The town that time forgot:
An example of socialism in Cuba's tobacco industry

by Daniela Mohor

photo by Mimi Chakarova

The warm smell of tobacco floats in the room. Wooden tables covered with piles of tobacco leaves are lined up. Sitting at their desks like children in a classroom, more than 100 Cubans hand roll some of the world's most sought after cigars: Montecristo, Cohiba, Romeo y Julieta. As they work soft wrapper leaves over rougher tobacco, they listen to a morning radio sitcom.

"The man's face is the face of a dog," says a deep and manly voice. "It's a threatening face."

No one pays much attention. Instead, workers chat among themselves. While they joke, even holler across the room, their fast fingers effortlessly grab the brown leaves and shape the cigars. Despite the daily production quota of more than 100 cigars per worker, the atmosphere is relaxed and friendly. Most of the hand-rollers are young, have known each other since childhood, and appear happy to be there. The opening of the factory has made their life easier.

Inaugurated in January 2000 in the small town of Pilotos, about three hours southwest of Havana, the Juan Casanueva factory, named for a local martyr of the revolution, is the direct result of a local initiative and the latest expression of the community's strong support for the revolution.

The factory became a reality when a group of tobacco growers from the town's agricultural cooperative made an uncommon move. They went to Fidel Castro and asked him to transform the abandoned military base into a cigar factory. They had two purposes: to create new job opportunities to keep young people in town, and to serve the revolution. Castro liked both.

Pilotos' new factory is one of 60 cigar operations that are playing an increasingly significant role in the country's post-Soviet economy. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the USSR and its support of Cuba's economy, the island sunk into a deep recession. In the span of three years the GDP shrunk by 40% and the state could not feed its citizens. The crisis pushed Castro's regime to ease market restrictions and introduce dollars into the economy. The state too needed hard currency, and so it turned to the sectors that generated the highest income in dollars: tourism and export tobacco.

While the price of raw tobacco is roughly 10 cents per pound, a box of Cuban cigars abroad sells for as much as $200. The market is profitable, and Castro knows it: new brands and new sizes of cigars at different price keep appearing and every season new workers are incorporated in the industry.

For a factory at the cutting edge of the economy, the Pilotos plant is also a throw back to the best days of socialism. Everyone has a role to play in the production and all laborers are equally important. Piñaldo Franco, the director of Pilotos factory explains, "The country is a single entity, the factory is a single entity and it has a single owner: Fidel Castro."

"I was born under a tobacco tree," jokes Orlando Acosta. "So I know a bit about tobacco."

Like many of Pilotos 5000 residents, Orlando Acosta, the factory's production supervisor take prides in his lifetime of working in tobacco. He is a quiet but friendly man with a soft voice and a brown moustache. At the factory, people simply call him Rolando.

"I was born under a tobacco tree," he jokes in the small storage room where raw material is handed out to the rollers. "So I know a bit about tobacco."

On weekends, when he can escape family duties, Rolando goes to the countryside where he still has a vega, or tobacco field. There, he relaxes and "forgets about work."

Going from growing tobacco at the local cooperative to managing an industrial factory was no small task. Rolando and two other cofounders had to learn everything from selecting and stemming tobacco leaves to hand-rolling cigars and quality control. For 13 months he attended class in Havana and visited other factories in Pinar del Rio, the traditional tobacco region where Pilotos is situated.

By June 1999, they were ready to open a hand-rolling school in the factory and receive the first group of workers: 73 people took the first class, including Rolando's wife. Since then, dozens of new recruits have been selected and trained every season, contributing to the production's steady increase. Last year laborers rolled 1.4 million cigars, surpassing their goal by more than 200, 000 pieces. This year, the factory hopes its 206 workers and 66 students will make more than 2.4 million cigars.

Underlying such efficiency is the state's new incentive policy. With the crisis, the government dug up an agricultural law from the late 1980s that permitted independent tobacco farmers to use idle cropland to grow tobacco.

The state provided other incentives as well. The government still sets the price of tobacco and furnishes fertilizer and agricultural supplies, but now farmers are paid according to their productivity. The more they grow, the more they earn, and part of their income is in dollars. The same incentives apply to factories. Workers receive six percent of their wage in dollars and extra money for each cigar they make above their daily quota. At the Pilotos factory, some workers have doubled their $16 monthly wage.

All over Cuba, the incentives have worked: between 1996 and 2000 the number of cigars exported rose from 70 million to 118 million. And this year, Habanos S.A., the distribution company for Cuban cigars, plans to ship 150 million.

The significance of tobacco in Cuba, however, goes beyond its potential to save the island from the dollar crisis. Tobacco is to Cuba what scotch is to Scotland.

photos by Daniela Mohor Men roll cigars at the Pilotos plant.

"Talking about tobacco is talking about the national cultural identity," said Zoe Nocedo, the director of the Museum of Tobacco in downtown Havana. "It is not only a fundamental product for the economy, but a product that helped the development of the history of Cuban culture."

When Cubans don't want someone to expand for hours on a topic they say: "Don't tell me the whole history of tobacco." And they have good reason.

By the time Christopher Columbus discovered Cuba in 1492, the Indian natives had already organized all their rituals around the tobacco tree or "cohiba." They smoked to communicate with divinities and they used the plant as medicine to cure skin diseases and cuts. Columbus' crew smoked for enjoyment and it didn't take long for them to send the leaf home.

After unsuccessfully trying to prohibit tobacco imports in 1717, the Spanish Crown instead decided to establish a monopoly on tobacco's cultivation and comercialization. A century later, Cuban rebellions and problems of mismanagement led to the end of the monopoly and the island developed its own tobacco.

With the creation of the island's first cigar factories, the tobacco industry took center stage in Cuban history. To entertain the rollers, tobacco barons hired readers, who read news and literature from around the world- a tradition that gave workers the reputation of being the world's most educated.

It didn't take long before they started organizing and progressively acquired political power. They participated in all major strikes affecting the country, supported José Martí's fight for independence and later Castro's revolution. Nowadays, the reader's fare is limited to Granma, the national paper, and romance novels.

 

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