The Bridge of Liberty, Its History and Meaning

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One of the Solanaceae plants, described by Linnaeus in 1753 as the species Nicotiana tabacum, a species native to South America, Mexico and the Caribbean, was the plant whose manufacture and commercialization became fashionable in the Western Hemisphere and developed into one of the main contributions from the New World to humanity.

Christopher Columbus was the first European who spoke about the plant and its stimulating function when he observed Indians in Cuba inhaling the smoke through the nose by using hollow reeds divided into two at one end to facilitate its introduction into the nasal cavity. For natives of countries where tobacco is wide-spread, like Cuba, the plant served as a stimulant, as a narcotic for ceremonial and medicinal purposes. The popularity of tobacco is due, precisely, to the narcotic effects of nicotine, which at the same time contributes to the development of the smoking habit.

Cultivation of the Nicotiana tabacum began in "La Española" in 1531, in Cuba in 1580 and in Brazil in 1600. Its name comes from a Caribbean Arawak word and from Jean Nicot, the name of the French Ambassador in Lisbon, who sent seeds to the Queen of France, Maria de Médicis. In 1612, it was being cultivated in Virginia and in 1631 in Maryland, reaching its greatest expansion in the United States after the American Revolution, when Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio and Missouri joined in its production. The famous Burley variety is from the United States and is different in color and softness from Cuban tobacco, which is very aromatic but strong, dark and reputed to be the best leaf in the entire world. There are three historical centers of production that are famous for the excellence of their leaves: Vuelta Abajo in the province of Pinar del Río, Vuelta Arriba between Havana and Pinar del Río, and Partido or Remedios in the province of Las Villas. Tobacco is farmed today throughout the Island.

Very general medical qualities were attributed to tobacco, almost transforming it into a universal panacea. This contributed to its introduction in Europe. Between 1556 and 1565 it was introduced in France, Spain, Portugal and England, from which it spread to the rest of the Continent and was transformed into a much-appreciated merchandise for world trade.

Tobacco, with its precious tubular flowers and leaves that can reach two and three feet high, was praised by Cuban poets for its beauty, as was the vega or tobacco plantation, small meadows primarily under the care of Canary Islanders, although there were also black and white vegueros criollos (Cuban-born tobacco growers). According to Cuban historiographers of the stature of Fernando Ortíz and Julio Le Riverend, it was not a crop sown on plots that required a large number of slaves, unlike, for instance, Virginia with its plantations and productions bound to an expansive capitalist market. That was one of the reasons for which Fernando Ortiz, in his classic Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Cuban Counterpoint Between Tobacco and Sugar), contrasted it to the sugar cane fields with their huge territorial extension and hundreds of African slaves. Cuban tobacco farming was an accomplishment of free men, though exploited both in the fields and in the manufacture workshops. In Cuba, tobacco farming was not based on slavery plantations.

The tobacco plant requires careful attention since it has many enemies- insects and viruses, such as the "mosaic." The vega should be sterile, both in the beds where the seeds are planted and throughout the tobacco plantation itself, which is frequently covered with a special cloth to protect the plants. In addition, the soil should be fertile and wet, which led to the establishment of fields along the course of rivers (e.g., the Almendares in Havana, or the Arimao in Las Villas), creating the so-called "natural" vegas. Jean Stubbs quotes an 1898 text by Robert Porter on this type of vega: “A tobacco plantation, or Vega as it is known with its orchard, its bananas to feed the laborers, its flower and fruit trees, its stone walls, its frontispieces and pretty little houses - is the most protected and intimate agricultural landscape (Stubbs: 1989:63).

Such an idyllic environment has always been threatened; it has existed in precarious times. Many of these vegas disappeared, but new ones attained the protected-intimate aspect mentioned by Stubbs.

The veguero, the starting point in the tobacco industry, suffered because of his isolation and defenseless position, contrary to the situation of the workers in the industrial sector who were united in shops and were strengthened by a united front that enabled them to mobilize in order to achieve better working and social conditions. For hundreds of years the vegueros endured the abuses of the middlemen (frequently at the hand of retail grocers' creditors) by those willing to commercialize the raw materials for their exclusive benefit. But they suffered even more from monopoly measures dictated by the colonial government and, after that, from the protectionism of the United States: measures, which were constantly increasing the fees to be paid for exports. As analyst Stubbs says: the agricultural and industrial development of Cuban tobacco "was skillfully twisted like a cigar by overseas commercial interests." These interests were first controlled by Spain and then by the United States.

