El Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory Reader (review)

There is an old story of a king who wanted to impress an important visitor with the power of his kingdom so he would not be tempted to invade it. To accomplish this, the king placed very ordinary-looking individuals along the road as the visiting leader approached. These individuals responded to the visitor’s questions in educated Latin as they worked the fields and pulled their carts. Just as the king planned, the visiting leader concluded that he dare not attack a kingdom that was so wealthy and advanced that it could afford to educate its farmers and livestock keepers at such a level, and the kingdom remained safe.

The story comes to mind when one reads El Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory Reader which tells the story of how cigar factory workers simultaneously attended to both hands and heads, combining their cigar making with their own cultural and political education. The book begins with a broad introduction to the history of reading aloud—perhaps a little too broad—and proceeds to a chronology of the development of the cigar factory reader, using both printed and oral sources. In the process, Tinajero weaves a narrative that treats not only the evolution of the “lector,” but also the development of the Latin American press, Latin American politics, and the labor movement. Perhaps one of the more interesting things about this book is its timeliness. As this review is being written, labor unions are responding to challenges in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio, inviting some reflection on the history and future of the labor movement. As Tinajero reminds us, it was Samuel Gompers, a cigar worker in New York City, who became one of the major figures in the American labor movement.

Lectors were introduced in the cigar factories in the mid-nineteenth century, on an informal basis. A cigar worker would read to the workers from novels or newspapers while they worked, and the other cigar workers would contribute cigars to his or her production to compensate for time lost. As Tinajero documents, the readings often included classic novels by the likes of Victor Hugo and Miguel de Cervantes, as well as poetry and timely political news from the newspapers. Tinajero chronicles the way in which the practice became institutionalized with permanent platforms for the readers that were, in some cases, stages, and professional readers who were paid from contributions by the cigar workers.

At times the employment of a cigar factory reader was an exercise in developing democracy. Who decided what would be read? How much input did the workers have into the lector’s offerings? How much input did the cigar factory owner have? For a period of time, Tinajero reports, cigar factory owners succeeded in banning readings in the factories.

If there is a downside to Tinajero’s narrative, it is that at times it veers off into an overabundance of detail, losing track of the central story, in some places chronicling the history of some of the publications favored by cigar factory readers, and in others delving into the biography of some of the authors favored by the cigar factory readers and their audiences.

Tinajero’s narrative reaches back before living memory, using newspaper sources and other historical documentation. A substantial portion of the book is a lead-up to the portions in which she relies on living narrators. Her narration includes the development of cigar making in Tampa, Florida, as well as in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. Throughout that development, we meet some of the major characters in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American history, including Jose Martí. But it is the lector and the lectora that are at the center of this narrative, which chronicles the impact of the tradition of reading aloud on history and culture, reminding us of the power of the human voice. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that voice was...