Revolution and Embargo: The Great Rupture

In early 1959, Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries seized power in Havana — and within a few years the cigar world changed more profoundly than it had in the entire preceding century. The consequences of that rupture still divide the market today.

The Nationalisation

On 15 September 1960, the government nationalised the island’s private businesses — among them the great cigar factories. The H. Upmann factory, belonging to the Menéndez and García families, passed to the state along with the H. Upmann and Montecristo brands; the same fate befell the Partagás factory of Ramón Cifuentes. In February 1962, the government consolidated the entire industry into the newly created state enterprise Cubatabaco. The families who had built Cuba’s marcas across generations were left with nothing — most of them left the island.

The Embargo

On 3 February 1962, US President John F. Kennedy signed Proclamation 3447; it came into force on 7 February: a complete trade embargo against Cuba. For the cigar industry this meant the overnight loss of its most important export market — from that day forward, no Habano could legally enter the United States. What began as a Cold War foreign-policy measure has persisted in its essentials to this day, and it has divided the American market from the rest of the world into two distinct spheres.

Exile and Split Brands

The exiled families started again elsewhere — in Florida, the Caribbean and Central America — and took their brand names with them, most with the stated aim of recapturing the character of the old Habanos from new tobaccos. In 1972, a US court ruling in the dispute over the Montecristo rights confirmed that the exile producers were entitled to continue using their ancestral names in the United States. Since then, many of the great brands have existed in two versions: Montecristo, Partagás and Romeo y Julieta come as Cuban versions for the world market — and as non-Cuban versions, produced mainly in the Dominican Republic or Honduras, for the United States. Same name, different cigars: anyone standing in front of a shop shelf today is looking directly at the legacy of 1959 to 1962.