A Farming Life
Even with an aggressive driver, the trip from Havana to Pinar del Río takes around two hours. But the congestion of the city quickly gives way to open spaces. Flanked by palm trees, rice paddies and pastures, the rough highway has few cars. Travelers dot the roadside, some hoping for a ride, others simply walking. Workers here and there chop slowly at tall grass with machetes, and you see the occasional farmer holding a block of homemade cheese, eager for a sale. The farther you drive, the more rustic the conditions, until asphalt turns to dirt as the car reaches San Juan y Martínez, one of Cuba’s best tobacco towns. Out here, with spotty cell service, one cannot rely on GPS. “De donde Máximo?” a visitor asks. That one name is all it takes, and a local points the city folk to the farm.
Máximo is Iván Máximo Pérez Maseda, a renowned Cuban farmer who has worked these lands for decades. A solid man, thickly built like a football coach, with mighty forearms, broad shoulders and closely cropped, no-nonsense hair, he walks out to greet the visitors to his farm. He shakes hands with the firm grasp of a working man. He’s 54, but appears older, with the serious look of a person who was thrust into responsibility at an age when others are still playing with toys. Everyone calls him Máximo.
“My father died in an auto accident. I needed to take over the farm,” he says. That was in 1984, when he was only 14 years old. “I was always very curious about the tobacco. I had already decided to dedicate my life to the plantation. I always wanted to be independent, I didn’t want to have a boss. The only way I could be independent was working on the property from the beginning.” He looks a visitor in the eye. There’s no frown on his face, but no smile either. It is what it is—no regrets. “That’s the challenge life puts in front of you,” he says simply. “There was no other option.”
The farm, known as Finca El Rosario, or “The Rosary,” was founded nearly 100 years ago, in 1936, by his grandfather Máximo Ramón Venancio Maseda Deben, who had emigrated from Spain. He died in 1972. He had a son who was uninterested in the farming life. The farm ed to his daughter, who married Carlos Pérez Ramos, Máximo’s father. In 1984, after Carlos’ tragic death, Máximo took over. He was not the oldest child in his family, but the middle child. His older brother was studying in school, so Máximo shouldered the family business, leaving school himself to focus on the farm. While his father died when he was young, Máximo was old enough to his most important lesson. “Lies have short legs,” his father told him. “You only go far with long legs.”
This farm has been Máximo’s domain for four decades. “Forty-one harvests,” he says, counting as a farmer marks time. Here, he grows filler, binder and wrapper that ends up in some of Cuba’s finest cigars.
It’s February. He has tobacco in various growth stages, having started planting in November. “The first lot has already been collected, and now I’m starting on the second. As we have only one drying barn, we just can’t start too early. Normally, you would start in November in this area. In October it’s still raining, and there’s no sense planting as the rain will affect them. I’m planning to be done by the end of April or the first week of May, when the rain starts.” Tobacco is a fickle crop, working better with too little water than too much.
At 4.5 hectares, a little more than 11 acres, Máximo’s farm isn’t the biggest, nor is it the smallest. Like so many others in Pinar del Río, it was severely ravaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022 (see “The Storm,” page 72). The farm was left with but one curing barn where three had stood. As a result, the plantings are staggered this season to work within the confines of his limited curing space. Máximo expects to plant about 60 percent of his normal crop this year.
He walks through his curing barn, where tobacco has been hanging for more than a month. It’s dark, sheltered from the hot Cuban sun. Inside, the aroma is rich; your nose can tell how far along the tobacco is in the curing process. Freshly harvested leaves smell like clipped grass, but this older tobacco is starting to smell like an open cigar box, warm and inviting. Máximo smiles in the gloom. “Tocaro,” he says, Spanish for “touch,” holding a leaf in his callused hands. It’s nearly entirely brown, save for the thick stem, the last bit to hold onto the green color that this tobacco had in the field. It’s about 10 days away from being ready to leave the barn.
Just outside is a field of tobacco growing in the open sunlight, tabaco del sol. It’s up to the hip—Cuban-seed tobacco makes a relatively small plant, but it is destined to grow still higher before priming. “It’s still a baby,” he says. “You are right now in the heart of the very best tobacco soil.”
Farmers live at the mercy of nature, and their lives are one worry after another. Máximo has been doing this long enough to look for details beyond the simple. Storms of course can be a severe problem. He also worries about ozone levels. At higher levels, he says, they are bad for the tobacco. In recent years, airstreams from the north have brought higher concentrations of ozone, impacting the crop. “Varieties we grew 20 years ago don’t grow as big as the ones today,” he adds.
Despite the challenges, this life that has chosen him can be a good one. He is proud of his leaves, proud of his land. He loves to sit and read while smoking cigars he rolls himself, made with leaves from his own farm. He eats food harvested from his land. A lunch shared with his visitors is hearty and delicious: lechón (roast pork), boniato (sweet potato), rice and beans, sliced tomatoes and lobster. Everything but the crustacean came from his farm.
After the meal, it’s time to smoke. Máximo takes to a rocking chair and lights up. He smokes eight, perhaps nine cigars a day. He speaks of the weather again, how the wind here blows from the north, stressing the tobacco plants, making them strong. One cannot help but draw conclusions, making comparisons to Máximo’s own life. Just as steel must be hammered against an unwavering anvil to make it stronger, so has Máximo been annealed.
“If I would have been the son of Bill Gates I wouldn’t have had the challenge. This was my opportunity, this was my challenge.” He has no regrets, but his story seems like it will not have a fairytale ending. “The level of knowledge I have acquired would be easy to transmit to the next generation, but there is no next generation to take over the farm,” he says. He has two daughters, both of them with university degrees. His son cannot take the reins. “Unfortunately, he has limitations,” says Máximo. He takes another puff of his cigar, the smoke carried off on that wind from the north. The leaves move against the breeze, bending, but never breaking.
