Keywords

Ybor City, historical narrative, destination marketing, heritage tourism, urban tourism, Tampa history

Abstract

Ybor City is a historical neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, and a tourist attraction known for its immigrant roots and once-thriving cigar industry. This thesis places Ybor City into the context of the burgeoning heritage tourism market, examining how cities financially reliant on tourism often sanitize their public historical narrative. I identify the main actors involved in Ybor City's marketing and preservation by investigating contemporary newspaper articles and multiple National Park Service documents, thereby uncovering the motivations and decisions that led to Ybor's cultural image of a bustling, relatively peaceful early 20th-century "Latin" community. To correlate Ybor's aestheticized public image with the official record, I review and contrast historical primary sources, academic literature, tourism advertising material, and Ybor's physical historical markers designated to its landmarks. My main argument is that embellishing local memory with overt celebratory overtones and a patriotic message not only fosters a misleading narrative, but it also sidelines traditionally marginalized racial and ethnic groups: Ybor's working-class families, as well as its Jewish, Black Cuban, and African American heritage. This thesis seeks to advance a more authentic interpretation of Ybor City history by proposing a reinvestigation into literary sources and applying both GIS and mobile technology to update the existing scholarship.

Completion Date

2023

Semester

Fall

Committee Chair

French, Scot

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

History

Degree Program

Public History

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

DP0028033

URL

https://purls.library.ucf.edu/go/DP0028033

Language

English

Release Date

December 2023

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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