«This is slavery», what the multimillionaire gains of Habanos SA hide

The company Habanos SA reported that in 2024 its sales reached 827 million dollars, 16% more than the previous year. These billionaire revenues hide a life of deprivation and «slavery» in the so -called Mecca of tobacco in Cuba, according to Martí News a peasant leader.

The representative of the League of Independent Peasants of Cuba, Esteban Taje Abascal, mentioned the pressures imposed by the Government on the tobacco companies, which must have been borrowing to be able to meet the goals.

«It is costing almost a million and more pesos to make a tobacco house, they are living with land floors, there are the roofs still covered with canvases and the Cuban regime has not improved the lives of any of those peasants. They are committed, most of the tobacco producers with the bank, are others waiting for the approval of bank loans, do not have money to pay the day laborers The area where the best tobacco in the world is cultivated.

«Although the peasant is determined, although much of that tobacco does not reach the required quality, they always take advantage of it, but this is abusive, 734 million dollars last year for sale of Habanos and this year, a record of 827 million. Then, ¿Where are we going to get? This is a slavery of man by man, here in this type of communist and totalitarian system, «said the opponent in an interview with the journalist Tomás Cardoso.

The company composed of the state of Cubatabaco and the Ibero-British Altadis closed this week with a lavish party at the National Capitol La XXV edition of the Festival del Habano.

As usual, in the millionaire auction of humidos and pure, collectors, fans and international distributors coincided with high positions of the dome of the Communist Party of Cuba as the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel, and Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz.

«Every year becoming richer, as they are in the cars, in the triple houses, and the peasants without home, without a roof and with nothing … that must be seen. ¿How long are we going to support this?

«This is something painful (…) because in real life or subsidizing the taxes imposed by the peasant, or subsidizing all sales, they pay tobacco companies everything they have stolen,» he said.

As he has denounced on other occasions, the peasant recalled that many tobacco companies have not yet managed to raise the infrastructure for crops since the Ian cyclone in September 2022 destroyed the area.