The end result for the vegueros was to subsist, full of debts, with a poor economy, losing lands in favor of the oligarchs of the sugar industry or of cattle ranchers, thus transforming themselves into subleasing tenants or mere sharecroppers.

An example of this process during the twentieth century was the case of the Remedios or Partido tobacco plantation workers of the Cuban Land who could only preserve for themselves half of their shade tobacco and three-quarters of the sun tobacco, which is of an inferior quality.

An important segment of nineteenth century Cuban literature reflects the already mentioned defenseless state of these workers, the vegueros, the terrible consequences brought about by the extinction of the hatos (large cattle ranch) in the western portion of the country due to capitalistic designs to bring about the commercialization of lands in order to promote the new mills and also the flatland coffee plantations during the first two decades of that century. In this process at least 10,000 families —many of them veguero families — lost the lands they arduously worked for generations because some rich owner or other declared their lots private property. The expulsion of both white and black peasants from these lands seriously damaged the possibility of achieving a diversified agrarian economy. It fostered latifundia, vast uncultivated estates; strengthening instead of diversifying, the plantation kind of mono-cultivation and its complements: African slave trade and slavery.

The delights of tobacco consumption include: its direct inhalation as snuff or tobacco powder (rape); its chewing as plug tobacco (andullo); and its combustion as cut tobacco (picadura) for smoking pipes. It is also smoked commonly in cigarettes, whose production has been mechanized since the nineteenth century. But the mode of consumption that interests us most is as a cigar or habano (puro) in its greatest variety, the inhalation of smoke produced by the combustion of selected leaves, interweaved and covered by a special wrapper of rich aroma.

After transplanting the plants from the seed bed to the furrows of the tobacco plantation, one has to wait a ripening period before cutting their leaves, which are then transferred to drying sheds for aging or seasoning, a careful process aimed at obtaining the maximum fragrance from them. Once aged or seasoned, the leaves are packed and sold as raw material, or are stored to be used in the preparation of the various forms of consumption at different factories and workshops.

According to historian Le Riverend, tobacco was exported to Europe in the seventeenth century, above all, as raw tobacco (tabaco en rama), cut tobacco (picadura) and snuff (rapé), this last one a specialty made by using stone mills which make use of the hydraulic force of rivers, that were also used for transportation. The cigar or puro was for national consumption, made by the tobacco workers themselves. Thus made, it distinguished itself as the Cuban habano. By the middle of the nineteenth century an international and distinct predilection for tobacco had been established: England preferred the "cut tobacco" for pipes; snuff was most welcomed in France and Italy, and the plug tobacco flourished in the United States. But the habano cigar was already well established in these countries, as well as in Spain, Holland and Germany. The cigarette was the leading form of consumption in the twentieth century and was considered vulgar, while snuff and plug tobacco were already on the decline.

Cuba's position in the international tobacco market was consolidated, as it is today, by the manual elaboration of the habanos made with "the world's best tobacco," and by a varied production of cigars of different shapes, sizes, texture, elasticity, thickness and tobacco mix. The modern tobacco industry in earnest was initiated in the nineteenth century with the expansion of that taste for the cigar, and even more by machine-produced cigarettes.

Throughout that crucial century, huge factories of habanos appeared in Cuba. They were exported, above all, to the United States, the main market for years. General Israel Putman had introduced them to the country after the seizure of Havana by the English in 1762. Those huge factories, almost all of them the property of Spaniards, depended on a specialized labor force that included some Spanish and Chinese workers but mainly composed of black and white Cubans. From their hands came a steady production of brevas, coronas, largos, imperiales, cortos, cazadores, panetelas, churchills and cohibas. Habanos for all tastes were produced by companies that gained international recognition for the quality of their productions: Susini, Por Larrañaga, Clay y Bock, La Corona, Cabañas y Carvajal, Partagás, H. Upmann, Romeo y Julieta.... But, together with these important capitalist enterprises, small shops called chinchales survived until the first half of the twentieth century. In addition, home shops rolled habanos for personal consumption or to market them to those unfortunate enough not to be able to afford the famous "brands."

