Lexicon
Lector
The reader who recited newspapers and novels to rollers in Cuban cigar factories during their work.
The tradition dates to 1865, when the journalist Saturnino Martínez first arranged readings at the Havana factory El Fígaro — rolling occupies hands and eyes, not ears. Since then torcedores have listened to news, debates, and literature while cigars pass through their fingers. Tradition even holds that a marca owes its name to the lector: the rollers’ favourite novel was reportedly Dumas’s “The Count of Monte Cristo” — from which, the story goes, Montecristo was born.