Images that smolder

My fascination with the world of cigars started with cigar boxes and cigar labels. These wooden boxes with intricate pictures of imaginary landscapes, which suggest the possibility of escaping to a magical place through the brevity of a smoke, have always been intriguing to me. Cigar brands have a certain allure, since some of them have been named after the greatest ill-fated love stories ever written; it’s as if the smoker is to experience the enraptured heights of romantic passion from a puff of a “Romeo y Julieta� or a “Madame Butterfly.�

When I was commissioned to write a play for New Theatre in Miami, I immediately turned to the world of cigars. The first thing I did was to place an old cigar box in front of me to invite the writing into my hands. I stared at the simple box for a long time, paying close attention to all its details. It seemed as if all the ingredients I needed for my play were in this container: love, literature, politics and loss of innocence. Themes I had explored in the past through my plays. And as it always happens, I had to close my eyes so I could dream up the world I was going to write about. The first image that came to me was that of a lector (reader) reading aloud to cigar workers in Tampa, Fla. The second image was of a woman in the same cigar company escaping the monotony of work through the story that was being read. As these images became a little clearer, I started to find my way back in time to the late 1920s, when the world of art played an important role in the tabaquerias (factories) as the lectores read to workers from world literature.

My association with cigars has always been related to escape.

As a child I was given a cigar box for my coloring pencils. The United States embargo on Cuba, the scarcity of food and material goods, forced Cubans to embrace the concept of recycling. Objects were assigned multiple functions and responsibilities. My cigar box with its landscape label of palm trees and women draped in flowing tulle became more than a pencil box. It became my box of dreams, my Houdini box in which I was able to escape everything that was happening around me. In those early years of political unrest and uncertainty, it seemed as though everyone in my house had to have his or her own circus act to escape reality.

Cigar smoke offered my father escape from his disenchantment with the revolution. The smoke rings out of his mouth, which seemed like circus rings to me, were more like smoke signals asking his friends in the States for political asylum. My mother had her own circus act. She used to find escape through prayer and used cigar smoke as a celestial envelope for sending her supplications to the divine. Her altar consisted of Catholic saints and African deities. Instead of using incense, she used to insert the burning end of the cigar into her mouth and exhale her breath through it. The result was a surge of smoke that bathed all her sacred statues in a blue cloud. I believe these mystifying smoke rituals proved to be miraculous when my family was allowed to flee the country in 1970.

Literary reveries are related to cigar smoke because they both have the capacity of escaping the weight of the world and defying the laws of gravity. Cigar workers were able to escape the monotony of manual labor through literary reveries. The art of listening to stories is analogous to the landscape of dreams. The listener collects words and draws pictures in his mind; the dreamer collects subconscious impressions and paints vivid images in his dreams. Literary reveries provide the listener with information about his individual essence. Dreams present the dreamer with a series of images and symbols that mirror his present life or past existence. Metaphors confer upon the listener emotions, which construct parallels that relate to his life. Perhaps these imaginary slights don’t offer immediate solutions to life’s difficulties, but to pause over a few lines and share human emotion can bring a sense of consolation and can alleviate reality.

The tradition of having lectores in the cigar factories can be traced to the Tainos Indians. For the Native Americans of Cuba, the sacred leaf of cohoba (tobacco) was tied to the language of the gods. The cohoba leaves were smoked or converted into powder that was inhaled through the nose. The cacique (chief Indian) used to communicate with the divine through these sacred leaves. A well-known Spanish colonialist, Bartolome de las Casas, described the indigenous rite in his “Apologetica Historia�: “And I witnessed how they celebrated the cohoba and it was extraordinary to see how they took it and what they said.... The one who began was the Cacique and all the rest remained quiet until he was finished; once he had consumed his cohoba, he held his head to one side for some time with his arms over his knees, and then he raised his face toward the sky, speaking certain words, which could’ve been a prayer.� In cigar factories, the lector became a sort of cacique who gave voice to the written words, and the cigar rollers became listeners who wrapped the spoken word in cigar leaves as their minds wandered to the heights of literature.

