the mavros story
In the wake of the Cuban war of independence, two brothers fled to Mexico. They brought with them tabaco negro Cubano, Cuban Black Tobacco plants.
The brothers settled in Veracruz and established their cigar plantation and company in the area of San Andrés Tuxtla. The ideal climate and land, and the unique pairing of Cuban tobacco with Mexican soil, established it as a premiere tobacco growing region.
In the prelude to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the workers of the cigar company organised a series of strikes. The outstanding quality of their cigars, together with the ideological force of the workers’ class identity, made these puros the favourite smoke of Mexican revolutionaries – especially among the charro generals who fought, on horseback, for the land to be returned to the people.
After the revolution, the tobacco farms were nationalized in agrarian reforms and working conditions improved in the cigar factories. Years later, the workers in San Andrés Tuxtla organised yet another major strike, continuing their tradition of labour organising. The owners caved in, closed the 120-year-old company and left the top of the line, antique machinery to the workers.
This became the first and only cigar cooperative in Mexico.
It now works exclusively with Mavros, continuing a centuries old tradition of creating master blends of Cuban Black Tobacco grown in San Andrés Tuxtla’s fertile, volcanic, nutrient rich soil.
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