With a voice trembling with emotion, tobacco entrepreneur Carlos «Carlito» Fuente revealed in an interview with Cuban journalist Ismael Cala what his first action would be in a free Cuba: to travel to Güines, the town in the province of Mayabeque where his grandfather Arturo Fuente was born, sit on that land, and "place it close to his heart."
The conversation, recorded in the Dominican Republic for the podcast La Revolución de la Abundancia, is a journey through more than a century of family history, tobacco legacy, and a Cuban identity that Carlito carries deeply in his soul, even though he has never set foot on the island as an adult.
When Cala asked him what he would do with a free Cuba, Fuente replied without hesitation: "To arrive in Cuba freely, walk the streets, embrace the people, hear the accent, listen to their music, and get to the town of Güines, where my grandfather was born. To sit on the land and press it to my heart."
He clarified that setting up a factory on the island is not something he expects to do at his age, but he does dream of rekindling the relationship with Cuban tobacco growers and purchasing Cuban leaf, as the industry in Tampa did before the Castro revolution: “Tampa produced 500 million cigars with Cuban tobacco. That's more than Cuba, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Jamaica, and Honduras combined today.”
Carlito was born in Tampa, Florida, in 1954, but he identifies as a Cuban by upbringing: English was not spoken in his home, and he learned the language when he started school. In front of his Dominican factory, he planted royal palms in memory of a photograph of Pinar del Río that hung in his grandmother's kitchen. "I was raised Cuban. It's embedded in my soul," he stated.
His grandfather Arturo Fuente, born in Güines in 1887, emigrated to the United States and founded A. Fuente & Company in West Tampa in 1912, when he was just 15 years old and seeking to support his family after the war of independence with Spain. That sacrifice is the common thread throughout the conversation.
At 16, upon discovering that no one outside of Tampa knew his grandfather's name, Carlito made a promise: "I swore that I would carry my grandfather's name around the world and that I would honor it." He fulfilled that promise alongside his father, Carlos Fuente Sr., who passed away in August 2016. "I walk through the factory every moment and I hear my father's voice," he confessed.
In 1980, with the tobacco industry in Tampa in decline, the family moved to the Dominican Republic and started anew. There, Carlito challenged the consensus of an entire industry that deemed it impossible to grow quality wrapper tobacco in Dominican soil. The result was the Fuente Fuente OpusX, launched in 1995 and today regarded as one of the most exclusive cigars in the world.
Beyond business, Carlito described as "the most important product" of his life the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation, co-founded in 2001 along with the Newman family in Bonao, Dominican Republic. The 23-acre complex offers free schooling from preschool to twelfth grade, medical care, technical training, and martial arts—not for fighting, but to teach discipline and leadership. Between 87% and 92% of its graduates continue to higher education or work as professionals. Recently, the foundation celebrated its 18th high school graduation, with graduates in nursing and computer science.
"The most important thing, what those children have been taught, is the term 'giving back'," emphasized Fuente, who attributes that generosity to his mother and the values he absorbed as a child in that little wooden house in Ybor City, surrounded by Cuban tobacco workers, dominoes, and coffee.
At the close of the interview, Cala succinctly captured the legacy of his guest: "The cigars carry his name as well as that of his grandfather and father, but the children, families, and dreams he helped transform will forever bear his mark."
Filed under: