Cigar-factory reader (lector)
Lector de tabaquería
- Date
- 1865 · confidence medium
- Place
- Havana, Cuba
- Credited to
- Saturnino Martínez, poet and cigar maker; Havana cigar workers
- Field
- Communication
What it is
From 1865, at the El Fígaro factory in Havana, cigar rollers paid a reader who, from a platform, read aloud newspapers, novels and political texts while they rolled cigars. The custom spread across Cuba and to Cuban-run factories in Florida.
The year and the name of Saturnino Martínez come from the Cuban historiographical tradition; colonial authorities and factory owners restricted it at various times. It is a social rather than technical invention.
What it led to
- informal literacy and working-class culture in the tobacco industry
- union organisation and political awareness among cigar workers
- spread to Key West and Tampa (Ybor City)