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Through the rise and fall of empires, ideologies, and economies, tobacco grown on the tiny island of Cuba has remained an enduring symbol of pleasure and extravagance. Cultivated as one of the first reliable commodities for those inhabitants who remained after conquistadors moved on in search of a mythical wellspring of gold, tobacco quickly became crucial to the support of the swelling Spanish Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Eventually, however, tobacco became one of the final stabilizing forces in the empire, and it ultimately proved more resilient than the best laid plans of kings and queens. Tobacco, and those whose livelihoods depended on it, shrugged off the Empire's collapse and pressed on into the twentieth century as an economic force any state or political power must reckon with. Cosner explores the history of this golden leaf through the personal narratives of farmers, bureaucrats, and laborers, all struggling to build an independent and lucrative economic engine. Through conquest, rebellion, colonial and imperial schemes, and the eventual Communist revolution, Cuban tobacco and cigars became a luxury item that commanded loyalty that defied mere borders or embargoes. Ultimately, The Golden Leaf is a story of two carefully cultivated products: Cuban tobacco, and its lofty reputation.

The practice of reading aloud has a long history, and the tradition still survives in Cuba as a hard-won right deeply embedded in cigar factory workers’ culture. In El Lector, Araceli Tinajero deftly traces the evolution of the reader from nineteenth-century Cuba to the present and its eventual dissemination to Tampa, Key West, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. In interviews with present-day and retired readers, she records testimonies that otherwise would have been lost forever, creating a valuable archive for future historians. Through a close examination of journals, newspapers, and personal interviews, Tinajero relates how the reading was organized, how the readers and readings were selected, and how the process affected the relationship between workers and factory owners. Because of the reader, cigar factory workers were far more cultured and in touch with the political currents of the day than other workers. But it was not only the reading material, which provided political and literary information that yielded self-education, that influenced the workers; the act of being read to increased the discipline and timing of the artisan’s job.

Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar. Fernando OrtizIntroducción. Bronislaw MalinowskiConocido y amado a Cuba desde los días de una temprana y larga estancia mía en las islas Canarias. Vara los canarios Cuba era la «tierra de promisión», adonde iban los isleños a ganar dinero para retornar a sus nativas tierras en las laderas del Pico de Teide o alrededor de la Gran Caldera, o bien para arraigarse de por vida en Cuba y solo volver a sus patrias islas por temporadas de descanso, tarareando canciones cubanas, pavoneándose con sus modales y costumbres criollas y contando maravillas de la tierra hermosa donde señorea la palma real, donde extienden su infinito verdor los cañaverales que dan el azúcar y las vegas que producen el tabaco. Después de iniciar de tal manera mis contactos con Cuba desde mi primera juventud, fui también ligado a ese país andando el tiempo, al conocer él nombre de Fernando Ortiz así como su obra sociológica. Sus investigaciones acerca de las influencias africanas en Cuba, sus estudios de los aspectos económicos, sociales y culturales que ofrecen los recíprocos influjos entre los africanos y los latinoamericanos, me impresionaron siempre como una obra modelo.Así, pues, cuando al fin me encontré personalmente con Fernando Ortiz durante mi primera visita a La Habana, en noviembre del año 1929, fue para mí a la vez de provecho y de placer si abusé de su tiempo y paciencia más allá de lo permitido por un conocimiento casual. Como era de esperar, con frecuencia discutimos los dos sobre esos interesantísimos fenómenos sociales que son los cambios de cultura y los impactos de las civilizaciones. El doctor Ortiz me dijo entonces que en su próximo libro iba a introducir un nuevo vocablo técnico, el término transculturación, para reemplazar varias expresiones corrientes, tales como «cambio cultural», «aculturación», «difusión», «migración u osmosis de cultura» y otras análogas que él consideraba como de sentido imperfectamente expresivo. Mi respuesta desde el primer momento fue de entusiasta acogida para ese neologismo. Y le prometí a su autor que yo me apro­piaría de la nueva expresión, reconociendo su paternidad, para usarla constante y lealmente siempre que tuviera ocasión de hacerlo. El doctor Ortiz amablemente me invitó entonces a que escribiera unas pocas palabras acerca de mi «conversión» terminológica, y ello fue el motivo de mis presentes párrafos.

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue to the English Edition -- Introduction -- Part One. Reading Aloud in Cigar Factories Until 1900 -- One. Cuba -- Two. From Cuba to Spain: Reading Aloud in Emilia Pardo Bazán's La Tribuna -- Part Two. \"Workshop Graduates\" and \"Workers in Exile\": Reading Aloud in the United States and Puerto Rico, 1868-1931 -- Three. Key West -- Four. Tampa -- Five. Luisa Capetillo: Lectora in Puerto Rico, Tampa, and New York -- Part Three. Cigar Factory Lectores in Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic 1902-2005 -- Six. Cuba, 1902-1959 -- Seven. Cuba, 1959-2005 -- Eight. Mexico: The Echoes of Reading -- Nine. The Dominican Republic: Reading Aloud and the Future -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Introduction -- Chapter One -- Chapter Two -- Chapter Three -- Chapter Four -- Chapter Five -- Chapter Six -- Chapter Seven -- Chapter Eight -- Chapter Nine -- Epilogue -- Bibliography -- Index.

