Cubans arrived to the United States with nothing. They became what they were denied in their homeland Cubans have had ties to the United States for a long time, particularly with the state of Florida. In the 1800’s, thousands of Cubans joined Italian, German, Romanian, and Spanish immigrants in Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood and Key West, working primarily in the cigar industry. After Fidel Castro forcefully installed a dictatorship on the island in 1959, hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled to the US, most of them establishing their new lives in Miami and other areas of Florida. While Cubans were denied opportunities in their homeland, they excelled in their new home in the fields of art, politics, business, science, sports, religion and beyond.