TAMPA, Fla. — Over the next couple of days, we’ll be highlighting the impact Latinos have had on the Bay Area for Hispanic Heritage Month.
Paulina Pedroso was an Afro-Cuban woman who owned property in the Bay Area and saved the life of Cuban liberator Jose Marti. Here’s her story, told by historian Rodney Kite-Powell with the Tampa Bay History Center.
“Paulina Pedroso was an Afro-Cuban woman who lived in Ybor City in the early 1890s," Kite-Powell said. "Ybor City in the 1890s was a very important multi-cultural, but also industrial segment, of Tampa. Very different from Anglo-Tampa just a mile away of what is now downtown."
As an Afro-Cuban woman from the outside, it would’ve been unusual for her to be a property owner. Not, however, in Ybor City.
“She owned a boarding house along with her husband, Ruperto, and they owned several other properties,” he said.
Kite-Powell stated that in the early 1890s, the Pedroso boarding home was the temporary home of Cuban liberator Jose Marti.
“He came here to raise money and raise support for Cuba’s revolution,” he continued. “There was actually an attempt on Marti’s life before he began staying at the Pedroso home, and they kept him safe every time he was here. That site is now home to Marti Park, which is literally a piece of Cuba right here in Tampa.”
After living in the Bay Area for 18 years, Paulina Pedroso returned to her homeland of Cuba, where she died in 1925 a poor woman. Her legacy lives on as “the black mother” of Cuban liberator Jose Marti.
In 1993, she was inducted into the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame. Paulina Pedroso is not just Hispanic history, she’s Tampa Bay history.