Reading with heart

The days at the cigar factories were divided into three sections: In the morning the lectores read from newspaper articles, in the afternoon they read from the proletarian press, and the later part of the day was saved for the sweet delicacy of the novel. Besides providing literary escape, the lectores were instrumental in facilitating awareness and mobilizing change in the workplace and the larger political arena. Cuba’s greatest poet and political leader, Jose Marti, read in the cigar factories of Tampa in the late 1800s. He believed that people who attended literary events were the ones who promoted ethics in politics and preserved the nation’s honor. He was a firm believer that the purpose of literature was to help humanity and that one could not know a country without knowing its literature.

Cigar laborers were mostly illiterate, but they could recite passages from “Don Quixote,� or a verse by Ruben Dario. These workers were similar to those musicians who can’t read music but can play it by ear. The workers demanded precision from the lectores and elicited coloratura when they read. Factory owners did not choose the lectores, the workers did. In the same way that an actor or an opera singer auditions for a role, the lectores had to audition before a group of cigar workers. A strong voice was imperative, clarity of speech was crucial, but more than anything the lectores had to read the novels with their hearts.

Even the Spaniards were not able to extinguish the sacred union of words and smoke, when they added their bloody chapter of infamy to history. In present-day Cuba, lectores still grace the cigar factories with their novels. In Tampa, the tradition came to an end at the beginning of the Depression. The introduction of machines to the cigar companies prohibited the listeners from fully surrendering their ears to the stories. Microphones were introduced to the workplace, but the necessary silence, which offers a stage for the spoken word, was missing. Finally, the lectores became a threat to the factory owners, who were hostile because of the labor press that was being read aloud to the workers. The lectores were removed from the factories in 1931.

After writing “Anna in the Tropics� and presenting a series of readings of the script throughout the country, I was told by an audience member that he knew of a lector who read in a hat factory. The image of a lector surrounded by workers makings hats stayed with me. Hats and words kind of go together. What words would not want to enter a hat and somehow be close to the mind? I guess nuptial ateliers would have been a good place for the lectores too, since the novels they read always spoke to the heart. I know that in my own humble way I’ve tried to give lectores a place in the theater, so they can read one more love story.

*

Tolstoy in the factory, lightening workers’ burdens

“Anna in the Tropics� is set in a cigar factory in 1929 Florida. The factory’s new lector is reading “Anna Karenina� to workers to help pass time as they hand-roll cigars. In this excerpt, Ofelia and her daughters, Marela and Conchita, argue with Cheche, half brother of Ofelia’s husband, over the need for lectores and plans to modernize the factory.

Ofelia: Only a fool can fail to understand the importance of having a lector read to us while we work.

Marela: Well, Cheche is not very happy with him.

Ofelia: That’s because Cheche is a fool.

Cheche: Now I haven’t said....

Ofelia: I heard what you told Palomo this morning and we’re not going to do away with the lector.

Cheche: All I said....

Ofelia: When I lived in Havana I don’t remember ever seeing a tobacco factory without a lector. As a child I remember sitting in the back and listening to the stories. That has always been our pride. Some of us cigar workers might not be able to read or write, but we can recite lines from Don Quixote or Jane Eyre.

Cheche: All I said was that I’m afraid we’re in for another tragic love story.

Palomo: I like love stories.

Marela: Me too.

Cheche: I would’ve preferred a detective story.

Marela: They’re not very literary, Chester.

Conchita: Well, I don’t know about you, but ever since he started reading “Anna Karenina� my mind wanders to Russia.

Marela: Me too. I have dreams and they are full of white snow, and Anna Karenina is dancing waltzes with Vronsky. Then I see them in a little room, and all the snow melts from the heat of their bodies and their skin. And I just want to borrow a fur coat from my friend Cookie Salazar and go to Russia.

Ofelia: He chose the right book. There is nothing like reading a winter book in the middle of summer. It’s like having a fan or an icebox by your side to relieve the heat and the caloric nights.

*

‘Anna in the Tropics’

Where: South Coast Repertory, Julianne Argyros Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: Opens Oct. 3. Runs Tuesdays-Sundays, 7:45 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m.

Ends: Oct. 25

Price: $27-$55

Contact: (714) 708-5555

Nilo Cruz won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for drama for “Anna in the Tropics.