Rolling By the Book

Lectors have been reading to workers in Cuban cigar factories since the 1860s. The tradition continues today.

Miguel Barnet
From the Print Edition:
Tiger Woods, May/June 2008

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The art of interpretation, pronunciation and tone of the voice are essential requirements of a good reader. Some of them become legends for their talents, which are developed after many years of performing this specific art. Many began as teachers or radio announcers, and brought their experience of talking to an audience or into a microphone to their new careers.

"When I applied for this job in the cigar factory, I competed against a retired lecturer. [To] my surprise, I won because I dramatized everything I read," said Jesús Pereira, 44, who studied telecommunications in the Ukraine but soon began working as a reader after graduation. He now works at the Partagas factory. "My pleasure is reading and reading out loud. Sometimes, I believe I am an actor. I act out the voices of all the characters. For example, when reading El Mercader de Brillantes by Xavier de Montépin, I play 15 different characters with different voices: men, women and children."

Sometimes, these daily readings are combined with cultural activities, radio programs or the visit of an author to read his own words. It is well known that books do not think for us but teach us how to think and dream. They are, according to Walt Whitman, "tiny ships chartered since antiquity, and on them we have traveled in calm and turbulent waters confronting all kinds of adventures."

Cuban cigar rollers have always known it and with the reading of the works from great authors, they have surely obtained a higher and more refined quality of cigar. When concentrating on a novel, a poem or just an ad while working, they never look at the face of the reader but instead pour on the leaf all the passion of what they are listening to, of the adventures they live and the dreams they dream, so that this other great pleasure of life—smoking—turns into supreme ecstasy.

"The praise I appreciate the most of all comes from the silence of the cigar rollers, mainly when I am reading and dramatizing a good suspense novel," said Pereira. "People say that I have the diction of an actor reading novels on the radio. During my time off, I am an amateur boxer and wrestler, but I wouldn't change reading for anything in the world."

Cuba hopes one day that this institution will be declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization an Intangible Heritage for its originality and because it is a living memory treasure from a sui generis community.

And remember, dear reader, when you think that your cigar has pleased you enough, don't put it out on the ashtray, don't humiliate it. Let it die, slowly and with dignity.

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