nicaragua: cigar factory

one of the most thought-provoking parts of our trip to nicaragua was a visit to a cigar factory north of managua. at the entrance to the factory we were greeted by a smiling man who was, appropriately, smoking a cigar. he spoke english well, unlike many of the people with whom we interacted in nicaragua. he was an executive of some sort in the cigar company, and he was obviously proud to give us a tour.

at the beginning of the tour, i was reminded of a visit to the glenfiddich distillery in scotland several years ago. in each case there was a boutique, even sexy, product. and the factory tour is a chance for everyone to feel good: the makers of the product get to show off, the consumers get to learn about something they already enjoy. at the end of the tour the factory gets to sell things to the visitors, and when its all over the visitors have a fun story to tell their friends back home about where cigars (or single-malts) come from.    

and this sort of boutique-factory-tourism seemed to be what our smiling, smoking guide at the cigar factory had in mind. he was enthusiastic as he led us from room to room, explaining each aspect of the process - fermenting the tobacco in ammonia, sorting the leaves according to color, cutting the leaves and removing the veins, attaching the final layer of tobacco and cutting the end, sealing each cigar in a plastic wrapper. 

but despite our guide's enthusiasm, the tour quickly took on a darker tone. in each room workers - mostly women - stood or sat at long tables under flourecent lights. there was no music playing. the workers spoke little with one another, and smiled almost not at all. our guide spoke about the workers, but rarely with them, and he never invited them to speak with our tour group or to explain what they were doing. with a few exceptions, there was nothing on the bare walls. the workers, we learned, are paid by the piece, rather than with an hourly wage. their hands worked quickly, performing the same repetitive tasks many time a minute. as we moved from room to room, i wondered to myself: are we being given a feel-good tour of a sweatshop?

all things considered, i wouldn't label this factory a 'sweatshop.' the conditions were not brutal in the way that word suggests. and the majority of the workers left around five in the afternoon, so the hours were not crushing or dehumanizing. still, the factory was dismal. the conditions were dreary and the tasks dispiriting. the work certainly appeared to be boring. it required very little development of their human capabilities. i was reminded of a line about jurgis in the jungle, where sinclair says that he was able to learn his task in about a minute, and then expected to do it over and over, all day every day.

the nature of the factory work was all the more striking in contrast to our visit to the home/workshop of artisan potters a few days earlier. the potters control every aspect of the production process - from digging the clay out of the ground to removing the finished pots from the kiln and bringing them to market. in contrast, the workers at the cigar factory each perform one task repeatedly as part of a production process with a highly differentiated division of labor. it was like moving from the world of medieval craftsmen to the industrial age. i don't mean to romanticize the work of the potters. it clearly involved hard work, and they did not live lavishly. but it was clear that they were proud of their work, and they embodied a kind of comfort and pleasure that was conspicuously absent from the cigar factory. i can say without question that i would prefer the vocation of the potters to the cigar-assemblers, if i was asked to choose between them.