Although the Arab presence in Cuba has been documented on several of Columbus' voyages to the New World, the Arab migrations to Cuba occur in three waves: 1850s-1890s, post WWI, and post WWII.The paper examines and contextualizes Arab migration and associational history of Arabs in Cuba in the twentieth-century, but focuses on the activities of the Cuban-Arab Union (UAC for Unión Árabe Cubana), a 'non-government civil society organization' founded from a coalition of older Cuban-Arab organizations in 1979. The UAC's daily and special programmatic activities and its associations in larger Latin American pan-Arab organizations become the lens through which to explore the continuous elaboration of diaspora identities. How does the Cuban legacy of imperial colony and anti-colonial resistance nexus inform the political stances of the organization? How does an organization dedicated to the goal of promoting Arab unity, foster that ideal in practice among its members and in programming that involves the official diplomatic community, whose members are at war or do not recognize one another? How have history and migration impacted the practice of religion especially in an ostensibly atheist socialist-revolutionary society? Who are the bicultural Arab figures who have shaped Cuban history? How does the organization elaborate and pass on an Arab past? What compromises are made to belong in the host society? This paper marks the beginning of a larger study of he Cuban revolution from the margins through Arab immigrants who accommodated and sutured their identities to Cuba's larger social project. Finally the paper uses the creation, institutionalization and activities of the Arab Cuban Union as a way to interrogate the constructs of Orientalism and Occidentalism and solidarities of the Third World.