History
The
tobacco plant originally came from South America. Even though it is
impossible to state exactly when it was brought to the largest island
in the Antilles, it can be said that that happened between 3000 and
2000 B.C. Europeans
were introduced to this planta source of great physical and
spiritual pleasure when they first reached the Americas. It didn’t take
long for the Old Continent to develop a veritable passion for it. As
was only to be expected, Spain had the most smokers who were also the
first to be subjected to terrible punishments for smoking. The
habit later spread to Persia, Japan, Turkey and Russia, where the
cruelest punishments were established. Curiously, as bans on smoking
gained ground, tobacco was increasingly used for medicinal purposes. The
monopoly remained in effect until June 23, 1817, when a royal decree
did away with the monopoly, permitting free trade between Cuba and the
rest of the known world as long as it was through Spanish ports. No
slaves were used in tobacco-growing. Sugarcane wasn’t such a delicate
crop, and slaves could be used in its cultivation and harvesting, but,
as José Martí said, tobacco plants had to be handled as
carefully as if they were fine ladies. Immigrants from the Canary
Islands worked in the tobacco fields, laying the foundations for a very
special breed: Cuban farmers. The
19th century provided the final reaffirmation of Cuba’s tobacco
production. Suffice it to say that, in 1859, there were nearly 10,000
tobacco plantations and around 1300 cigar factories in the capital.
Cuba entered the 20th century in very precarious conditions, for its
devastating wars of independence had just ended. 
The aborigines considered tobacco a miraculous medicine and an
essential element in their religious, political and social ceremonies.
It was a part of their agriculture and an inseparable adjunct of life.
On April 11, 1717, King Philip V established a royal monopoly on
tobacco-growing in Cuba a decision which has gone down in history as
the Estanco del Tabaco. Tobacco-growers who opposed the onerous law
lost their lives.