Tobacco production in Cuba, concentrated mainly but not exclusively in Havana, reached a high degree of perfection in the manual elaboration of habanos, with a careful selection of the leaves, for their appearance as well as for the quality of their combustion. The area of Vuelta Abajo gained fame for the superior quality of its leaves, thinner and more fragrant, to be used as wrappers, while the leaves from the area of Remedios or Partido, a much stronger variety, were used as fillers. Those who participate in the production of habanos must endure a long period of learning or apprenticeship, particularly those who do the rolling or torcido. They, along with all other workers in factories and shops, are under strict supervision by inspectors who scrutinize their skills and technical expertise at the different phases of the productive process. The purpose is to obtain perfect habanos, primarily in terms of their workmanship, aroma and texture. In some huge factories the processing of the leaves, their selection and distribution, are done in the ground floor, while the torcido or rolling is done in the upper floors in a huge room or salon called galera (galley), may be due to departmental similarities with print shops. Other processes include the despalillo the removal of stems), the escogida (selection), the fileteado (customizing of boxes) and the anillado (placing of cigar ring). The process of cleaning and removing the stems and "veins" of the cigar (despalillo) was historically women's work, while that of rolling (torcido) was reserved for men. Nowadays work at the tobacco factories is no longer gender-specific.

In Cuba, the complexity in the preparation of the habanos or puros has been aesthetically enhanced by the successful introduction of artistic cedar boxes, with corresponding chromolithographs and gilded rings for the different brands. This singular aspect added for the preservation of the cigars became an integral part of the evolution of the arts on the Island, an art recognized today by collectors throughout the world. Ever since the nineteenth century, these cedar boxes have improved the fragrance of the habanos while the chromolithographs (with their great variety of themes, colors and charm) made them attractive pieces of workmanship.

The totality of the Cuban habanos industry arrived in the United States: Cuban raw materials, the art of rolling the cigars, the fine art of constructing cedar boxes and their customized chromolithographs. Tobacco factories or tabaqueras, with their corresponding labor force from Cuba, flourished in Key West, Tampa and in other cities of Southern Florida, and to a lesser degree in New York and New Jersey. For many years some tabaquerías, such as those in Tampa and Key West, remained integrated to a "Cuban tobacco universe."

There are references to tabaquerías of this type in the United States from the decade of the 1830s, but their spectacular rise began in Key West after 1869. The appearance in Cuba of the huge tabaquerías preceded the United States installations, which also included chinchales, for a few years. Carlos Cabañas founded Cabañas y Carvajal in 1810; Jaime Partagás established the one carrying his name in 1827; and in 1834 Ambrosio Larrañaga founded his own make. All of them were located in the city of Havana.

In addition to the above-mentioned reasons for this migration of production (with its accompanying technology, capital, raw materials and labor transfer) from the Island, there is the fact that in 1868 a revolutionary struggle for independence had begun in the eastern portion of Cuba, a process lasting ten bloody years, during which Spanish colonialists clashed with Cubans fighting to attain full political sovereignty for the island. But the main causes have their origin in a deep crisis in the Cuban tobacco industry due to the high import duties imposed on the habanos by the United States, its main market. The United States, in its own economic crisis, hoped these protectionist measures would facilitate development of their own domestic habanos production. To all this was added the benefit of low duties for the importation of the raw materials for the production of cigars, as well as the low salaries paid to Cubans and to other emigrant workers who labored in the industry.

The first big producer who transferred its factory and employees was the Spanish Vicente Martínez Ybor who began to make habanos in Key West under his trademark "Príncipe de Gales," in honor of the future Edward VII of England, a famous smoker. Other manufacturers followed the steps of Martinez Ybor. Approximately 45 tabaquerías were operating by 1875 with 14,000 employees, the great majority of whom were Cubans. They made 24 million habanos a year for the United States market, a figure that increased to its highest level in 1890, the year 100 million habanos were made in some 130 tabaquerías. After 1890 production began to decline.

The shared tobacco culture generated a process of ethnic and socio-cultural exchange of the greatest importance: with the majority of its population of Cuban origin, the Florida city acquired a Latin Cuban character that, although somewhat diminished, is still preserved today.

Statistical data show that during the last decades of the nineteenth century, the resident community in Key West enjoyed the highest per capita income in the United States. The income distribution must have been very uneven since the salaries of the workers in the tobacco industry were always below their economic yield.

