Honduras: The Home of Tobacco
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-11-13 11:24:10
Those who love cigars know that Honduras is one of the world's best places to make them. After all this Latin American country has been a prime tobacco-growing location for centuries and its cigar industry boomed again after 1959 when many longtime Cuban cigar makers fled the Castro regime for neighboring countries—including this one. No wonder that Honduran cigars—including those from La Fontana. Camacho. Carlos Torano and La Libertad—sell better than any others in the United States with the exception of the Dominican Republic. But how many of us know much about this rich fascinating country? Like the other Latin American countries which might be said to form the world's "cigar belt"—Cuba the Dominican Republic. Nicaragua. Brazil and Mexico—Honduras's past affects its position as a producer of fine tobaccos—and just possibly its future. Honduras is first of all a proud and epic country: the Mayan Empire during its classic period (150-900 CE) built cities near the present-day site of Copan bequeathing a set of ruins that beguile archaeologists and inspire visitors. Christopher Columbus "discovered" this country—already rich in lived history—on his fourth voyage of 1502 and even the story behind the country's name is romantic. Columbus it is held on reaching the Bay Islands near present-day Honduras's coast whispered the words "Gracias a Dios que hemos salido de esas Honduras": "Thank God we have emerged from those depths." "Honduras" means "depths," literally and metaphorically. Honduras was run by the Spaniards until 1821 when it along with the other Spanish American provinces of the Spanish Empire gained independence. Border disputes with other Latin American countries especially El Salvador have led to intermittent fighting through the years and the country has suffered under bouts of political oppression particularly during the 1980s (when extrajudicial executions torture and "disappearances" became frequent albeit not as common as in neighboring Nicaragua). Honduras remains a developing country especially after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 (which also destroyed much of Nicaragua): according to then-President Carlos Roberto Flores the superstorm destroyed half a century's worth of economic gain and developmental progress in less than a week. Seventy percent of that year's crop died—a small loss for smokers who depend on the country for its sublime tobacco but a barely-survivable one for the nation's small farmers. But the country did survive. In recent years it's even boasted an annual growth rate of seven percent—one of the best in Latin America. (Still half the population remains in poverty.)Along with the cultural and personal strength that allowed Hondurans to survive such a disaster the country is also strong in another kind of resource: ecological ones. In less than fifty thousand square miles it contains over six thousand species of plants two hundred kinds of reptiles and seven hundred bird species. In the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve—added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites in 1982—it boasts one of the world's great rainforests. These areas may hold the key to greater understanding of evolutionary and biological history or to new drugs. Like several other Latin American countries which depend largely on farming yet are blessed with ample ecological resources which must be maintained the country has faced and will continue to face a difficult balancing act in deciding how to use without exploiting its environmental riches (which include the soil in which its excellent tobacco is grown). Given tobacco's importance as a cash crop—it gives Hondurans something to sell to the United States and it also gives them a certain leverage with other Latin American countries as tobaccos of all types flourish in its soil—it's not surprising that Honduras is not following in the anti-smoking footsteps of say. Brazil. Percentages of smokers are still relatively high (in the low thirties for men a rate comparable to that of the US) and public smoking regulations are fairly light (you can't smoke on the bus or in the hospital basically). Perhaps this is one tobacco-producer that smokers should consider seeing firsthand. After all with its considerable natural beauty and light regulation of smoking this could be a cigar lover's paradise!
•Casual cigar owners often ask themselves: is a humidor really necessary? The answer is: only if you care about the quality and taste of your cigars. After all for some smokers the after-dinner cigar is more symbolic than anything - a conspicuous display perhaps of taste and leisure or a social or familial ritual. If however you smoke for taste - which is the best reason to smoke - you should probably invest in a humidor: a specially-constructed box designed to maintain your cigars in...
•Those who know their cigars well also by that same token know Brazil—albeit as a source of great tobacco rather than as a top cigar-producing nation. Brazilian tobacco mainly produced in the country's temperate northeastern and southern regions turns up in such world-class cigars as Carlos Torano's Toro but the country's cigar producers themselves haven't always gotten the same respect. But that may be about to change. After all. Brazilian cigars—including the Angelina. Dannemann and...
•To cigar smokers. Nicaragua is already legendary. Through regime change social upheaval and revolution this Latin American nation has produced some of the world's finest tobacco. And since the post-1959 cigar diaspora—when many of Cuba's great cigar makers fled the country to seek more propitious conditions than those they expected to find under Castro—it's produced many of the world's finest cigars too. Since 1959. Nicaragua has been a cigar powerhouse producing some of the...
•Many novice smokers have embarrassed themselves trying to smoke a cigar with the same frantic huff-and-puff energy that goes into cigarette smoking. But cigars aren't cigarettes any more than cheap beer is fine wine and just as you'd never guzzle a fine Cabernet Sauvignon you shouldn't just inhale a cigar. The first question to consider is of course the quality of the cigar. Handmade cigars are generally considered best. Machine-rolled cigars use scraps and bits of tobacco rolled...
•The 1990s were the best of times—and the worst of times—for the premium cigar industry. On the one hand the previously near-moribund pastime suddenly experienced huge growth in profits garnered new publicity and racked up all sorts of hipness points as a stressed-out workforce turned to cigars for that little touch of luxury that makes a day complete. On the other hand a wave of smoking bans across the country made it a somewhat dicey time to pick up the habit. As more and more cigar...
•We hand them out during bachelor parties. We give them to new fathers. We hand them out to potential business partners and employees (Sit down. Have a cigar.). It's no wonder then that cigars are also a well-known father's day gift. (For example a Google search turns up 442,000 possibilities for father's day cigar.) Cigars have that reputation—they're the gift that you give someone to help him slow down relax savor the moment. They have the classiness the gentlemanly appeal you want in a...
•For many of us casino gambling and cigar smoking go together like Frank and Bing. Generations of first-time Vegas visitors have enhanced their experience via frequent applications of cigar smoke just like those iconic Rat Packers of yesteryear with their impeccable suits suave manner and constantly-replenished supplies of alcohol and tobacco. Which made it all the more surprising for many cigar lovers when the Nevada legislature imposed a public-smoking ban in 2006. That ban doesn't yet...
•As the 1990s dawned few industries seemed deader than cigar sales and manufacture. From its height in the 1850s - when Cuba alone exported 356.6 million cigars - the cigar had fallen into virtual moribundity. Its market had been conquered by cheap ubiquitous cigarettes. Its image was tarnished in the United States by among other things the persistent (and not entirely unfounded) popular association between cigar smoking and the fat cats of the Gilded Age - a picture wedged into its place...
•Hunting is as old as humanity—older in fact—and as new as the latest high-tech gear they're selling at your local sporting goods store. Fossil evidence indicates that early humans were hunting with spears as long as 16,200 years ago and scientists estimate that we've been eating meat much longer than that—for nearly two million years a span of time that long predates the emergence of homo sapiens. And in that time we haven't merely hunted animals—we've made the experience of hunting part of...
•Camping—it's a brute necessity and one of the most refined and civilized of pleasures. Our remote ancestors would never have survived and evolved without the ability to build strong and protective shelters in the wild—the wiliness and courage to gather or track down their food—and perhaps most of all the resourcefulness to entertain themselves and each other in the infinitely long evenings before civilization. At the same time we thoroughly civilized contemporary urban dwellers have the...[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://www.bharatbhasha.com/sports.php/97133
0 Comments:
No comments have been posted yet!
|
