Cuba up in smokes

The Sunday Times July 16, 2006

Cuba up in smokes

Mojitos, cigars and tinpot socialism can be a bewitching but bewildering
blend, as Brian Schofield discovers on the Cuban tobacco trail

The sun is beginning to grow fierce as Jesus strides onto the valley
floor. Sheer, broad-shouldered rock formations rear up around us like
crouching giants as we take the dusty trail in near silence — the Cuban
government, Jesus explains, prohibits the use of any machinery in the
Viñales tobacco fields, the better to preserve the bucolic peace.

Our state-employed walking guide, a self-taught botanist who’s never
left this stunning, steamy valley in the midwest of Cuba, leads us to
the centre of a field to explain the aristocracy of tobacco leaves — the
wide, thick lower stems will make the world’s most celebrated cigars,
while the tiddlers at the top will end life (Jesus can scarcely conceal
his contempt) ground up in a cigarette.

We move on, past a “tourist tree” — “because it’s red, and its skin
peels off easily” — to the next stage in the life of the great Cuban
cash crop: the tobacco-drying barns. Still covered in hand-woven reed
matting, because no labour-saving artificial roofing can control the
humidity quite so perfectly, these noxious caverns turn green to gold as
the months pass. If you think wine-makers have mastered the art of
waiting profitably, you should witness the imposed languor of a tobacco
farmer watching his crops dry.

However, the real profits come later in a cigar’s creation, so in
Viñales it’s helpful to shave off a little elsewhere. “Maybe now we
should go drink coffee in a real Cuban farmhouse?” asks Jesus. He’s not
really asking.

As we sip scalding creosote around a knotted kitchen table, a farmer who
looks like the inspiration for Slowpoke Rodriguez (the slowest mouse in
all Mexico) silently rolls a few smokes from his own collection of
rum-and- honey-soaked leaves.

The finished product bests anything ever lit up at the end of a long
British wedding, and we gratefully pocket the spares and press the
farmer’s flesh with precious tourist pesos (Cuba wisely has two
currencies: a cheap one that only the locals can use, and a pricier one
for you and me, to deter Thailand-style penny-pinching travellers).
Jesus is no charity worker, though — as we leave, he “forgets
something”, pops back inside and emerges, hand in back pocket, grinning
and exhorting us, “Please not to mention this visit when we get back to
town.”

Back in town, judging by the fresh paint, cropped lawns and local army
of noisily cheerful children that characterise the parish of Viñales,
the off-white market is proving an efficient way of distributing the
pesos of the valley’s foreign visitors to its local residents. Homestay
B&Bs, known as casas particulares, line the backstreets, offering a
characterful, cheap place to stay and by far the best meals in town —
even the tourists stranded in the bland state hotels above the valley
soon ask how they can take dinner in a casa.

(Legally, they can’t, but if you cross the palm of the old lady who runs
the local botanical garden, she’ll be waiting for you in the town square
at dusk. Without exchanging a glance, she’ll then stroll to the edge of
town, with you following at a nonchalant distance, and nod in the
direction of the house that’s expecting you for dinner. That’s the Cuban
way.)

The sum of all these shenanigans, combined with a government that’s
always looked after the country folk first, is that it’s hard not to
conclude, rocking on the porch of your casa with a glowing cigar in one
hand and a cold lager in the other, that this is a pretty damn desirable
postcode. Life here is good — and when I joke with Jesus that everything
will change when los yanquis are allowed back into Cuba, he doesn’t
laugh. Viva la revolucion.

DRIED AND bagged, many of Viñales’s finest leaves will find their way to
Havana, and the Fabrica de Tabacos Partagas, the largest cigar factory
in Cuba — where, this morning, factory tour guide Maria is behaving like
someone who’s normally got sassy-and-cheeky down pat, but — perhaps
handicapped by a particularly thick mojito hangover — she’s currently
stuck on fantastically, startlingly rude.

“Before we start, do you have any questions? What, no questions at all?
Are you stupid or something? Whatever, let’s go.”

Despite knowing she’s already blown her tip, Maria conducts the full
tour, starting with the sorting room, where expert eyes categorise each
leaf according to shades of brown. Next, the school, where rows of
hopefuls spend nine months learning to hand-roll a cigar in the hope of
securing steady employment — hen’s teeth in Havana — in the giant
rolling room itself.

When we reach that industrious hall, 300 backs, hunched over wooden
desks, perform the calm, elegant craft of cigar-making, a mix of
culinary and aesthetic skill, dexterity, experience and instinct. At the
head of the rolling room sits a middle-aged man with a microphone — now
in his 16th year, Maria explains, as the factory reader.

“In the morning, he reads the newspaper to the workers. In the
afternoon, he reads them novels — which the workers can vote for. Often,
they want the classics, but some are always asking for erotic fiction,
which he does not like to read. Last week, he just finished reading The
Da Vinci Code.”

Now, though, it’s more like the classified football results, as the
reader proclaims the weekly salary, based on output, of every roller on
the floor. The room, of course, is all ears — many of the workers admit
to hearing the reader’s voice in their dreams.