Key West and the tobacco industry prospered for more than a decade, but in the 1880s worrisome signs of deterioration began to appear due to, among other causes, the unmet demands of the workers. These claims led to a succession of strikes and confrontations between capital and labor and the desire on the part of some main producers to expand the industry. This expansion was hindered by the absence of drinking water in Key West and the lack of land communications with the continent as well as by the proximity of the Island of Cuba, a source of labor instability because of frequent visits by many workers from Key West. This situation drove a group of manufacturers to Tampa, then a small settlement with the advantages of a better transportation system. Ships, in addition to the rail-road, and certain benefits given by the authorities to the industrialists, including even the use of the local police in case of labor disturbances, made Tampa an enticing choice for the producers.

Once more, Martínez Ybor was a pioneer in moving on with his company, and by promising his workers certain advantages, such as housing and a degree of profit sharing by means of bonuses. Other producers also granted these new benefits, which already had some precedence in Key West. Such practices, once fully realized, were the genesis of Ybor City, Tampa's beautiful pride, and its captivating architecture, charming setting and history. In May 1886, around 200 Cuban tabaqueros arrived in Tampa by ship, coming from Key West and Havana. At the end of the year they amounted to 3,000 Cuban and Spanish workers. In 1934 Ybor City's population surpassed that of Key West reaching 30,000 inhabitants, composed of three main groups of immigrants: Cubans, Spaniards and Italians. As in the case of Key West, they infused this city with a strong and distinctive Latin character.

For many years, sharing families and bur-dens, the histories of Cuba, Key West and Tampa were tightly and inevitably intertwined. The colonial conflict in the island had intensified, when the war against Spain broke out again in 1895, culminating in 1898 when the United States intervened using as a pretext the explosion within, and subsequent sinking of, the ironclad cruiser Maine in Havana Bay. This led to the first military occupation of Cuba, between 1898 and 1902, by the powerful country from the North. In 1902, Cuba was granted an independence that was constitutionally encumbered by amendments and by other legal measures imposed by the increasing process of imperial domination practiced by the United States.

The context of protectionism in the United States reached its highest level by 1890, with serious additional impact on the Cuban tobacco industry. These are the years when James Duke, the main partner in Duke Sons and Company attained more than 90% of the cigarette market in the United States, as a result of his advantageous Bonsack machine. In addition, he benefited by an even greater rise of import duties on Cuban exports, including raw tobacco.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the American Tobacco Company gained control of some 20 factories in Havana, under the auspices of the American Cigar Company and then under the Habana Tobacco Company, which later became Cuban Tobacco. It thus gained total domination of the manufacturing portion of the multimillion dollar tobacco business, a de facto empire that the Anti-Trust Sherman Act (1890) barely weakened or merely affected in form not its essence due to Cuba's dependency status.

The high density of Cubans among the population of Key West during the last decades of the nineteenth century engendered another effect which should not be overlooked: their active participation (even decisive participation in some instances) in the process of independence taking place in their fatherland. This is especially true with respect to fundraising activities for the support and development of the independence movement, and for the organization and possible dispatch of expeditions. For years these expeditions were regularly supported, leading to their being labeled "filibuster enterprises" by the United States Government, that is to say, unlawful and prohibited.

This other side of the history of the bonds between Cuba and Key West is not separate from to the north/south quarrel that led the United States into a devastating Civil War, between 1861-1865. The North had abolished slavery for its own interests while the southern states had attempted to add Cuba as another slave state at their service.

At the beginning of the 1850s, two expeditions departed from the southern United States precisely for that purpose, headed by the Venezuelan General Narciso López. Both of them failed and López was captured and executed in Havana in 1852. Many North Americans took part in those expeditions, among them Mr. Quitman, the Governor of Mississippi.

