More than five decades after a trade embargo banned imports of cigars from
Communist-ruled Cuba, the majority of U.S. cigar imports come from other
Caribbean countries as well aAs Central America.
Yet in Miami a niche industry is growing, centered on a few
dozen elite Cuban rollers who make special edition cigars that sell for as much
as $700 per box in Europe.
Cigar Aficionado, the industry's leading glossy magazine,
recently highlighted Miami's cigar industry describing the city as a "a
new hot spot for creative cigar makers who make fantastic cigars such as the Arturo Fuente Cigars."
Sierra, at age 18, was one of 30 Cuban women selected from
thousands to learn the craft from Fidel Castro's personal cigar roller Eduardo
Rivera. Women entered male-dominated factories at the urging of Cuban
revolutionary Celia Sanchez, a close confidant of Castro's in the 1960s and
70s.
"We would start with one little cigar and they would
watch over us very closely, removing those who didn't do well enough,"
said Sierra, now 64. "A group of 30 or 40 women would come in to learn and
after a couple of days only one or two were left."
Sierra is one of 10 rollers working at El Titan de Bronze
(The Bronze Titan), a Little Havana store named after Antonio Maceo, a general
in the war for Cuban independence from Spain.
Other rollers came from Cuba's respected Partagas and H.
Uppman factories. Some were arrested several times trying to escape before they
made it to Miami.
"We're basically a boutique," said owner Sandy
Cobas, whose father Carlos opened the small shop about 20 years ago. "We
don't produce in mass quantities and the cigars are done exactly like they are
in Cuba."
In Miami, Cuban rollers are prized for their rigorous
training. Unlike rollers in other cigar-producing countries, each is
responsible for his or her cigar, from start to finish.
"A lot of the families of plantation owners left for
those countries with (Cuban tobacco) seeds in a handkerchief," Cobas said.
"None of those countries were known for making cigars."
Tropical Tobacco, which produces Casa Fernandez cigars,
opened a small factory in Miami in 2012, hiring a dozen or so Cuban rollers who
produce about 1,200 cigars a day. At the company's factory in Esteli,
Nicaragua, Fernandez employs 50 to 60 rollers who work in pairs - with one
bunching tobacco and wrapping the cigars and another applying the cap - to make
15,000 cigars daily.
In 2012, the bulk of the nation's cigars came from the
Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras, with imports from those countries
totaling almost $600 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Despite the Cuban rollers' lofty reputation, Rico said there
are more of them than there is work available. At the same time not all rollers
are as passionate as El Titan's Sierra, who retired from cigar making in Cuba
in 2011, but returned to it after moving to Miami to be near her daughter.
"You can make a decent living," Rico said,
"but some rollers ... want to move on to other jobs."
