| cigar smokers, it is always just "the embargo." After all, | | | | purchasing 1200 H. Upmann cigars the night before the |
| though governments declare trade and other kinds of | | | | embargo began. (Salinger himself was dispatched to |
| embargoes for various reasons all the time, no other | | | | make the purchase.) The trade embargo, in other |
| such order has so affected the lives of those who | | | | words, was signed into law by a man who was |
| smoke cigars as has the United States' trade | | | | himself no stranger to the taste of a fine Cuban cigar. |
| embargo against Cuba, created by executive order by | | | | But that's not the end of the story—and here it |
| John F. Kennedy in 1962 and in force ever since. At | | | | becomes doubly ironic again. As the embargo |
| the time, Cuba was the world's undisputed cigar capital, | | | | outlasted generations of activist efforts to change it (it |
| thanks both to the uniquely fine tobacco of its Vuelta | | | | even became federal law thanks to the 1992 Cuban |
| Abajo district and its history as the first place where | | | | Democracy Act and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act), |
| many Western explorers and colonists encountered | | | | even surviving the frequently-expressed criticism that it |
| the ancient ritual of rolled tobacco-leaf smoking. As a | | | | merely strengthens Castro while preventing needed |
| matter of fact, though, that "cigar capital" status is | | | | aid from reaching ordinary poor Cubans (even staunch |
| increasingly being challenged by offerings from | | | | conservative George Schultz, who was Ronald |
| Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican | | | | Reagan's secretary of state, has called the embargo |
| Republic—a fact that itself relates to our initial | | | | "insane"), the Cuban cigar industry has been challenged, |
| subject, The Embargo. | | | | and some might even say eclipsed, by cigar makers in |
| The trade embargo, banning imports to and exports | | | | neighboring countries. |
| from Cuba, is doubly ironic. After all, the two countries | | | | In what we might call the Stogie Diaspora, some of |
| had enjoyed close trade relations for years; indeed, | | | | Cuba's best-regarded, longest-established cigar-making |
| Cuba's political and economic ties to the United States | | | | families fled the country during any of the several |
| were seen as one reason for the latter's willingness to | | | | waves of emigration that have punctuated Castro's |
| go to war, in 1898, to secure the smaller island nation's | | | | reign. Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras |
| freedom from colonial Spain—a "freedom" that, | | | | have absorbed an especially high number of these |
| as many observers then and now have pointed out, | | | | once-Cuban powerhouses. These immigrants have |
| was sharply limited by Cuba's utter dependence on the | | | | flourished in their new homes, to the point where cigars |
| US. With the larger county accounting for a whopping | | | | from these countries routinely top international rankings. |
| percentage of the island's exports (eighty-two percent | | | | Though a Cuban cigar remains a peak memory for |
| as of 1877) and making periodic attempts at seizing | | | | many dedicated cigar smokers, the expertise of these |
| Cuba for itself throughout the nineteenth century (the | | | | Castro-evading expatriates has allowed these |
| most famous being the 1854 Ostend Manifesto), it's | | | | countries' cigar industries to attract some of the |
| widely thought that Cuba, by accepting the assistance | | | | prestige that once attached only to their island |
| of its neighbor to the north in its struggle for | | | | neighbor. For example, Nicaragua's importance as a |
| independence, merely exchanged one kind of | | | | source of cigars is so established that its cigar industry |
| colonialism for another, slightly less obvious version. | | | | has managed to survive not only the Sandinista-era |
| (Indeed, the guns had barely stopped firing when a | | | | decision to turn the country's tobacco crop to cigarette |
| US-owned company began offering Americans Cuban | | | | tobacco (which was thankfully reversed in the early |
| land; and US troops only left the country when its | | | | 1990s), but, more importantly, the utterly disastrous |
| leaders agreed to accept the Platt Amendment, which | | | | Hurricane Mitch, which left thirty percent of the |
| stipulated the US's right to intervene in the Cuban | | | | country's infrastructure standing. |
| economy and political process as desired.) Whether | | | | Adding insult, perhaps, to injury, many of these same |
| you think that Cuban-US relations prior to 1959 were | | | | countries have benefited from the assistance of |
| domineering, neo-colonialist, or just rather cozy, the | | | | Castro's Cuba over the years. In Honduras, for |
| Cuban revolution of 1959 put an end to that | | | | example, the two countries' history of cooperation |
| longstanding friendship. | | | | allowed the Hondurans to learn tobacco cultivation |
| The other major irony is that, according to aide Pierre | | | | from the experts (some of whom then decided to |
| Salinger, President Kennedy made a point of | | | | remain in country permanently!). |