Los Kentubanos: Digging Into Louisville’s Cuban Side

It’s almost as difficult to find Sweet Havana as it is to forget it. Tucked away behind a car dealership in a small but brightly colored strip mall in Louisville’s South End, the name tells you exactly what you’ll get: a sweet taste of Havana, Cuba. Rows and rows of guava pastries, savory pastelitos de carne, and round meringue-covered coconut tarts are complemented by cakes iced with pastel-colored whipped cream. Behind the counter, a small espresso maker is kept busy with constant cafécito orders while the scents of ropa vieja and congris waft from the kitchen into the small dining space I’m standing in.

Owner Carmen Coro recently took ownership of this family business, changing the name from Havana Bakery and Café. “It’s about creating positive memories for the community,” she says. That wish is reflected in the eyes of a small child squirming in his chair nearby, who only sits still when his mother hands him a guava pastry to sink his teeth into. His eyes light up in a way that tells me all I need to know about how it tastes.

It would be easy to assume that Sweet Havana is an anomaly in this midsized Southern city. But driving a few miles in any direction from the crossroads it sits at will land you at Cuban grocery stores piled with loaves of hard, crusty bread; a number of Cuban clubs, rocking with the thumping bass of reggaeton; or additional Cuban restaurants offering mamey milkshakes and ham croquetas.

Situated halfway between Miami and the frigid Canadian border, Kentucky may not be the most obvious choice for a Cuban diaspora settlement. But Cubans have chosen to settle in almost every major town in the state, from Paducah in the west to Covington in the northeast. Nearly 8 percent of Kentucky’s foreign-born population is from the small island nation, third only to India and Mexico—and the community is most visible in Louisville’s Jefferson County, which ranks 12th in the country when it comes to total Cuban population.

There are a few ways in which this has come to fruition. Starting in the 1990’s, Louisville’s political leadership marketed itself as a dream destination for refugees and winners of the lottery system that allowed Cubans to be selected for resettlement in the U.S. As more lottery winners found themselves attracted to the job market in the Ohio River Valley, they sent word back to others to join them. This, combined with a low cost of living, now puts Louisville at the top of the list for newcomers looking to save money outside of pricey big cities.  

“I came to the U.S. in 2000, and at that time there were less than 500 Cubans in Kentucky,” says Luis David Fuentes, founder and publisher of El Kentubano, a magazine designed for Cubans in Kentucky. “In 2009 there were more than 7,000 Cubans here, and now we have surpassed 30,000.” El Kentubano has also grown from printing 100 copies of a 20-page tabloid in 2009, to a full 100-page lifestyle magazine that prints and distributes over 9,000 copies a month.