Influence Of Revolutionary Latinas In Ybor City Explored In New Book

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — Historian, author and assistant professor of History and Latinx & Mexican American Studies at Texas A&M University, Sarah McNamara, will discuss her book, “Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South,” Friday, 7 to 8 p.m., at Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg.

In the book, published earlier this year by The University of North Carolina Press, the Tampa native explores the lives of the revolutionaries that grew Ybor City into the global capital of the Cuban cigar industry, focusing on the role of leadership within movements for social and economic justice.

She’ll be joined by another Florida historian, Gary Mormino, at Tombolo to discuss the political shifts of Ybor City over the decades.

A Tampa native, the book is personal for McNamara, whose family is from Ybor City. Growing up hearing stories, she frequently heard stories about the historic district from her grandmother.

“The essence of Ybor was just so natural to me,” she said.

She also decided to take a different approach to her writing, compared to other history books, by telling Ybor City’s story through the lens of women, rather than men.

“It examines three generations of Latinas and how they shaped politics and society and how they were essential to the remaking of the city of Tampa,” McNamara told Patch. “I focused on women to tell the story of the overall community. We’re never asked to answer why the majority of books focus on men.”

She added, “The book centers on Latinas, but tells the wholeness of the community story. We can tell collective narratives with unexpected actors at the forefront of the story.”

McNamara began writing about Ybor City and conducting oral history interviews as an undergraduate student at the University of South Florida.

“I didn’t really think of Ybor as being a place that had this big story to tell until I was at USF,” she said.

While taking an upper level seminar with then-USF professor Eric Morser, he asked about her family background to help her focus on a research paper topic. She didn’t know much about her father’s family, but told him about her relatives on her maternal side.

“When I told him about how my grandmother took me to the May Day festival and I’d walk around this pole in the middle of Ybor, he stopped me and said, ‘Do you know that’s associated with the labor movement and the communist party? I think you have a story here,'” according to McNamara.

From there, she landed at UNC Chapel Hill for her graduate studies.

“That’s when the book or the core idea of ‘Ybor City,’ my book, begins to come alive,” she said.

Her research eventually led to an Ybor City mural and mile marker recognizing the 1937 Ybor City women’s march against fascism.

“Five thousand women marched through Ybor. There was a whole anti-fascist movement that lived and thrived in Ybor,” McNamara said. “It lived with them so strongly. It sat at the core of how they understood things like World War II.”

An entire chapter of her book is dedicated to the march, which her aunt participated in.

The mural, completed this past spring by artist Michelle Sawyer and commissioned by the historian, features three women who attended the march, including her aunt, Margot Falcón Blanco, according to the Tampa Bay Times.