​In 1636 Canon Diego Torres de Vargas wrote that Puerto Rican tobacco leaf was as superior to that from Havana but of of lesser quality than that grown in Barinas. This is probably the earliest mention of tobacco agriculture on the island, however, in those days mostly small farmers planted and harvested mainly chewing tobacco in rolls. Tobacco together with coffee and sugar were traditionally Puerto Rico's main the three agricultural products, not necessarily in that order.  Until the second half of the 19th Century, tobacco harvesting on the island was minimal compared to the other two.  Unlike coffee, tobacco farming did not require a period of several years before the plants began to yield a marketable commodity and the initial capital outlays for tobacco were much smaller than those in sugarcane or coffee agriculture.  In addition, unlike sugar, tobacco did not require the use of slave labor.

Prior to the Royal Order of July 18, 1765 issued by King Charles III of Spain abolishing the tax on grains and establishing the right to freely trade in agricultural commodities, the Spanish Crown restricted all exports from the colonies to Seville through the Casa de Contratación.  In addition to these restrictions and the fact that local tobacco leaf had a limited market in Spain, tobacco exports were controlled by Dutch smugglers until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. In an effort to curtail contraband, the Spanish Crown authorized corsairs or privateers like Miguel Enriquez.  Towards the end of the Spanish American Wars of Independence, Spanish authorities began to end the use of privateers who the new nations began to consider as pirates. The decline in contraband transformed the way farmers financed their operations introducing the use of crop liens.  It also changed the way that tobacco was packaged and traded from tobacco rolls to bales and giving rise to the use of commission merchants with foreign contacts.  The end of piracy around 1832 made the Dutch colony of Saint Thomas the main port of departure for tobacco bound to Europe especially Hamburg.  However, German immigrants established in the western part of Puerto Rico like Gustav Adolph Schröder, Wilhelm Schröder, Carl Reichard and Karl F. Schömburg had strong commercial ties with their old country and used Mayagüez and Aguadilla as ports of departure mainly to the German ports of Hamburg and Bremen.  

In the mid 19th Century, the quality of Puerto Rican tobacco was poor and there were no known cigar factories on the island.  Still by the end of the century, cigar making consisted more of part-time artisans that hand rolled cigars in back rooms of retail shops and grocery stores.  This fact is depicted in Francisco Oller's painting La Escuela del Maestro Rafael Cordero whose teaching room in his house was also used to roll cigars as evidenced by the cigar rolling bench in the room. The expansion of leaf production during the second half of the 19th Century was due to the Puerto Rican tobacco growers awareness of the success of the better quality leaf grown in the Vuelta Abajo region of Cuba. Growers in the east central highlands of Puerto Rico began importing seeds from Cuba and take their production methods as a model for their own with the expectation that they could produce leafs with similar quality.  In a few short years, due to the destruction of tobacco fields in Cuba because of the Ten Years War, Cuba became the main market for Puerto Rican leaf tobacco. The year 1880 marked the year when the island produced twelve million pounds of tobacco leafs, its highest production to date. However, the tobacco leafs shipped to Cuba came back to Puerto Rico in the form of high priced cigars which prompted the beginning of locally manufactured cigars. Large scale cigar production in factories employing over one hundred workers and mechanized cigarette production started to appear during the last twenty years of the 19th Century.  In 1895, the island produced its own high quality cigars and no longer imported raw tobacco.[1]

Exports of Puerto Rican tobacco leafs to the US did not start until 1899 thanks to Morris J. Levi and his business partner Alexander Blumenstiel when  Levi, Blumenstiel & Co. began importing El Falco brand cigars made on the island.  However, during that time cigars made in the US with Puerto Rican leafs were not identified as such.  They did not register the brand as a Puerto Rican cigar nor marketed it as made in Puerto Rico.  In 1901 some twenty six million cigars were exported from Puerto Rico to the US and in 1902 that number increased to some seventy four million but importers did not identify the leaf used came from Puerto Rico.

