In 2008, I visited a very close friend and self-taught local historian Berta Martínez Paez in Artemisa, Cuba. One of a few highly educated Black residents, Berta’s reach into the community was broad. It encompassed many cigarmakers at Artemisa’s government-owned factory. This cigar label was evidence of that trust: one night, they invited Berta and me to meet them at the factory to give me several samples of a made-to-order cigar with this label. As they explained, a wealthy Republican Party congressman who publicly supported the US Embargo prohibiting the purchase and sale of Cuban cigars in the United States had privately relied on contacts in the Cuban regime to make, sell and ship dozens of boxes of cigars made in their factory under “special cover”: the cigar label was printed with the first lines of the American Constitution! Who would have guessed that such cigars, presumably distributed to friends, family and fellow politicians were actually made in Cuba? Berta’s cigarmaker friends wanted me to witness this so I could reveal the hypocrisy of what they assumed were many pro-Embargo American politicians.