From the long-stemmed pipe to snuff, the water pipe, hand-rolled cigarettes, and finally, manufactured cigarettes, the history of tobacco in China is the fascinating story of a commodity that became a hallmark of modern mass consumerism. Carol Benedict follows the spread of Chinese tobacco use from the sixteenth century, when it was introduced to China from the New World, through the development of commercialized tobacco cultivation, and to the present day. Along the way, she analyzes the factors that have shaped China’s highly gendered tobacco cultures, and shows how they have evolved within a broad, comparative world-historical framework. Drawing from a wealth of historical sources—gazetteers, literati jottings (biji), Chinese materia medica, Qing poetry, modern short stories, late Qing and early Republican newspapers, travel memoirs, social surveys, advertisements, and more—Golden-Silk Smoke not only uncovers the long and dynamic history of tobacco in China but also sheds new light on global histories of fashion and consumption.

Life expectancy was less than 60 years. Since 2002, successive governments have focused on rebuilding the country. In recent years, there has been a push by the government and by non-governmental organisations to provide people with nutrition-based agricultural support, including educating parents about healthy food they can produce and eat including sweet potatoes and leafy greens, and the benefits of preserving traditional recipes that are unique to Timor-Leste. According to a WHO survey in 2014, a fifth of all adults have three or more NCD risk factors, including smoking, inadequate diet, high blood pressure, alcohol use, and inadequate physical activity. According to the 2014 WHO survey, 70% of men consume tobacco in some form.

Urban agriculture in Cuba is often promoted as an example of how agroecological farming can overcome the need for oil-derived inputs in food production. This article examines the geographical implications of Cuba’s low-carbon urban farming based on fieldwork in five organopónicos in Pinar del Río. The article charts how energy flows, biophysical relations, and socially mediated ecological processes are spatially organised to enable large-scale urban agricultural production. To explain this production system, the literature on Cuban agroecology postulates a model of two distinct modes: agroecology versus industrial agriculture. Yet this distinction inadequately explains Cuba’s urban agriculture: production in the organopónicos rather sits across categories, at once involving agroecological, organic-industrial, and petro-industrial features. To resolve this contradiction, a more nuanced framework is developed that conceptualises production systems by means of their geographical configuration. This provides analytical clarity—and a political strategy for a low-carbon, degrowth agenda.

In the half century since the 1959 Cuban Revolution, El Habano remains the premium cigar the world over; but both before and since 1959, the seed, agricultural and industrial know-how, and human capital have been transplanted to replicate that cigar in a process accentuated by upheavals and out-migration. The focus here is on a little-known facet of the interconnected island and offshore Havana cigar history, linking Cuba with Connecticut and Indonesia: from when tobacco was taken from the Americas to Indonesia and gave rise to the famed Sumatra cigar wrapper leaf; through the rise and demise of its sister shade wrapper in Connecticut, with Cuban and Sumatra seed, ultimately overshadowed by Indonesia; and the resulting challenges facing Cuba today. The article highlights the role of Dutch, U.S., British, and Swedish capital to explain why in 2009 the two major global cigar corporations, British Imperial Tobacco and Swedish Match, were lobbying Washington, respectively, for and against the embargo on Cuba. As the anti-smoking, antitobacco lobby gains ground internationally, the intriguing final question is whether the future lies with El Habano or smokeless Swedish snus. En el medio siglo que ha transcurrido desde la Revolución Cubana en 1959, El Habano sigue siendo globalmente el puro de lujo, pero tanto antes como después de 1959, la semilla, el conocer agrícola e industrial, y el capital humano se han trasplantado para replicarlo, en un proceso acentuado por eventos y movimientos migratorios. El enfoque aquí es sobre una faceta poco conocida de la historia de El Habano tanto fuera como dentro de la isla, que vincula Cuba con Connecticut, Estados Unidos e Indonesia: desde cuando el tabaco se llevó de las Américas a Indonesia, dando lugar a la capa afamada de la hoja Sumatra; pasando por el auge y declive de la hermana capa tapado – shade – en Connecticut, de la semilla cubana y la de Sumatra, pero que fue eclipsada finalmente por Indonesia; y los desafios resultantes Cuba enfrenta hoy día. Se pone de relieve el papel del capital holandés, estadounidense, británico y sueco para explicar porqué en 2009 las dos corporaciones mayores globales del puro, British Imperial Tobacco y Swedish Match, estuvieron presionando en Washington a favor y en contra, respectivamente, del embargo contra Cuba. En la medida en que se fortalezca la campaña internacional en contra del humo y del tabaco, la intrigante pregunta final es si el futuro está con El Habano o con el snus sueco, sin humo.

The practice of reading aloud has a long history, and the tradition still survives in Cuba as a hard-won right deeply embedded in cigar factory workers' culture. InEl Lector, Araceli Tinajero deftly traces the evolution of the reader from nineteenth-century Cuba to the present and its eventual dissemination to Tampa, Key West, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. In interviews with present-day and retired readers, she records testimonies that otherwise would have been lost forever, creating a valuable archive for future historians. Through a close examination of journals, newspapers, and personal interviews, Tinajero relates how the reading was organized, how the readers and readings were selected, and how the process affected the relationship between workers and factory owners. Because of the reader, cigar factory workers were far more cultured and in touch with the political currents of the day than other workers. But it was not only the reading material, which provided political and literary information that yielded self-education, that influenced the workers; the act of being read to increased the discipline and timing of the artisan's job.