TAMPA — They come every Saturday morning, miles from their suburban homes to a Cuban-owned coffee shop in West Tampa. Men sit at one end of the table, women at the other.
They discuss baseball, food and politics. At their last gathering, they pondered President Barack Obama's decision to end more than 50 years of Cold War policies toward Cuba.
"I'm confused with Obama," said Jesus Esposito, who left Cuba in 1962. Cubans on the island today lack food, clothing, even toilet paper, he said. "And we're going to make relations because Obama thinks Raul Castro is going to give it to them? I don't believe it."
But when asked if he was for or against a thaw in relations, Esposito said, "I don't know."
It's a far cry from the harsh response by Republican critics led by Sen. Marco Rubio of Miami.
But Tampa's Cuban community, while not as large as Miami's, has a history that dates back about twice as long, with so many twists and turns that it resists easy definition.
To be sure, there are Cuban-Americans in Tampa who fiercely oppose the restoration of diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba. But there are others who vote Democrat, travel to the island — which is taboo among the most extreme hard-liners — and agree that U.S. policy of the past half-century has proved futile, with the Castro regime still intact.
Susan Valdes shocked a luncheon group about 15 years ago when she asked why the United States doesn't just lift the trade embargo. Far from disappearing into political obscurity, she was elected three times to the Hillsborough County School Board, which she now chairs.
"I am not a socialist and I am not a Communist," said Valdes, who was born in New York to Cuban parents. "I am an American."
Taking a position on Cuba is a delicate matter, as many Tampa residents who might not even consider themselves Cuban have connections to the island through friends or relatives.
U.S.-born Fred Gonzalez, 78, grew up in Ybor City and can articulate the ambivalence. In Cuba, he said, you cannot have a free exchange of ideas in a public restaurant. He had a cousin who fought alongside Fidel Castro during the revolution, then was killed for objecting to the mass executions after the war, he said.
"We deal with China," Gonzalez said. "With China I have mixed emotions. With Vietnam I have mixed emotions. With Cuba, this is closer to home. What am I trying to say? I'm not sure where I stand."
Opinion polls taken after Obama's Dec. 17 announcement showed Cuban-Americans are divided, largely along generational lines, on the Cuba question.
Surveys show the generation that came to the United States in the early 1960s is more likely to reject any overture. "And you have to respect their position, even if you don't agree with it, because they felt the effects of the oppression," said Simon Canasi, a financial adviser who was 5 when he arrived.
But differences also exist between Tampa — where many families can trace their Cuban and Spanish roots back for three or four generations — and Miami, where a collective philosophy was shaped by a mass influx from Cuba that began in the 1960s.
"Miami is ground zero for the Cuban exile community in the United States, and historically there has been a strong cultural norm as to how to engage in conversations about Cuba," said Fernand Amandi, managing partner at the Bendixen & Amandi research firm in Miami.
Although some in Miami might privately favor relations with Cuba, he said, "to a strong extent, that hard-line, pro-Republican political philosophy has had a chilling effect."
In Tampa, ties to Cuba go back more than 100 years. Ybor City's cigar factories, once a flourishing industry, used Cuban labor and tobacco, and were a catalyst for growth in what was a sleepy fishing village until about 1880.
Jose Marti, the revolutionary poet revered by both Communist and anti-Castro Cubans, mobilized support in Tampa during the movement for independence from Spain. A statue of Marti stands in a small Ybor park that Marti's supporters gave the Cuban government before Fidel Castro. It is still considered Cuban soil.
A young Castro, similarly, came to Tampa for money and support when he was trying to unseat Cuban ruler Gen. Fulgencio Batista.
Travel to and from the island was routine, said Patrick Manteiga, third-generation publisher of Tampa's trilingual La Gaceta newspaper.
"The Italians who came here couldn't go back," Manteiga said. "The Spaniards were stuck here.
"The Cubans, if there was a worker strike, they could get on a boat and go back home. If you got in trouble in Tampa, you went to Cuba, and if you got in trouble in Cuba, you went to Tampa."
Events before and after the revolution also produced two distinct immigrant communities, Manteiga said. Some Miami Cubans resented those in Tampa who supported Castro before he came to power. "I can show you my grandfather's FBI file," he said.
Children of the Ybor immigrants grew up with memories of close-knit neighborhoods, traditions that they honor in gatherings like the Saturday breakfasts.
City Council member Mike Suarez is a third-generation West Tampa resident. He speaks little Spanish, he said. His grandmother was born in Key West, his grandfather in Cuba. He considers himself Cuban-American, although he doesn't know if his children will.
He is proud of the way his ancestors worked their way out of poverty. "We have been wildly successful as a group," he said. "Whether in politics, business, the medical field, you name it, you can find a Cuban-American leader in all of those areas."
He is not against Obama's actions, although he wants the administration to stay focused on human rights in Cuba. He appreciates being able to take an independent position on the issue.
"I worry about the way things are in Cuba, but not because of the way it looks politically," he said. "I run in Tampa, I don't run in Miami."
There's often a difference between people with long-ago roots in Cuba and those who were born there, Canasi said.
He favors unrestricted travel, but thinks the trade embargo should remain in effect. As he sees it, communism will collapse from within if Cubans are exposed to large numbers of wealthy foreign tourists.
He was surprised, however, at his 86-year-old mother's reaction to the news of Obama's announcement. "She said, 'Maybe it's time,' " Canasi said. "I was floored."
Relations with Cuba will likely be an easier sell to newly arrived immigrants, Amandi said, for two reasons: They have close family on the island and, having growing up in a society where politics can be deadly, they are less likely to be politically active.
In the Tampa area, the recent arrivals are largely concentrated in the Town 'N Country suburb where, according to school district records, 440 of the district's 3,500 Cuban-born students are enrolled in Leto High School.
Patsy Feliciano, 47, attended Leto after arriving in the United States as part of the 1980 Mariel boatlift.
Today she's director of diversity and inclusion at the University of South Florida and adviser for the Cuban American Student Association. She's also a mother of two teens in the Carrollwood suburbs, far from the streets of Ybor that she likes to visit to reflect on Marti's legacy.
The voyage across the Gulf of Mexico was treacherous, she said. Before her family could leave the island, her father spent 17 years as a political prisoner in Cuba. She is steadfast in her opposition to any kind of relationship with the Castro government.
"We are trying to have dialogue with a regime that doesn't respect the rights of human beings to have a dialogue," she said.
She realizes personal experience can be a dividing line between those who take pride in their Cuban heritage and those who remember life under Castro.
"There are a lot of Cubans who did not have a political prisoner in their family," she said.
"I did not read this in a book. I experienced this. There's pain."
Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Contact Marlene Sokol at (813) 226-3356 or msokol@tampabay.com. Follow @marlenesokol.