This morning is our last day in Havana, and we are finally off to the cigar factory. We have been there twice, but missed the tour each time. They have tours all day, every 15 minutes, however they close at random times...sometimes noon, sometimes 3 PM or 4 PM...you never really know.
Since we leave for Varadero this afternoon, we got up and headed down (via Coco Taxi!) to the Partagas Cigar Factory, which is right behind the Capitol Building. Luckily we were right on time and headed straight in for our tour. It was $10 CUC each, which I thought was a bit high, but well worth it.
The building is quite beautiful and smells wonderful...I've always liked the smell of fresh tobacco. It's 4 stories high, and each floor is reached by steep wooden stairs. Pictures are not allowed, other than of the main entrance. The top picture is taken inside the "foyer".
The process is like an assembly line, very efficient and quick, but no machines are used at all, everything is handmade. We saw each stage of how a cigar is made, from the unbinding of the tobacco to the final stickers being placed on the boxes. In an automated world, I found this to be really fascinating. There are many more steps than I had realized and it's quite an intricate procedure.
There is a large training room, where employees are tested on the various aspects of cigar making, from picking out the best leaves to use as the final wrap on the cigar, to the actual rolling (not done on a Cuban woman's thighs any more, much to the dismay of most of the men on our tour) to the measuring, putting in boxes and so on. Once your area of expertise has been determined, that is your job for the duration of your employment. There is no advancement at all...ever. The employers want the employees to become experts at their jobs.
Some jobs are more highly coveted than others, putting on the final large tobacco leaf that holds the whole cigar together is the highest paid job, and the hardest to do.
Each employee gets three cigars a day and can also smoke as many as they want while at work.
They save up their three and then try and sell them to people in the tour group...discreetly of course, with the international signals like raising of eyebrows, and chin movement and head nods towards their pockets where they quickly show you a handful of cigars, and the raising of fingers to let you know how many pesos they are worth. It all depends on what brand of cigar is being made at that time.
If a deal is made, and God knows I couldn't figure it out, then the employee walks by you and the exchange is quickly made while the employee heads off into the washroom.
I wouldn't let Steven do it, he was just dying to, but I didn't want anyone to get in trouble. I found out later that a blind eye is generally turned during these transactions, so I should have let him. A very pretty girl also gave him "the eye" and kept gesturing to him to meet her in the hallway. He sadly shrugged and we wandered on.
Each floor has a raised platform at the end of the room where a "reader" sits and reads the newspaper to the employees, music is also played. In the past, novels were read and the employees enjoyed some of the Shakespeare and other classics so much that some of cigars were named after some of the plays (Romeo y Julietta, and Monte Cristo )
It was really interesting and I had no idea that it was done in such an old fashioned way, each employee has their own table and their own supplies and they work at their particular job as fast as they can, and get paid by the amount they do, so a great deal of money can be made by an experienced cigar roller. They do get regular breaks and don't work more than 8 hours a day.
I would be curious as to the amount of cases of lung cancer though, it was quite smokey inside, even though fans were blowing constantly. No air conditioning though, it was fairly hot in there.
I'd recommend that you definitely take a tour if you are ever in Havana.
No comments:
Post a Comment