During the boom times following WWI and into the late 1920s, Puerto Rican tobacco was used mainly in class B cigars made to retail at more than 5¢ but not more than 8¢ and class C cigars made to sell for more that 8¢ but not more that 15¢.  That trend shifted in the 1930s with the use of Puerto Rican tobacco more and more in class A cigars made to sell at no more than 5¢.  The use of Puerto Rican filler in class B and C cigars was blended with Cuban filler but the percentage of Puerto Rican filler to total filler in these classes decreased over the years. 

In the early years of the 20th Century, the island was producing high quality cigars with locally grown leafs.  Puerto Rican tobacco leaf jumped from being the island's third leading agricultural product export behind coffee and sugar to the second only after sugar.  ​James L. Dietz in his book Historia Económica de Puerto Rico states that in 1918 tobacco became the second leading agricultural product replacing coffee. As can be seen in the following charts, land used to grow tobacco almost quadrupled between 1899 and 1909 and more than doubled between 1909 and 1929 when it started to dwindle and the value of tobacco leaf exports tripled between 1901 and 1910 despite a slight reduction in the amount of exports and increased another 847% by 1930.

The first well established known cigar factory in Puerto Rico was Las Dos Antillas, it was the initiative of Spanish immigrant from Lugo, Galicia José Rodriguez Fuentes (1831-1896) who learned the craft in Cuba and in 1870, a year after arriving in Puerto Rico, established a buckeye factory or "chinchal" in Old San Juan, located in the same lot where later were the Banco Territorial y Agricola and Banco Popular. In the Universal Exposition of Barcelona in 1888, cigar from Las Dos Antillas obtained a Gold Medal but in 1892 Rodriguez Fuentes shut down the factory due to labor issues.

Local cigar manufacturing negatively affected tobacco leaf exports but the latter always remained part of the industry as was the case with Solá & Cia. of Modesto Solá who was farming tobacco in Barrio Borinquen of Caguas and exporting leafs to Cuba as early as 1893 . In 1899 Solá, although the largest tobacco farmer in Caguas with forty of his nine hundred twenty six cuerdas farm planted with tobacco, was not among the largest exporters. The largest tobacco leaf exporters at the tun of the century were long established dealers with offices and warehouses in New York City to wit:

• American West Indies Trading Company (AWITCO) incorporated by Levi Blumenstiel on September 9, 1898. Between February 1899 and April 1900 and between November 1901 to May 1902 AWITCO was the largest exported of Puerto Rico tobacco leafs and cigars with 43.7% and 44.5% of all tobacco product exports to New York.[2]

• John H. Goetze & Co. was the second largest exporter between 1899 and 1900 with 16.5% of the export market, however, they abandoned the Puerto Rico market in 1902.

• Lewis Sylvester & Son was the third largest exporter between 1899 and 1900 with 9.2% of the export market, however they abandoned the Puerto Rico market until 1909 when Allie Sylvester joined the American Cigar Co., a subsidiary of the American Tobacco Co. (ATC) and became a director of the Puerto Rico Leaf Tobacco Co. (PRLTC), a subsidiary of the Puerto Rican American Tobacco Co. (PRATCO) in 1912.

Local exporters like José Portela and Marcelino Solá e Hijo[3] had also established offices in New York City by 1902.  The February 20, 1908 edition of the Tobacco Leaf reports that:

"Solá e Hijo, growers and packers of Porto Rican leaf tobacco, are preparing for an aggressive campaign this year. They have more than trebled their office and storage facilities by a lease which they have just signed.  They have taken the entire corner at Pearl and Pine streets with entrances at their old number 761 Pine and at 171 Pearl.  The interior is being completely overhauled, and when the work of carpenters and painters is finished, the offices, warerooms and sample rooms will be adequate for their requirements.  There will be room for storing about 700 bales of tobacco on the premises.  This firm who have been established in Porto Rico for over half a century, are gradually working up a good trade in this market on their fine tobacco.  They are the only strictly Porto Rican leaf house in the trade."

