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The Reader and the Worker: Los Lectores and the Culture of Cigarmaking in Cuba and Florida

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Gary R. Mormino
Gary R. Mormino
Affiliation:
University of South Florida
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Extract

“You know what Victor Hugo say?” asked José Vega Díaz. Thus began a lengthy recitation, the product of decades of labor agitation, listening to Les Miserables, and rolling cigars. He had been asked to explain the influence of el lector (the reader) on the lives of cigar workers. The answer filtered through ninety-five years of experience in Cuba and Florida.“You know what Victor Hugo say? In all the towns, in every place, they have a schoolteacher. And in every town, the schoolteacher is the light. He lights the candle. But in every town they try to blow away the light. The preachers, the priests. That's why they [the church, the owner] don't want the reader. The reader lights the candle. It was a good thing.”

Type
Migration, Labor Movements, and the Working Class
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 54 , Fall 1998 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1998

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References

Notes

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