Sephardic Jews in Cuba - From all their Habitations

Judaism, Wntr, 2002 by Margalit Bejarano

The Jewish mass migration to Cuba, however, coincided with the economic crisis of 1921, caused by the collapse of the sugar prices in the world market: "My father and my uncle had a shop of clothing, and they started to do very well, it was the period of the 'Dance of the Millions' and they were moving upwards. When we arrived they were millionaires. But they had the misfortune that in 1921 was the moratorium, and they lost everything." (26)

Ashkenazi Jews, who arrived in Cuba during the same period, were discovered by the local Jews to be sleeping in the Parque Central and suffering from hunger. With the assistance of the small American Jewish community, and later Jewish welfare organizations in the United States, they received merchandise on credit or purchased sewing machines, that facilitated their economic integration, starting as peddlers, tailors, or shoemakers. Harry Viteles was sent to Cuba in 1925 by the Emergency Refugee Committee in New York, and his report on the situation of the Jews in Havana served as a basis for the assistance supplied by American Jewry to the Eastern European Jews. Viteles did not deal with the Sephardic community, since his impression was that they didn't need American help. He calculated that the Sephardic population was composed of 2,000 newly arrived immigrants and 700 veteran residents. (27) Viteles was probably unfamiliar with the large Sephardic population in the campo; Sephardic sources estimated that 1 ,500 resided in Havana, and 2,500 were scattered throughout the island. (20)

The geographic distribution of Sephardic Jews differed from that of their Ashkenazi brethren, who tended to concentrate in Havana since their immigration. Several Sephardim went through three different stations: they started as itinerant peddlers in small pueblos in the countryside; later they established themselves in the major cities of each province; from there they later moved to Havana. (29)

Sephardic immigration diminished during the second half of the 1920s, and came to a standstill during the depression. At the same time Cuba witnessed the emergence of a nationalist movement, in reaction to the sugar-based economy and to the political and economic submission to the United States. The national Cuban movement was economic and revolutionary; its principal goal was to achieve economic independence and to secure the rights of Cuban workers. The xenophobia that developed during the depression was aimed primarily at the immigrants from Spain and from the West Indies, who competed with the native workers in the labor market.

The revolutionary government of 1933 discriminated against the aliens who were salaried workers. The Law of Nationalization of Labor stipulated that each firm had to employ at least 50% of native Cubans, but at the same time it did not limit the rights of aliens who owned their own business. Several Jews of Eastern Europe, who were employed as workers in small factories of shoes and clothing, were forced to become independent. (30) The Sephardic Jews were less affected by this law, since most of them were self-employed in commerce and industry. (31)