The success of Rodriguez Fuentes and Las Dos Antillas factory motivated a number of local entrepreneurs to establish cigar factories before the incursion of the American Tobacco Co. (ATC), also known as the “Tobacco Trust” in the island. Some of the factories established before the turn of the century were:

• La Ultramarina factory in San Juan owned by the partnership Portela & Lomba/Portela & Co. comprised of Luciano Lomba and Galician José Portela Silva (1858- ) since 1885

• La Flor de Cayey factory in Cayey of Rucabado & Co.

• La Comerieña factory in Comerío of Sánchez & Hno.

• La Habanera factory established in 1890 by Mamerto Infanzón Mendez a Spanish immigrant from Ribadeo, Lugo, Galicia and a former Captain in the Spanish Army. In May 1915 it was acquired by PRATCO for approximately $50,000 but remained in operation as Infanzón & Rodriguez. In 1918 their factory in Mayagüez was destroyed in the San Fermin earthquake, they rebuilt the same location and continued to operate in Mayagüez until the 1940s when the relocated to Caguas.

• La Internacional factory of Toro & Cia., makers of the El Toro cigar brand established in Ponce in May 1898 by Ponce native Luis Toro Pasarell (1873-1941) in partnership with Fritze, Lundt & Co. and Leopold Engelhardt & Co., a Bremen based partnership with operations in Egypt, Cuba and Colombia

• La Colectiva factory in San Juan owned by Rucabado, Portela & Co., a joint venture established ca. 1897 by Rucabado & Co. of Fausto Rucabado and Mateo Rucabado and Portela & Lomba owned by José Portela Silva, manufacturers of some four hundred thousand cigarettes daily in a steam-driven plant in San Juan. They used dark tobacco grown in the plantations of Rucabado & Co., which had an economic interest in the partnership.  After La Colectiva was acquired by PRATCO in 1899, in September 1901 Rucabado, Portela & Co. established operations in Providence, RI to distribute leafs and manufactured cigars

In 1902 the New York Times in an article titled “Porto Rican Cigars Now Made Here” stated:

“The demand was such that, for a time, the Porto Rico seemed poised to displace a popular cigar crafted with Havana filler and Connecticut wrapper.” 

In 1902 the US-based trade journal Tobacco stated that:

“one of the marked developments in the cigar trade during the past few months has been the steadily growing demand for Porto Rico cigars.  At the present time, the demand is far in excess of the supply, and it seems likely to continue so for some time to come.”

It also stated that local factories proved incapable of fully satisfying the increased demand. In an article titled “The Future of the Porto Rico Cigar”, the publication stated

“Smokers seemingly developed an insatiable appetite - they were hungry - for these cigars, although many fell short on quality.”  It continued stating that the growth resulted in cigars of uneven quality, where some manufacturers maintained the quality that had attracted a devoted following for their brands while others “flooded” the market with the “poorest kind of trash.”

The outlet for Puerto Rican tobacco before the American occupation in 1898 was confined to domestic consumption and exporters of unmanufactured tobacco mainly to Cuba and Spain. After the Spanish-American War Puerto Rico lost the Cuban leaf market while the US market opened for Puerto Rican cigars and tobacco leafs due to the removal of import duties.  The island was chiefly known for its filler which represented about 95% of the total production, grown in the valleys and hillsides of the interior mountainous region of the island. From 1902 until 1927, shade grown wrapper tobacco was grown in some three thousand five hundred acres in the la Plata Valley between Cayey and Aibonito by a subsidiary of one of the large manufacturers in the States. 

