HAVANA, Cuba. – In the country that was the largest producer and exporter of the best tobacco in the world, non-smokable figs made from discarded cigarette butts, tobacco casings, rice husks, dried herbs and particles have regained the prominence they achieved more than half a century ago. of everything that combusts or serves to increase the wisps of smoke from a bad cigarette, more harmful than others and cheap, rolled up in sheets of school notebooks, books or magazines.
Due to their aura of clandestineness, they were baptized in popular slang as “tupamaros”, in allusion to the guerrilla movement that operated in Uruguay in the early 1970s.
The also named “ropepechos” served as palliatives against the stress caused by the abrupt or gradual disappearance of the black cigarettes of the Ligero, Popular and Vegueros brands, and the blonde Aromas and Dorados, harvested in the plains of Vuelta Abajo, Viñales, in the province of Pinar del Río.
Like many other things, those “cigars” or explosive tobaccos that, under the brands Reloba, Moya and Crédito, caused cramps in the smokers’ jaws due to the countless and intense puffs to keep them lit, also disappeared from the heritage horizon of Cuban smokers. , in addition to the fear that those tagarninas made with the guts and leaves discarded in the land of the Cohíba, Coronas and Montecristo.
However, while Cuban smokers choked on coughing attacks caused by inhaling that grayish and nauseating smoke as the only option in the face of the scarcity of cigarettes and the rise in their prices, Fidel Castrothe largest grower and landowner that Cuba has ever had, ordered the construction of a Habanos factory for his exclusive consumption, with the best raw materials and in different vitolas, under the names of Cohíbas Lanceros and Laguito I.
But, the generosity of the then Cuban ruler to satisfy his ego and his hedonism did not prevent his “revolutionary magnanimity” from putting an exclusive and high-quality Cuban product, like the cigar, at the service not of the Cuban people but of the poor of the land, but of political personalities such as the satrap Saddam Hussein, of Iraq, and Queen Elizabeth II, whom he honored with his exclusive vitola “Laguito No. I, King of the world.”
More than 50 years have passed since that discriminatory distribution of the best tobacco in the world among the rich and celebrities who enjoy it anywhere in the world. And today, the Cubans who plant, cultivate, harvest and make it have no right or financial possibilities to access the most humble vitola of the legendary Habanos brand. They can only be enjoyed by those in power in Cuba.
Most Cuban smokers have had to return to tupamaros.
In your article “Smoking is not a pleasure”published in CubaNet On December 16, the writer Jorge Ángel Pérez reported that given the shortage, the shortage of supplies in state establishments and foreign currency markets and the intermittence or nullity of the regulated quota offered by the ration book (at a rate of four packs and two cigars for people over 18 years of age residing in Cuba), smoking has become another of the permanent nightmares that afflict both “mounted” and ordinary Cubans.
The author of the novels Smoking I wait and The candid walker He assures in his article that “a box of H. Upmann has already reached 600 pesos, but tomorrow that price will be somewhat higher, or much more.” And the passing of the days has proven him right: on December 29, a box of Popular with a filter cost no less than 700 pesos in Central Havana. Right now, they are selling them for 1,000 pesos and more in Central Havana
The “smokers”, desperate, faced with the unattainable prices of the H. Upmann, Populares (Red or Green), the Rothmans and even the Criollo “breakers”, abandon their dreams of giving a “kick” to a legitimate cigarette that does not they can buy, and they turn to the tupamaro. And some also “chemical”much cheaper, captivating and quicker to – if it doesn’t kill – fly far away, at least for a while.
