“My responsibility as ‘el lector’, which means ‘the reader’ in English,” I explained, “is to read to the workers who roll the beautiful cigars such as these we gentlemen are smoking.” I held mine up for consideration. “I sit at a high platform in the middle of the floor of the factory for several hours and read from newspapers, periodicals, various novels and other literature as requested by the workers, translating them if necessary into Spanish.”

 The most humble cigar maker houses–“the shotgun”–had a front porch, a small living room, a bedroom, a kitchen and a backyard. The first houses built had no electricity, water or indoor plumbing.

Cigar labels, whether adorned by an attractive woman or a famous writer, are among the earliest forms of popular advertising, illustrating the country's shift from an industrial economy to one based on consumer goods. The cigar labels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are also particularly rich in symbolic imagery and are often "windows to the past," depicting contemporary events, celebrities, and social life.

In the 1800s and 1900s, millions of immigrants came to this country hoping to escape religious and social discrimination, political unrest and financial struggles. The individual achievements of three of these immigrants, Arturo Fuente, Angel Oliva, and J.C. Newman, would ultimately impact the cigar industry in Tampa and in the world. 

Since the town of Sancti Spiritus, Cuba is by the Yayabo River, some say the shirt was originally called the yayabera. Others say it was named for the tart fruit, the guava. Workers frequently wore the shirts as they ate their lunch in the shade of the guava trees. It even became the uniform of the resistance fighters in Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain. When people started moving to Florida from Cuba in the late 1880s, they brought the shirts with them.