Cigar manufacturing for local consumption increased rapidly from 1906 to 1912 when a rapid downward trend began mainly due to the increase in cigarette consumption.  Cigar manufacturing for export reached its peak in 1919 but from 1920 to 1923 the per capita consumption of cigars in the US was reduced by half and by 1940 was 38.5% less than it was in 1920.  The production and exports of filler leafs and cigars fell to levels seen prior to 1920. Due to the lack of locally produced wrapper, the costs of importing wrapper from the States and exporting manufactured cigars was too high.  It was more economical to ship tobacco leafs to the US to be blended with other types and manufactured into cigars.  This cost the loss of a number of jobs in cigar factories on the island as evidenced by the number of factories established around the turn of the century and the date they ceased operations.

• Caguas-Cayey Tobacco Co. established in December 1903 by a group of individuals not associated with the tobacco business; Murray M. Coggeshall firm Coggeshall & Hicks a banking and investment firm, T. Ludlow Chrystie an estate tax lawyer from New York and Rutger B. Jewett a manager at Appleton Publishing House. The three together with William Dooley and Frederick R. Hoisington incorporated the firm in New York to acquire La Industrial factory in Cayey and accompanying farmland from the Porto Rico Export Co.  They manufactured the Amorifé, Diadona, Alomino, Turabo and Caguina cigar brands but Savarona was its leading brand. Shortly after incorporation they bought Dooley, Smith & Co., Henry Dooley's tobacco retail and exporting business in San Juan, transaction which made Dooley the company's first corporate treasurer and local agent. By 1904 they had factories in Cayey and Caguas and offices in New York.  By 1905 they employed three hundred cigar makers in Caguas alone and in 1906 built a large concrete building to house the factory, followed the next year by a concrete warehouse, both in Caguas.  Cayey came after with a new concrete cigar factory, a warehouse, and tobacco sheds for the Rincón plantation.  Then came the purchase of a concrete building to house its growing workforce and warehousing needs in San Lorenzo. In 1906, it expanded on the initial farmland by buying additional acreage that expanded two hundred acres including the Savaron plantation.  That year they established the Johnson Development Co. to manage the agricultural side of the enterprise and hired Franklin H. Bunker to head the planting department.  By 1912, the firm had one thousand forty seven acres planted with tobacco dispersed between Caguas, Cidra and Cayey. Bunker remained with the company until 1916 when he left to manage the planting division of the Puerto Rico Leaf Tobacco Co., then a former subsidiary of the ATC. By 1907 it was the second largest exporter of cigars among independents and by 1910 was second only to PRATCO.  In 1908 Mateo Rucabado bought the barrio Arenas farm, which had already abandoned tobacco for growing sugarcane financed with a crop lien from the Cayey Sugar Company. Rucabado also purchased the Rincón plantation then held by the Johnson Development Co. The Caguas-Cayey Tobacco Co. went into voluntary liquidation and was dissolved in June 1918.

• Durlach Bros. owned by Milton Durlach opened factories in Caguas and San Lorenzo and had plantations in Caguas, between 1901 and 1902 became the third largest shipper of manufactured cigars to the US with a 6.7% share of cigar exports, Durlach Bros. promoted El Rigodón and El Bogador more than any of the other brands it manufactured.  Durlach Bros. did not conceal the point of origin of its products and claimed that their cigars “have made Porto Rico cigars famous in the United States” and that Porto Ricos were “an established and staple factor in the retail cigar business.”[4]

• In 1900 the partnership Solá, Cadiz & Co. was formed by Marcelino Solá and Quintiliano Cádiz, it lasted until 1902. 

• In 1901 the partnership Solá, Argüelles & Co. was formed by Magín Argüelles, a Spaniard who had learned the business in Cuba and Marcelino A. Solá Rodriguez (1879- ) as managing partners and his father Marcelino Solá Rodriguez (1852-1928) and uncle Celestino Solá Rodriguez (1839-1926) as silent partners. The partnership lasted until January 25, 1910 when it was dissolved.  

