Book Review

Over the past ten years many new organizations have become involved in an effort to promote relations between the U.S. and Cuba. Such groups, including U.S.-Cuba Sister Cities Association, the Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and others, are clamoring that a change in policy is overdue. Included in this ever-growing group is Mobile, Alabama, a politically and religiously conservative port city on the Gulf Coast. When Mobile became a sister city with Havana in 1993, many people throughout the United States were surprised. They asked: What does Mobile have to do with Cuba?

In 1993 Jay Higginbotham, City of Mobile archivist, traveled to Havana and did the unthinkable: he proposed that Havana and Mobile become sister cities. Havana enthusiastically agreed to the association as too did Mobile's mayor and city council. The “twinning” occurred later that year—the first such sister city relationship between the United States and Cuba. The Society hosted the first of many Cuba conferences early in 1994, attracting attention from a puzzled media, and eliciting dismay from many Cuban Americans in Florida. Speakers at the first conference included a representative from the State Department and Alfonso Fraga, chief of the Cuban Interests Section. The meeting focused on the political and historical ties between the two nations. Lively debate ensued, including a confrontation between Mobile's mayor and rowdy group of Floridians shouting “traitor.”

Mobile and Havana's intertwined histories date back more than 300 years. Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville explored this region of the world in 1698 and founded Mobile in 1702, making it the first capital of French Louisiana. Iberville initiated strong ties between Alabama and Cuba. He died a few years later in Havana, where he is buried. A statue of Iberville overlooks the Mobile River the nine foot tall, 1500 pound ...