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

English-speaking readers will welcome this translation of the acclaimed El lector de tabaquería: Historia de una tradición cubana (2007), which won an honorable mention in the 2006 Casa de las Américas competition. Professor Tinajero takes us on a 140-year journey to Cuba, Spain, the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic as she traces the influence and vicissitudes of the Cuban practice of reading aloud in cigar factories, a custom which began in prison workshops. The practice was received with ambivalence in some places, and even banned occasionally in nineteenth-century Cuba and Mexico. Overall, however, the benefit of having a quiet, focused workforce outweighed the risk of having the workers overly excited or even too politicized by readers turned agitators. Accounts of fistfights over the choice of novels or over political differences emerge in this book, along with descriptions of rituals, such as the Mexican workers’ celebration of the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and memories of pensioners who had been readers or workers.

This is a thrilling read with beautiful pacing, as the author moves fluidly between the overview and the case study, or between accounts of newspapers published for cigar factory workers and lists of books selected by various readers. There are sections devoted to extraordinary figures. Highlights include an account of José Martí’s relationship with the cigar workers of Florida, his admiration of the lector and his use of the reader’s platform to publicize his letter to the Key West workers, and a succinct biography of Luisa Capetillo, the radical Puerto Rican labor leader, writer and lectora who galvanized workers in Cuba, Florida, and New York and advanced the cause of anarchist trade unions. The chapter on Cuba from 1959 to 2005 chronicles the expansion of the cultural and social activities of the cigar workers since the establishment of the socialist state, not only through political mobilization but also through educational programs, games and sports, and the introduction of literary readings and workshops by established and emerging writers.

The chapters on the Dominican Republic and Cuba include some extensive first-person accounts by cigar workers and readers, which complement the rich archival information against which they are set. There are touching anecdotes, such as the author’s unexpected discovery of living informants when she first went to Cuba to carry out archival research and also her interview with a cigar maker in Palmar Abajo, Dominican Republic, who asked her to read Rubén Darío’s poem “Marcha triunfal.” After hearing her, he said he was inspired to resume reading aloud and also to set up a free school for the local children, where he would begin with José Martí’s La Edad de Oro. The adaptation of the project to include these first-person accounts also allows room for the author to emerge as an agent, as in her emotional recollection of Martí’s letter to María Mantilla enjoining her to start a school for girls and suggesting a curriculum.

Tinajero’s research appears exhaustive, including familiarity with most if not all of the materials that were read out loud on the factory floor. Just as she did in her earlier monograph on orientalism in the Modernista literary movement, in this book she constructs an impressive model of rigorous cultural history made accessible through its design and detail and through a passion for the subject that is contagious.