The Guayabera Shirt

If you take a stroll around Ybor City you will see them everywhere. The men who stop to sit and chat with friends on the benches in Centennial Park, or who drop in for a café con leche at La Tropicana on 7th Avenue or the West Tampa Coffee Shop on Howard all have something in common. They are wearing guayaberas.

This is a shirt many think originated about 200 years ago in Cuba. Others say Mexico or even the Philippines. It is often called the Mexican Wedding Shirt. I like the version that tells of a rancher in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba whose family in Sevilla, Spain had sent a package of material called batiste – a woven fabric with a soft and light feel. The rancher had shirts made from the fabric to wear as he traveled about on his ranch. As the story is told, his shirt was styled with four pockets – two at the breast and two at the hem – which could be buttoned to prevent him from losing anything. He could easily carry cigars, matches, pens and pencils, and perhaps even a guava for a snack. Designed to be worn on the outside of the trousers, the shirt was embroidered on the front from each shoulder to the straight hem.

Workers and friends loved the look and feel of these shirts and wanted their own. The hot and humid climate in Cuba was perfect for this cool, lightweight shirt.

Since the town of Sancti Spiritus, Cuba is by the Yayabo River, some say the shirt was originally called the yayabera. Others say it was named for the tart fruit, the guava. Workers frequently wore the shirts as they ate their lunch in the shade of the guava trees. It even became the uniform of the resistance fighters in Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain. When people started moving to Florida from Cuba in the late 1880s, they brought the shirts with them.

As the fame of the shirt grew, they were homemade or tailored, some with short sleeves and some with long, and some were even fancy enough for formal occasions. Now they are usually made from lightweight cotton, which is cool and comfortable in our sometimes steamy Florida climate. I've even heard some are made from leather, but isn’t that missing the point? From Miami to Tampa you see the shirts on all the "cool" men. Several famous people have also been known to wear them – Ernest Hemingway, Robert Duvall, James Michener, and former President George H.W. Bush, to name a few. And Fidel Castro still wears one for official occasions.

So, if you are new to the area get yourself a guayabera and a cup of café con leche. You'll be feeling like a native in no time.

"The Guayabera Shirt" by Gail Ellis appears in Volume 1, Issue 4 of Cigar City Magazine.

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