ne Caribbean day some time in the 1960s, Fidel Castro ran out of cigars while driving around Havana in his Oldsmobile. No problem. His bodyguard and fellow revolutionary Chicho offered him one from his own stock. Rolled by another revolutionary named Eduardo Rivera, it was a fuma. The fuma, which means ‘smoke’ in Spanish, was more than just a smoke: it was a proletarian allegory symbolised by the thin cigars, which impecunious torcedores produced using leftover tobacco from premium cigars. They could take home all the fumas that could fit in their guayabera pockets. Their strong pastoral flavours—earthy, spicy, grassy, floral, herbal and cocoa—appealed to Castro. He smoked them by the dozen. He also distributed them to friends such
