José Yglesias
Abel was twenty when [Eloisa] became an apprentice at sixteen, and he worked at the end of one long table, divided down the center by a low shelf, and she sat halfway in, next to the cigarmaker who was her master. Whoever went down the center aisle of the factory to get more leaf or tripa, the less select tobacco that went into the innards of the cigars, stopped to talk to Abel. If they were going across the street to the cafe, Abel always ordered coffee. He was neither bunchmaker nor roller but made cigars entirely by hand. He was the only cigarmaker of the younger generation entrusted with the corona-coronas, and they came off his hands with great ease. If he worked the full day without too many breaks for coffee or chats, he could make two hundred – other hand cigarmakers produced only one hundred – but most days he contented himself with one hundred and fifty and spent his last hour helping rollers – usually women – complete their quota for the day.
From his corner, he looked at Eloisa’s profile at the other side of the long table, and since he could have made cigars in the dark, he wooed her with his long-lashed eyes, black and shining like his hair, and with talk calculated to make Eloisa notice him. He did not have to. Eloisa noticed everything. That was her trouble as an apprentice; she sat there as at a movie, observing the whole place with wonder… Zola’s Germinal was being read afternoons by the reader who sat at a high platform in the middle of the factory, and when Eloisa felt confident enough to ask what had gone on in the story before she entered the factory, the others called on Abel.
The Truth About Them, pp. 90-91
The strike was lost and each cigarmaker went back to his factory on his own and begged for his old job. Grandfather waited to be called. That was when his old friend from New York proposed that they take over Old Paco’s Café. There was money to be made, he said, and Grandfather was eager, for it would make him the head of the family again. And yet he waited. He went to the factory and stood at the bottom of the steps when he expected the foreman would come down for lunch. Grandfather caught the foreman’s eye and nodded, and the foreman walked over. “How are you?” the man said. “When you did not come back I knew you must be doing well someplace else.” He extended his hand and Grandfather hesitated. The foreman frowned. “If you have not found a place… perhaps… but not at the same grade of cigars–“ Grandfather did not let him finish. “No, no, I am set,” he said, and shook the man’s hand.
Card playing was the only gambling that went on at his café. Grandfather and his partner did not run a numbers game, as did the other cafés in West Tampa and Ybor City, and the only liquor they served was beer. The café did not yield much more than what he had made at the factory, and Grandmother who had vowed to herself that she would not sell another jewel had to find more sewing to do. Grandfather felt no pride in the café, and when he said yes to Nicanor’s petition for Titi’s hand, he gave up his partnership and got a job in a factory. At least, he thought, it would not be at his café that Nicanor would play cards for stakes.
The Truth About Them, p. 178
Interviews with Jose Yglesias
Ybor City's Cigar Industry and Its Workers
The most provacative subject of Yglesias's writings is the cigar industry that proved so critical to the foundation of Ybor. Vicente Martinez-Ybor established the cigar factories in the 1880s after feeling labor troubles in Key West. Cigar makers followed the same protocols that they were familiar with in Cuba, often going on strike when demands were not met. Yglesias asks us to remember his Ybor City as "a radical, trade-union town," driven by workers' rights and "the Cuban revolutionary tradition."
A cigar factory in Ybor City. Photo courtesy of Special & Digital Collections, Tampa Library, University of South Florida.
Following the Cuban practice, Ybor City's cigar factories included el lector, an individual who read from the works of Cervantes, Zola, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Jules Verne, and more during the workday. The lectors preserved the spirit of revolution and workers' rights. As Yglesias explains, "Anarchist newspapers were read by the lectores until the United States entered the First World War. After the Bolshevik revolution, Communist papers were read, too...in Ybor City the readers irked the factory owners and during the Depression, they summarily did away with them." As a result, the cigarmakers went on strike "for culture," Yglesias asserts.
The following audio clips contain interviews with Jose Yglesias, who discusses various aspects of Ybor City's Cigar industry.
Inside a Ybor City cigar factory, where a lector reads in the background. Photo courtesy of Special & Digital Collections, Tampa Library, University of South Florida.