Havana, Cuba -- Alejandro Robaina, 'Godfather' of Cuban tobacco dead at 91, he'd been smoking cigars since he was 10 years old. Cuban cigar company Habanos S.A., produced cigars named for him.
Robaina's tobacco leaves are considered some of the best in the world. A box of premium Vegas Robaina cigars can fetch more than $500 on the international market.
In Cuba, he was called "The Godfather." His deeply wrinkled face smiled out from billboards, T-shirts and boxes of Vegas Robaina cigars. But the man behind the smile was also a simple country farmer who got up at the crack of dawn every day to survey his fields until cancer slowed him down. "The first thing is to love the land, take care of the land."
Robaina's family have farmed tobacco continuously since 1845 on the plantation. Under Robaina, business flourished, and the plantation had some of the best yields in the region, producing highly-prized wrapper leaves used for the outer layer of cigars. Robaina kept his lands even when many ranches were nationalized after the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro.
"I had a very strong conversation with Fidel 18 or 20 years ago," Robaina said in 2008. "He asked if I would join a big cooperative since I had so many workers, and I told him no."For me tobacco growing had to be in the family, done with love. Because in the big cooperatives, everyone's the boss, nobody worries as much as the grower."
Now, almost all of Cuba's tobacco farms are private, according to the Agriculture Ministry. And they generally take their lead from Robaina, planting and harvesting on the same days he did.
Because of the U.S. trade embargo, however, Cuban cigars are not legally imported into America.
Let's not forget the famous incident of the Cuban cigar and the affair at the Whitehouse involving Bill and Monica. Was it just an urban legend or the unvarnished truth?
source: Shasta Darlington, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/04/17/obit.alejandro.robaina/index.html?hpt=Sbin
No comments:
Post a Comment