Wednesday, September 17 2008
This article from the
Miami Herald reports on the devastation Cuba has suffered in the wake of hurricanes Gustav and Ike. The damage tally is currently at $5 billion, which includes the island's precious tobacco fields, and may threaten the future of its cigar production.
SAN JUAN y MARTINEZ, Cuba -- Alejandro González spends his days touting the intricate craft of tobacco growing to tourists here on the western reaches of the island that produces the world's premier cigars.
But when Hurricane Ike blew through Cuba eight days after Hurricane Gustav's pass, Gonzalez, 35, a tobacco engineer/plantation guide at the Hoyo de Monterrey cooperative, joined an intense effort to move delicate tobacco leaves from their drying barns to stronger buildings in hopes of shielding them from the storm's fury.
Even so, more than half the crop was lost, González says. More than 3,000 tobacco leaf drying sheds and 8,600 homes for tobacco workers in the region, which lies about 112 miles southwest of Havana, also were destroyed.
Hurricanes devastate Cuba's tobacco industry
