A New Cigar Brand Coming from Mexico
Manuel Mavroleon is releasing his brand Mavros Cigars in the next few months. The first line that will be released is Revilucionarios. The name pays honor to the Mexican charro generals who used to smoke these kinds of cigars during the revolution of 1910.
The Mavros story
In the last few years of the 19th century, Jose Marti, Maximo Gomez, and Antonio Maceo formed an army of Cuban refugees to fight the Spanish occupation. In the wake of the Cuban dependence war, two brothers fled to Mexico. And in their belongings was taco 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 premier tobacco-growing region.
Mexican revolution
In the prelude to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the workers of the cigar company organized a series of strikes. The outstanding quality of the cigars, together with the ideological force of the workers’ class identity, made these puros the favorite smoke of Mexican revolutionaries. Especially among the charro generals. They fought on horseback, for the land to be returned to the people.
After the revolution, the tobacco farms were nationalized in agrarian reforms. Working conditions improved in the cigar factories. Years later, the workers in San Andrés Tuxtla organized yet another major strike, continuing their tradition of labor organizing. The owners caved in, closed the 120-year-old company, and left the top of the line, antique machinery to the workers.
The workers formed a cooperative. It became the first and only cigar cooperative in México. This cooperative now works exclusively with Mavros. Together they are continuing a centuries-old tradition of creating master blends of Cuban Black Tobacco grown in San Andrés Tuxtla’s fertile, volcanic, nutrient-rich soil. The torcedor draws on his 70 years of experience to create Revolucionarios ‒ a line of cigars that embodies the legacy of the Mexican revolution.
