a weekly fee of 50 cents, and the state marker describes full medical benefits and a stipend for sick members, along with social, cultural and educational activities, at a time when average membership was about 300.

The dues also paid for a building. Tampa Historical and USF Libraries report that in 1908 the society built a two-story brick clubhouse at Sixth Avenue and Eleventh Street with a social hall, an auditorium or theater and club rooms; the marker dates its completion to 1909, and Clio reports that the land was bought in 1907 and the clubhouse finished in 1909. Tampa Historical notes concerts, games and music lessons for children in the hall, which was open to non-members.

The society shrank between the world wars. USF Libraries reports that strict immigration laws of 1923 left the club taking in very few new members, and the marker notes that many Afro-Cubans left Tampa during the economic collapse of the 1930s, so that benefits were reduced while the club kept operating.

In 1965 the Sixth Avenue clubhouse was demolished by the City of Tampa as part of an urban renewal initiative, according to Tampa Historical, which notes that highway construction hit Ybor City particularly hard in those years. The members moved to the present location at 7th Avenue and 13th Street, a smaller building that Clio describes as a former union hall. By the late 1960s the marker says few members were left, but in the early 1970s people who had left Ybor City as children in the 1930s came back as retirees and membership rose to over 100.

The Seventh Avenue building now carries the society's history on its walls. Photographs published by Tampa Historical in 2019 show tile artwork depicting José Martí, Antonio Maceo and the Cuban coat of arms on the front of the clubhouse, and a mural of Cuban immigrant history in Ybor City with portraits of Paulina Pedroso, Martí and Maceo.

The society's archive is public. USF Libraries reports that the Sociedad la Unión Martí-Maceo collection has been held by USF Tampa Special Collections since its arrival in 1983 and is among its most heavily used collections. In February 2024 the library announced that the first round of digitization was online, with correspondence, meeting minutes, beneficiary records, photographs and ephemera scheduled for further rounds.

Ybor City's centennial in 1986 produced the society's first published history. Greenbaum and Dworkin y Méndez write that members recruited Greenbaum to help document their history when centennial planning left the club out, and USF Digital Commons now hosts the resulting 39-page pictorial history, Afro-Cubans in Ybor City: A Centennial History. Clio reports that the society also took part in the Ybor City Folk Festival launched in 1986, and that 35 percent of the participants in the first festival came from the Martí-Maceo club.