The Porto Rican-American Tobacco Co. (PRATCO) was the largest, longest living and most successful cigar manufacturer established in Puerto Rico. It was incorporated in in New Jersey on September 22, 1899 by John Blackwell Cobb, a tobacco man from North Carolina and a group of men from the American Tobacco Company of which he was Vice President. On October 9, 1899 Cobb personally attended the negotiations when the company bought La Colectiva cigar factories in Cayey and San Juan from Rucabado, Portela & Co. In May 1900 PRATCO paid $153,716 to buy ⅔ of the outstanding shares of La Internacional cigar factory from Toro & Cía. who at the time employed some five hundred workers in its cigar factory in Ponce and in its cigar and cigarette factory in the Playa de Ponce.  La Internacional although owned by PRATCO, was an independent operation to the general public.  The firm had a yearly production of six million cigars and seventy-five million cigarettes. At the end of 1899, ATC held $99,100 of the $166,000 worth of PRATCO while Rucabado & Portela owned the balance.

In 1903, a group of men close to the trust and PRATCO organized and managed the Industrial Co., a subsidiary operation smaller than PRATCO which given its location in Ponce, its assets were most likely those of Toro & Cia. The Industrial Co. manufactured El Timonel brand cigar whose lithograph, in the inner lid of the cigar box, identified the Cia. Industrial as its current owner and Sucrs. de Mayol Hnos. as the previous owner with no reference to the PRATCO. 

In 1900 PRATCO announced the construction of La Marina factory just outside the walls of Old San Juan in Puerta de Tierra, a three-story cement, brick and mortar plant with an approximate area of 22,500 s.f. which opened in 1901 and accommodated between four and five hundred workers and by 1903 employed close to one thousand two hundred workers in several departments that included the old stemming and cigarette departments from Rucabado, Portela & Co. and a new cigar-making one. Other than the brand names of their cigarettes, what remained of Rucabado, Portela & Co. was the name La Colectiva.  PRATCO operations were not merged into the ATC, it retained a separate corporate structure with its own directors and stockholders.  Luis Toro Pasarell was named President of PRATCO in 1901, Toro Pasarell was also president of the Puerto Rico Leaf Tobacco Co. (PRLTC) organized by the ATC to manage its plantations of shade grown tobacco used to produce the light colored wrapper leafs preferred by smokers.

La Marina and the Ponce factories capacity was not enough to satisfy the growing demand for Puerto Rican cigars so around 1903 PRATCO established a branch named the Puerto Rico Tobacco Corp. in a rented two-story house near Bayamón’s town square.  Within a few years, the Bayamón factory was relocated to a new four-story brick plant also in Bayamón.  By 1906, La Marina factory and the Bayamón branch employed one thousand seven hundred twenty six workers. Following the establishment of the Bayamón factory, in 1905 a new factory was established when PRATCO bought from the city of San Juan the building that used to house the provincial jail in Puerta de Tierra, which today is the site of the Biblioteca Nacional de Puerto Rico pictured below.  When the Puerta de Tierra factory opened, it was the largest cigar factory on the island and remained so for years, in 1939 it was sold to the Bacardí Corporation.

The US Government was successful in its legal action to split the ATC under the Sherman Antitrust Act in the case U. S. v. American Tobacco Co. decided by the US Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York on November 16 , 1911 following the instructions of the US Supreme Court decision on May 29, 1911 in the case United States v. American Tobacco Co. The final decision resulted in the assets of the ATC being split among fourteen different companies, one of which was PRATCO.[5] As stated in the Supreme Court’s decision, in 1899 the ATC caused the organization of the Porto Rican-American Tobacco Company with a capital of $1,799,600 to take over the partnership business Rucabado & Portela with covenants not to compete. At the time of the court’s decision, the ATC and American Cigar Company each held $585,300 representing 6,578 and 6,576 shares respectively of the 19,984 PRATCO issued and outstanding shares of stock with the balance was is in the hands of individuals. The Porto Rican-American Tobacco Co. owned 190 of the 380 shares of preferred, and 300 of the 450 shares of common stock of La Industrial Co. of Porto Rico and also owned 2,150 of the 5,000 shares of capital stock of the Porto Rico Leaf Tobacco Co. The decision called for the ATC to acquire all the PRATCO shares it owned and distribute among its common shareholders by way of dividends to be charged to surplus all of its securities.