The victory of the North in the Civil War led to changes in the strategy for the territorial expansion of the United States, maintaining the Island of Cuba as one coveted goal. A policy called "patient waiting" (la espera paciente) was adopted which, as mentioned above, was temporarily effective during the events that hastened the Cuban transition years between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Planning expeditions to support insurgency in the Island and clandestine efforts under the watchful eye of the United States authorities in Key West and their convenient Naval Base there, the Cubans relied on their consistent will to endure economic sacrifices as well as to offer their lives for the cause of a Free Cuba. They also relied on their own organizations, numerous patriotic clubs, like the glorious Club San Carlo, where patriotic sentiment was preserved. They also relied on the local settlers and were bolstered by the persuasive visits of the most outstanding heroes of the revolutionary cause in nineteenth-century Cuba: men of the stature of Serafín Sánchez, Ramón Leocadio  and José Dolores Poyo, all local patriots, and Máximo Gómez, Antonio Maceo and José Martí, passionate visitors who aroused courage, visiting clubs, private homes and tabaquerías.

In spite of the fact that Spain controlled the seas, especially by having acquired in 1870 30 gunboats made in the United States, during the Ten Year War (Guerra de los Diez Años) numerous expeditions were organized in Key West. Even when these expeditions could not depart from its bay, attempts were made to set out from other places like Nassau, Jamaica and other islands, with much risk and uncertainty. That was the gist of the situation until 1898: in the last stages of the war, the most noted expeditions left from various places in vessels like The Three Friends, The Dauntless and The Laurada. Notwithstanding the North-American Neutrality Act, the large number of spies from Spain operating in Key West, the vigilance by the United States Coast Guard, endless protests and official denunciations by the Spanish government, the bold organization and daring dispatch of expeditions, with Key West as one of the central essential sites, were unrelentingly supported against all odds. These persistent activities united once more the histories of the United States and Cuba, along with a unity in manufacturing and other activities in Cuba, particularly Havana, and its brotherly cities in the North: Key West and Tampa.

After a visit seeking revolutionary support in May 1894, José Martí wrote to his friend Gonzalo de Quesada about the Cayo Hueso of the Cubans: 

About the Key I have no words to tell you, not even the newspapers can tell you about it. I have met the settled share: I let them alone when the clique expected me to renovate the war: the sky felt — as of inflamed steel — from the glare of their souls. I "play the lyrics," as they say in Mexico, very few times; but — in our deepest intimacy - 1 should make justice to that legitimate greatness.

To "play lyrics" is equivalent in Mexico to feeling a deep emotion for something great and touching, as the best poetry or the best song. This deep emotion is what Martí considered the equivalent of his living together with the Cuban tabaqueros in Key West, where he arrived from Tampa for the first time, sick, at the end of December 1891. A few days later, already in January 1892, he presided over a meeting with leading members of different Cuban associations and presented for their approval the constitutional statutes for the Cuban Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Cubano) that he chaired later as the Delegate.

The definitive approval of the Party's Rules and Statutes, whose objectives were to gain independence for Cuba and to work for the liberation of Puerto Rico, was reached by all of the Cuban associations of Key West, Tampa and New York on April 10, 1892.

There were days in Key West when Marti spoke five times: in tobacco factories, social clubs and meetings, at the cloisters of institutes like the Instituto San Carlos, or from the terrace of the house — also historic today — of the noble Cuban patriot Teodoro Pérez, the owner of one of the tabaquerías. For Cubans living in Cayo Hueso, also called "el peñón" (the Rock), the speeches were a revelation as well as a demonstration of expressive mastery and of pure patriotism. On occasions, there were women at those activities, repeated in subsequent years, who removed the few jewels of their humble existence and handed them over in order to raise the funds needed for the grand common goal of a free Island of Cuba. The Cayo Hueso émigrés were, according to the Apostle, "those who have never let the fire be extinguished at their altars."

This immeasurable relation between Key West and Cuba — as one may confirm demo-graphically, economically, politically and culturally — has been of a constant although irregular intensity. Its period of highest prominence comprised the years we have reviewed, highlighted by the emigration of Cuban tobacco workers and industry from the Island to the nearest United States territory.

Its decline began when an important portion of the industry and of the families began to move to Tampa, thus initiating a process through which the Floridian Key lost its former vitality and richness. In the 1920s, Key West was already a shadow of what it had been, with a diminished population, many abandoned buildings and a deserted commercial center. It was the result of an inverse process to that corresponding to the flourishing of the tabaquerías, and from which it only recovered when it became the important tourist center it is today. This recovery took place after the great depression of the early 1930s, under the fostering policy of the Roosevelt administration, funded by the famous Florida Emergency Relief Administration (F.E.R.A.). In the meantime, for many years before, Cuba had entered into a permanent crisis, which extended for decades.