American Millionaires Buck Bush for a Cuban Cigar
Feb. 27, 2005 — -- Cuba put on its annual cigar festival this week. And while President Bush's crackdown on travel to the Caribbean island kept the usual entertainment personalities and executives away, there were plenty of Americans among the cigar aficionados from around the world feasting on shellfish, sipping rum and smoking the world's most popular premium cigars.
Cuba sells some 120 million hand-rolled premium cigars each year, 70 percent of the world market not including the United States, where they are banned under the 43-year-old trade embargo on the communist-run country.
Some four million genuine Cuban cigars and a few million fakes are consumed in the United States each year, trade sources estimate, despite being prohibited under the embargo.
"It's like anything you can't get. It always tastes better," said Paul, an American sitting on the veranda of the Club Havana puffing on a Montecristo, Cuba's best-known and most expensive cigar.
Just Like the Good Ol' Days
Paul and a group of his American friends were dining at what was once an exclusive beachfront club frequented by former dictator Fulgencio Batista. On the outskirts of a crumbling but still enchanting Havana, the club is now open to foreign visitors.
Paul said 15 of his friends from different U.S. states had come to the festival through Canada. (The American visitors asked ABC News to withhold their last names because they were in Cuba illegally and risked being fined on their return to the United States.)
Five or six of the Americans were millionaires, according to Paul. Most were ex-military, some Vietnam vets, and one older man was visiting for the first time since 1954, when, as a captain in the U.S. Marines, he had been invited by a U.S. general he was friendly with to a three-day party hosted by Batista.
"It was like a dream," Joe reminisced of the night life back in 1954. He described the gala dinner complete with Mafia boss Meyer Lansky sitting at the head table, and said he had a conversation with one of the Gambino brothers.
"I'm having a ball this time around too," he said, looking over the club balcony to the hundreds enjoying a gourmet dinner at tables along the beach.
It was perfect weather. The palm trees swayed and the sea lapped the shore. After a first course of lobster bisque, caviar and oysters, a jazz band struck up a tune as Canadian salmon and caribou were served with wine.
Welcome, Comrades-in-Cigars
The five-day Habanos Festival kicked off on Monday and was a long party of good food and drink, endless cigars, visits to tobacco fields and factories, and seminars on the art of cigar smoking and a cigar paraphernalia trade fair.
"We have no problem if Americans smoke our cigars," said Oscar Basulto, co-president of Habanos S.A., a joint venture between the state-owned Cuban tobacco company and the Spanish-French tobacco group Altadis.
"There are many Habanos lovers in the United States even though we cannot sell them there. I have no idea how many are smoked because people have to go outside to buy a Cuban cigar," he said.
Some of the Americans at the table said they had their cigars mailed to them.
"It's my constitutional right to travel and smoke what I want," said one of the millionaires. "Our Cuba policy is stupid. We should be in here getting in position, like the Canadians, for the post-Castro era."
Harboring Habanos
Cuban President Fidel Castro has the United States surrounded by cigar stores, said Marc Melison, a Canadian who runs a Casa del Habano cigar store in Montreal. The Casa del Habano stores are franchise retail outlets owned by Habanos S.A.
There are usually one or two Casas de Habanos in a country, which then distribute the cigars to other outlets. But there are four of the outlets in Canada, eight in Mexico and six in Caribbean nations other than Cuba.
Joe and Tom, cigar smugglers who said they buy from a Casa del Habano in Mexico and sell them in the southern United States, said the Mexican outlet paid for their trip, but refused to give details about how they conduct their business.
Jose Lugo, Canada's chief Cuban cigar distributor, said 2.7 million premium hand-rolled Cuban cigars were sold in Canada last year and 500,000 machine-made ones. He said that 40 percent went to Americans.
"Movie stars come in or send others for cigars all the time," he said. "Last year, one of New York's most famous baseball players bought some boxes at around $500 a box of 25. I asked him how he got them home and he said he came in a private jet and his trainer would mix them in with the dirty laundry before going back."