In 1912, PRATCO started the construction of a branch in Manatí and an overhaul of the Ponce plant.  Ca. 1916 the PRLTC opened another factory in the Miramar suburb of San Juan with steam-driven machinery to manufacture cigar boxes and shipping cartons. It was located by the tracks of the American Railroad Co. that connected it to the Puerta de Tierra factory and farther down the line to the docks.

In March 1923 the Tobacco Products Corp. agreed to take over control of PRATCO. The transaction called for the holders of the 62,778 shares outstanding of PRATCO to exchange them for new 7% cumulative preferred stock, at the same time PRATCO issued new no par value common stock in an amount equal to the preferred stock, all of which was sold to the Tobacco Products Corp. at $25 per share. On January 4, 1927 The New York Times published an article notifying that Porto Rican-American Tobacco Co. issued $8,000,000 of 15 year 6.10% convertible gold bonds.  The article states:

"The Company which is the dominant factor in the Porto Rican tobacco business, has agreed to purchase at a price of about $12,750,000, 200,000 shares out of a total of 350,000 shares outstanding of the Congress Cigar Company, Inc. which operates six plants in the United States.  The bonds will constitute the only outstanding funded debt of the company."  

In 1929 PRATCO paid $3,000,000 to acquire controlling interest in Waitt & Bond Cigar Co.   In September 1931 Luis Toro Pasarell resigned as chairman and president of PRATCO. W. E. Waterman, then president of Waitt & Bond, Inc. was elected chairman of PRATCO and James M. Porter, then president of Congress Cigar Co. was elected president of PRATCO.

According to a March 1939 US Department of Agriculture circular about the tobacco industry in Puerto Rico, still in 1939 tobacco was the second ranking crop on the island both by crop value and exports exceeded only by sugar.  But in that same year PRATCO filed for bankruptcy signaling the end of the industry on the island. In March 8, 1940 The New York Times announced that:

“A committee acting for holders of the fifteen-year secured 6% convertible bonds of the Porto Rican-American Tobacco Company announced yesterday that, from a poll and communications with holders, it was convinced that the owners desired the liquidation of the company if they could realize in cash 80% of the principal amount of their bonds and receive securities for the remainder. The committee is composed of Nathaniel F. Gilden, Philip W. Henry and H. Duncan Wood. “The dates now set by the court are March 18 for the filing of a plan or report by the trustee and April 3 for a hearing on such plan or report and other plans which may be proposed,” the communication read in part. “Irrespective of the plan or intentions of the trustee, the committee proposes to present a plan of liquidation.”

In April 1940 Federal Judge Henry W. Goddard sent a plan of reorganization of PRATCO to the SEC with the request that the agency file an advisory report regarding an offer by Consolidated Cigar Corp. to buy the assets of Congress Cigar Co. for which it offered $4,000,000 in notes. PRATCO owned at the time 81.8% of the outstanding shares of Congress Cigar Co. The SEC report came back favorable and the plan submitted by Gordon Auchincloss, trustee, called for the sale of the Congress Cigar Co. Inc. to the Consolidated Cigar Corp. At a special meeting of stockholders in August 1940 the stockholders unanimously approved the dissolution of the Congress Cigar Co. Inc. and distribute $6.09 per share in cash or about $6.77 per share in notes of Consolidated Cigar Corp.

With the collapse of PRATCO, Puerto Rico ceased to be an important player in the US cigar industry but continued to be a leaf provider to US cigar manufacturers. The following chart shows the declining trends in local consumption, cigar exports and total cigar production for selected periods from 1910 to 1950.

