The start of the Jesuit apostolate in the Spanish Antilles (Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico) was late and irregular. From the 16th century to the mid-17th century, the Caribbean was merely a transit point to Peru or Brazil, a necessary stopover, sometimes due to storms.
Some Jesuits stopped on these islands and even worked for a few months, but their presence did not stabilize. Thus, on their return from the failed expedition to La Florida, Fr. Juan Rogel and Bro. Francisco Villareal stopped at Montecristi on the northwest coast of Hispaniola (October 24, 1566).
Five years later (1571), as part of an expedition heading to Brazil, Father Pedro Díaz passed through Cuba. That same year, on his way to Peru, the renowned José de Acosta stopped in Santo Domingo. And the fifteen Jesuits whom Father Pedro Sánchez de Canales was taking to Mexico stayed for a week (August 1-9, 1572) in San José de Ocoa, on the south coast of Hispaniola. Antonio Sedeño attempted to open a college in Cuba (1573-1577). Finally, Carlo Spínola, Girolamo de Angelis, and four companions, on their voyage to Japan, were carried by a storm to Puerto Rico (March 15, 1597), where they worked successfully for five months.
The company's first almost permanent establishment in the Antilles was in Santo Domingo. In August 1650, Fathers Damián de Buitrago and Andrés de Solís, along with Brother Juan Díaz, arrived in Santo Domingo from New Granada, present-day Colombia, to study the possibility of opening a college with the assets bequeathed by Captain Juan de Ribera y Quesada in 1648.
In 1658, although with scarce personnel, a residence was opened, and the Jesuits dedicated themselves to teaching at the diocesan seminary and conducting missions in the interior of the island, particularly in the settlements of the sugar mills located between the Nigua and Nizao rivers to the southwest of Santo Domingo.
Finally, Philip V (September 26, 1701) granted the license to found the San Francisco Javier college and, two years later, the city council granted the Jesuits the direction of the old Gorjón College, which served as a seminary.
Although there were Cuban vocations from the early 17th century, the Company was not established in Cuba until 1656, when the City Council of Havana requested a license from Philip IV to establish a Jesuit college. Even so, its staff from Mexico was very small until the 18th century. The license to found the college was obtained in 1721, and three years later, José de Castro Cid and Jerónimo Barahona began simple grammar classes in what would later be the San José College of Havana (1724), also taking on the task of evangelizing the interior of the island, as their predecessors had done. In mid-1740, the Jesuits also settled in Puerto Príncipe (later Camagüey), where Father José de Urbiola would found a college. In both Santo Domingo and Cuba – Puerto Rico would not join the apostolic scene until 1858 – this first period of Jesuit presence ended, as in the rest of Spanish America, with the expulsion from Spain and its colonies, decreed by the monarchy of Charles III in 1767.
