Word: cigar
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...Marine Charlie Antigua, who at 97 is the oldest member of the group. "See Charlie there. He likes his dentures real tight. He says he has a new girlfriend." Across the table, Pedro Tomas Lopez, 76, reminisces about his early days as a rabble-rousing union organizer in the cigar factories. "The bosses would fire me when they found out who I was," he says with a satisfied grin...
Even more respected than the union leaders in those days were the lectores, or readers. Cigar workers contributed 25 cents a week to pay these so-called princes of the factories to read to them while they worked. Perched on a platform high above the cigar rollers, the lector (who earned the then exorbitant salary of $80 a week) would usually spend two hours in the morning reading newspapers and periodicals. After a hearty lunch, he would resume in the afternoon with the classics. The works of Victor Hugo, Cervantes, Emile Zola, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Shakespeare were all eagerly absorbed...
...cigar workers pooled their resources to establish hospitals and mutual- aid societies. They built elaborate ethnic clubs complete with cafes, ballrooms and theaters, some of which attracted the best opera singers and actresses of the day from Spain, Italy and Cuba. "The culture of the cigar worker was evolved to a degree hardly found elsewhere in the proletariat," says County Historian Anthony Pizzo...
...early 1930s, however, cigar-factory owners began barring the lectores from the premises for reading subversive materials. Long strikes by active new unions did little to bring the lectores back or to stop the inevitable progression toward mechanization. "One machine took care of a whole row of twelve people," says Delia De Caprio, owner of Joe Faedo's bakery. Her parents were both cigar workers. The Depression finished off what the unions and machines started...
After World War II, Ybor City went downhill. Urban renewal bulldozed many of the old cigar workers' homes, stripping away the heart of the community. During the 1970s artists started moving into the cheap-rent area. Then, in 1972, Local Developer Harris Mullen bought up the old Vincente Martinez Ybor Cigar Factory and converted it into a collection of shops and restaurants. That signaled the beginning of a revitalization for the sorely decayed neighborhood...