Generally speaking, the history of Cuba’s cigarmaking industry is likened to male figures that grow, harvest, roll and even smoke this splendid fruit of nature. But, what’s the truth about this traditional linkage between men and cigars? Was this indeed a product solely made by male hands in the past? Was it at the beginning just a pleasure for gentlemen?

As we trace down the origins of this larger-than-life Cuban industry, many of us ignore one elements that meets the eye: women have played a major role in the art of rolling tobacco leaves into stogies. This nagging exclusion also became a thorn in the side of many members of the Friends of the Country Economic Fellowship (SEAP is the Spanish acronym).

This prestigious institution that came into being in the 18th century’s Havana in an effort to foster instruction and nonsugar domestic industry, made a call in 1852 for ways that would eventually prod employers to hire the abundant and cheap female workforce that couldn’t find jobs to bring home the bacon. In their line or argument, SEAP members suggested Cuban women could be hired in the cigar-making industry. “… this industry provides abundant working opportunities for our poor women because this leaf of supreme excellence seems to have been put by the divine hands of God in this land of weak women so that its delicate elaboration can be done by female hands…

” And the statement goes on to say, “This is not indeed a burdening job in which women could do their own without hesitation. And those who get down to the labor deserve that job for they belong to families hailing from regions where this plant is grown…” In addition to laying bare the presence of women in some stages of the cigar-making sector, this document was equally urging le femmes to join the industry bandwagon because, coupled with the proved performance of female workers, SEAP members were convinced the woman-cigar interaction was some kind of God-sent gift to cash in on.

Nonetheless, this interest shown by the Economic Fellowship was nothing but the continuation of a strategy that some of its members had tried out in the late 18th century at the Havana Charity Home, where they had set up a small cigar-making workshop. In there, a few female orphans and slaves learned the trade taught by a black hand roller named Juana Diaz.

Despite their young age, “her pupils yielded a good deal of stogies” and, to some extent, the sale used to be carried out from their own counters –located in the bustling Fernando VII Square. The revenues helped keep the Charity Home up and running. However, the relationship between Cuban women and the cigarmaking industry during the Spanish colonial rule was moving beyond the narrow halls of the Havana Charity Home –or the collecting houses where lodgers also made cigars.

Historian Jose Rivero Muñoz asserts that tobacco planters and their relatives used to roll cigars for domestic consumption and sell other pieces at the local groceries in their hometowns. Based on this information, there’s no doubt to believe that housewives probably had a hand in the whole process, and even some of them acted as cigar sale brokers. .

By 1868, while men joined the rank and file of the independence army, not a few female migrants handrolled cigars and removed leaf wicks to make ends meet during those times of war-bringing hardships in exile. Literature is another valuable source of information that sheds light on this issue, like the small stanza of “La Guajirita de Vuelta Abajo” (The Little Hick from Vuelta Abajo) written in 1835 by a local Pinar del Rio poet in which he praises the hard work of female farmers in this tobacco-rich region of western Cuba. It goes like this:

“I’m a countryside flower / I’m the female tobacco planter / from Vuelta Abajo / Come to meet me / I weave hats / I hand-roll cigars / I water the flowers / and take care of canaries.

For his part, in his masterpiece “Contrapunteo Cubano del Azucar y el Tabaco” (Improvised Musical Dialogue Between Cuban Sugar and Tobacco), Cuban sage Fernando Ortiz makes a joking recount of the topic as he writes about an old Hungarian man who came to Cuba in 1850 and loathed the sight of Negro women handrolling cigars on their laps. A French journalists, though, considered that the over-thethighs rolling was the divine touch the Habanos needed. If this much information reveals the participation of Cuban women in the cigar-making industry, other evidence prove that many femmes from this neck of the woods loved smoking cigars as well.

In their anecdotes about their trips to Cuba in the 19th century, we learn that quite a number of foreigners were stunned by the sensual tradition of watching women lighting huge cigars for their men. Others attending family gatherings were equally amazed by women who preferred flowers and cigars as their gifts of choice. And if the gentleman used to play piano tunes, the lovely hostess was keeping the cigar burning by puffing gently at it between the notes. It was so commonplace to see women puffing at stogies at the end of dinners or jam sessions that even the most demanding female smokers loved the highvalued Cabana and Dos Amigos brands.

At the same time, concert intermezzos at fancy theaters and music schools all around the island nation’s capital were filled with cigar smoke billowed by elegant and aristocratic dames, some of them dragging butts trapped in their coattails. And people say that if a woman paid a visit to a cigar factory, it was customary for the owner to present her with aromatic cigars in a magnificent paper-wrapped box.

Undoubtedly, women have been more than just inspiring muses for lithographers and decorators who have always spruced up cigar boxes for the whole wide world to see the top-quality smoking products this marvelous island has to offer. And even though biased attitudes have for years concealed the real history of our female ancestors, it’s no secret that Cuban women have worked –and still work- in the local cigar-making industry. The point is that both in the past and today, men and women from the turf and elsewhere share together the “heady smoke” and the fabulous pleasure that each and every puff at a peerless Cuban cigar brings.