Smoker Beyond the Sea

The Story of Puerto Rican Tobacco

Juan José Baldrich

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English

University Press of Mississippi
21 October 2022

History of the Americas; Agriculture & related industries; Industrial relations

In this groundbreaking volume, Juan José Baldrich traces the deep changes affecting Puerto Rican tobacco growers and manufacturers and their export markets from the Spanish colonization of the island to the present. Based on more than twenty years of research in the United States and Puerto Rico, the book sheds light on the important history of tobacco in Puerto Rico while highlighting the people and practices that have indelibly shaped Puerto Rico and its culture.

Smoker beyond the Sea: The Story of Puerto Rican Tobacco is a work of recovery that examines tobacco’s transitions from medicinal use to rolls fit for chewing and pipe smoking, followed by the appropriation of the Cuban paradigm for cigars and cigarettes, and, finally, to the US models after the 1898 invasion. This pioneering volume also offers the only history of the US tobacco monopoly in local agriculture and manufacture from its beginning in 1899 to the bankruptcy of its last successor company forty years later.

Baldrich's extensive research documents the organization of the cigar and cigarette manufacturing sectors and the resulting development of trade unions and socialist ideals. This multidisciplinary investigation gives due attention to the modifications that farmers made to tobacco planting and harvesting techniques in fine-tuning plants to the expected aromas and tastes of the manufactured commodities. In addition, Baldrich pays considerable attention to gender relations in the labor process, not only in the manufacturing sector but also in tobacco agriculture. The book also provides the only narrative of the rise and maturity of the Hermanos Cheos, a powerful apocalyptical movement that began and spread in the tobacco growing regions. Ultimately, this encompassing volume fills a major gap in the histories of tobacco-producing islands in the Caribbean.

By: Juan José Baldrich
Imprint: University Press of Mississippi
Country of Publication: United States [Currently unable to ship to USA: see Shipping Info]
Dimensions: Height: 233mm, Width: 155mm, Spine: 16mm
Weight: 363g
ISBN: 9781496842114
ISBN 10: 1496842111
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 21 October 2022
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Juan José Baldrich is a retired professor from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at University of Puerto Rico. He is author of Sembraron la no siembra and has been published in numerous journals, including Agricultural History and CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. He has also contributed chapters to such edited volumes as El tabaco en la historia económica and Puerto Rican Women's History: New Perspectives.

Reviews for Smoker Beyond the Sea: The Story of Puerto Rican Tobacco

Juan Jose Baldrich brings together a wealth of information to produce a longue-duree Puerto Rican tobacco history, melding the political, economic, and social-cultural, and embracing class and gender, while also interweaving individual stories that bring the narrative to life. Such an all-encompassing book on Puerto Rican tobacco history is long overdue and long awaited from an author who is the recognized leading authority on Puerto Rican tobacco.--Jean Stubbs, author of Tobacco on the Periphery: A Case Study in Cuban Labour History, 1860-1958