In 1945 the government of Puerto Rico established the Puerto Rico Agricultural Co. in a failed attempt to keep the industry alive. It invested $1.25 million in a cigar factory in the El Troche farm in Caguas, but as is the case with most government run enterprises, it was not successful and closed down in 1949. In 1953, the local government efforts changed direction and began promoting the establishment of cigar factories by offering different kind of incentives from rental subsidies on manufacturing facilities built at no cost to the manufacturer, to tax exemptions. Promoted by the Compañia de Fomento Económico and prompted by incentives from the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Corporation (PRIDCO), the following companies established operations on the island.

• The Consolidated Cigar Corp. was the first cigar manufacturer to take advantage of the government incentives and opened a factory in Caguas in 1953. That year immediately became the leading tobacco leaf buyer in Puerto Rico buying approximately 60% of local grown leafs. In October 1960 they opened a threshing[6] plant in Comerío and in 1959 rented a building from Fomento in the Villa Blanca sector of Caguas for their stemming and leaf-sorting departments. In 1961 they opened a second cigar factory in Cayey.

• General Cigar Co. had been established since 1926 as the second leaf buyer with its own stemming, fermenting and packing facilities. In 1954 it took advantage of the government incentive program and incorporated the Tobacco Products Manufacturing Corp. to take over its operations on the island. In 1964 they built a 60,000 s.f. two story building designed by Toro & Ferrer to expand its Caguas stemming, fermenting and packing operations. General Cigar’s first cigar manufacturing operation on the island was established in 1965 in a 110,000 s.f. facility in Utuado where over six hundred employees manufactured the well known Tiparillos.

• Universal Cigar Corp. established a subsidiary operation under the name Continental Cigar in Gurabo around 1968. It closed down in 1982.

• Bayuk Cigars opened a cigar factory in Ciales.

• Hartman Tobacco established a leaf processing plant in Juncos in 1954 that included the wetting, sorting according to size, fermentation, drying, fumigation, and baling for export of the shade-grown tobacco they imported from their Connecticut plantations.

• American Sumatra Tobacco Corp. established in Caguas around 1967 when it was acquired by the General Cigar Co., it stemmed, processed, packed and re-shipped wrapper leaf in the same industrial park where DWG had one of its plant. It operated until 1974.

• Waitt & Bond, Inc. once a subsidiary of PRATCO, established a cigar operation in 1965 in Yabucoa under the name Rapaport International, Inc. and Rapaport Puerto Rico, Inc. Here they cured, fermented and grind into fine powder locally bought leafs. The fine powder was then reconstituted into sheets marketed as wrappers in filter-tipped small cigars and sorted and sized natural wrapper leafs for handmade cigars.

• Diesel, Wemmer, Gilbert Co. later DWG Corp. established stemming, sorting, sizing and selecting operations in tow facilities provided by PRIDCO in Caguas and Gurabo in 1961.

In 1970 the well known cigarette manufacturer RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. was the last tobacco related enterprise to open a manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico, RJ Reynolds closed its cigarette manufacturing plant in Yabucoa in August 2010.

_____________________________________________________________

[1] Ayala & Bernard: Agrarian Puerto Rico

[2] idem

[3] Solá & Hijo was a partnership established August 24, 1905 by Marcelino Solá Rodriguez (1852-1928) and his son Marcelino A. Solá (1879- ), it filed for Bankruptcy on May 17, 1912.

[4] Baldrich: Smoker Beyond the Sea

[5] American Tobacco Co., Liggett & Meyers Tobacco Co., P. Lorillard Co., American Snuff Co., George W. Helme Co., Weyman-Bruton Co., MacAndrews & Forbes Co., J. S. Young Co., Conley Foil Co., The Johnston Tin Foil & Metal Co., R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., United Cigar Stores Co., British American Tobacco Co. Ltd., Porto Rican-American Tobacco Co.

[6] The mechanical process of making the harvested tobacco ready for consumption, threshed into small pieces to get short filler