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The Exodus
When Fidel Castro threw Cuba's cigarmakers out of their factories, he unwittingly re-created an industry
David Savona
From the Print Edition:
10th Anniversary Issue, Nov/Dec 02
(continued from page 8)
For Cuba's emigres, no memory is as bitter as the day they or their families lost their businesses, their assets, their fortunes. But there is some solace in what came of their ordeals. If not for the revolution and resulting embargo, there would likely be no Dominican cigar industry, no Honduran tobacco, no Ecuadoran leaf. The exodus turned Cuba's cigar men into creative blenders, master craftsmen who still experiment with tobaccos from around the world, trying to find new flavors as well as trying to revive the flavors of their youth.
In 2001, to commemorate the departure of cigarmakers from Cuba, Toraño Jr. and his son, Charlie, created a cigar in Honduras called Carlos Toraño Exodus 1959. "Most of the Dominican, Honduran and Nicaraguan cigars enjoyed throughout the world today owe their origins to the dozens of these cigar families," Toraño Jr. said at the time. "Much of the choice tobaccos grown in these countries and elsewhere comes from Cuban seeds smuggled off the island by these expatriates."
It is a fitting tribute to an unforgettable period in history, one that truly revolutionized the cigar business.
"Most of the cigars that are made today," says Toraño Jr., "there's always some Cuban family somewhere in there."
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