We finally reach the alpha-workers’ desk — the tasters. Lighting more
than 40 cigars a day, they can spot a flaw in a single puff, and will
send the whole batch back. The best salaried job on the shop floor
carries its own risks — the tasters are loathed by the rollers, who
don’t get paid for the rejects.

Eager to understand whether I’m standing in a sweatshop (if you’re
holidaying in Cuba and you don’t become fascinated by the realities of
life, you’re not really holidaying in Cuba), I press Maria for details
of the workers’ deal. Not, on first impressions, a loyal employee, she
grudgingly admits that the pay, job security, holidays and notoriously
wild office parties add up to a decent package. On balance, let the
revolucion roll.

IT’S 9am in the shabby, noisy streets of Havana Old Town and the savvy,
street-smart Sunday Times journalist and his equally seasoned travel
buddy are heading back through the puddles and potholes to their casa
particular after a hearty breakfast. A chirpy, sprightly young man who
clearly wants to practise his English appears alongside and introduces
himself as Octavio, a business student. “This is my sister, a
primary-school teacher. I’m taking her to today’s open-air music
festival on the other side of town. You want to come along?” Well, why not?

We head into Havana Central, the unvarnished, untouristy neighbourhood
that’s yet to see any of the Unesco World Heritage affection lavished
upon the old town, and Octavio polishes his grammar with an informal
city tour: the Chinatown bar where the Buena Vista Social Club first
gathered, the church where Pope John Paul II took Communion during his
1998 visit, the house where José Marti, the co-composer of the Hispanic
world’s most ubiquitous ditty, Guantanamera, lived and worked, a corner
ration shop where the locals still exchange their stamp-books for cheap
food, wartime-style.

And as the morning wears on, and the regular stops for a stiff mojito
start to kick in, Octavio begins to reveal some potentially valuable
connections. Might we be interested in taking home some of Cuba’s finest
cigars, straight from the Fabrica de Tabacos Partagas, for a very good
price?

With factory workers allowed to take home three cigars a day for
“personal use”, Havana’s black market in tobacco is generously stocked,
and in just a few minutes we’re peering into the gloom of a mouldy
ground-floor apartment, where a fat man sleeps on a bare mattress in his
fetid underpants, surrounded by wooden cartons. Octavio shakes him
awake, and the transaction is swift — a box of Hoya de Monterrey, one of
the mildest and smoothest brands, at a plump discount, with a plastic
bag full of H Upmann’s (a more everyday smoke) thrown in for free.

We shake, pay and leave — delayed only when Octavio forgets something
and pops back inside — and we head to yet another bar to toast a deal
well done. Here, our priceless guide leans forward, drops to a whisper,
and explains the true source of our saving — we’ve just made our first
purchase in Cuba’s secret third currency.

A new government issue, set halfway between the local and tourist rate,
he explains, this covert cash allows those in the know to double the
spending power of their dollars, euros or pounds, at no cost. To spend
the rest of our time in Cuba enjoying this bureaucratic windfall, all we
have to do is hand Octavio every last note of our foreign currency, and
he’ll exchange it for the secret notes, as a personal favour. A dim
light bulb flickers on. Certainly, my friend — let’s get a taxi back to
our casa and pick up all our cash . . .

When the cab reached the door, I told Octavio, or whatever his name was,
that he’d been rumbled. I thanked him for the 50 stolen cigars, the
photographs he had so kindly taken of us — two half-drunk halfwits
posing outside a house where nobody famous ever composed anything — and
for an enjoyable morning spent with him and a charming woman who
probably wasn’t his sister.

I suspect it’s impossible genuinely never to forget the look on
someone’s face, but theirs will stick for some time — expressions toxic
with the bitter, violent avarice of those who are sick and tired of
being poor and jealous. This revolution may not have long to live.

Travel brief

Getting there: charter flights to Varadero are the cheapest option.
Charterflights (0845 045 0153, www.charterflights.co.uk) has return
flights from Manchester or Gatwick from £220 in late July. Also try
Flightline (0800 541541, www.flightline.co.uk). Virgin Atlantic (0870
380 2007, www.virginatlantic.com) and Cubana (020 7537 7909,
www.cubana.cu) fly from Gatwick to Havana from £600.

Getting around: the reliable tourist coach service (www.viazul.com)
outshines the hassle and expense of renting a car in a communist country.
Where to stay: casas particulares (£10pp a night) are vastly preferable
to state hotels and are easy to find once in Cuba. However, you need
three nights’ confirmed lodging to get into Cuba, so your easiest option
is to book three nights in a hotel then go it alone. Voyager Cuba (01580
766222, www.voyagercuba.co.uk) can fix that.

Tours: a Fabrica de Tabacos Partagas tour (10am-6pm, closed Sunday) is
£11; Viñales walks start from the town museum at 10am every day, £3.60.
Packages: contact Voyager Cuba (01580 766222, www.voyagercuba.co.uk),
Regent Holidays (020 7821 4020, www.regent-holidays.co.uk) or Journey
Latin America (020 8747 8315 www.journeylatinamerica.com).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2100-2269711,00.html