THE CUBA REVIEW 15 
exhilarating coffee. In the writer’s own experience in the Island during which at one time 
he managed a tobacco plantation covering a very large area in which this product was 
grown on the share system by over one hundred families located throughout the property, 
and in his daily rounds, he hardly remembers the time when visiting one of these families 
to direct the work or to investigate conditions, when this ever-ready drink was not offered 
him. In the towns and cities visits to the homes are not followed by the same experience, 
except when one is a rather intimate friend of the family, but in all the cafes and res- 
taurants, in fact, wherever drinks of any kind are served, coffee is always ‘‘on tap” and 
to be had for the asking. Moreover, the liquid served is true coffee, used in that limited 
sense of the term which means coffee prepared in the very best manner from the green 
berry, freshly roasted as only the true lovers of coffee coming from ancestors long trained 
in the art of roasting coffee know how to perform this, freshly ground for immediate use, 
and made, not by boiling but by merely passing the boiling water through the very finely 
ground bean, with also a limitation of the quantity of water, so that the coffee when 
finally made is thick and heavy—a delight to the true lover of this drink when well made. 
In practically all regions where coffee is produced, the plantations are made among 
hills and nearly always an altitude of 1,200 feet or more above sea level is chosen, as it is 
believed that coffee produced at such heights has a better flavor and aroma than the 
product of lower altitudes. Following this practice, the production of coffee in Cuba is 
necessarily limited to three districts in which hills are found, these being the northern 
half of Pinar del Rio Province, the southern portion of Santa Clara Province, and Oriente 
Province, especially the south eastern and southern portions. As the center of the coffee 
interests of Pinar del Rio Province, Candelaria can be taken; as the seat of the industry in 
Santa Clara Province, Trinidad may be considered; and as the cities of most importance 
from which come the funds needed in the coffee industry of Oriente, may be taken San- 
tiago and Guantanamo, minor centers being La Maya and Palma Soriano. Of the three 
regions, that of Oriente Province is by far the most important, its product being at 
least six times that of both the Trinidad and Pinar del Rfo sections. It is stated that at the 
present time the Island produces in the neighborhood of 300,000 quintales, or 30,000,000 
pounds per year of coffee of all grades and classes. This, however, is not sufficient to 
supply the home demand, resulting in considerable importation of which details are given 
later on in this article. 
The supremacy of Oriente Province in this industry in relation to Cuba is the natural 
result of the history of the establishment thereof in the Island, and of the greater area of 
appropriate lands available therefor in this district. History tells us that in the latter 
years of the 18th Century and the beginning of the 19th as a result of a rebellion in Santo 
Domingo and Haiti, a considerable number of French refugees, coffee growers of that 
Island, came to Cuba, landing in the southern portion of Oriente Province. Here the 
adaptability of the region to the continuation of their vocation in the country from which 
they had just come appealed to them, resulting in the establishment of coffee and cacao 
plantations which yearly increased in importance. Naturally, in later years, the attention 
of the inhabitants of other similar regions in Cuba was attracted to the profits derived by 
these people in Oriente, and as the long continued life of the coffee and cacao plantations 
naturally appeals to an ease-loving and rather slothful people such as are our native 
Cubans, examination into the industry was made, with the result that plantings and 
plantations were established in the Trinidad hills and in those of Pinar del Rio. In all 
three of these sections, though accompanied by its ups and downs, the result of compe- 
tition with cheaper coffee when Cuba’s product was unprotected by high duties as at 
present, and also of the competition of other crops, such as sugar cane, during periods of 
satisfactory profits from their production, and, in the case of the Pinar del Rio district, 
the result of the many cyclones passing over the coffee groves from 1906 to 1910, the area 
planted to coffee has either increased or relatively held its own. The quantity produced, 
of course, is varied from year to year with the character of the season and the normal 
variability in production per acre, but for many years past a very considerable percentage 
of the coffee consumed in the Island has been the product of its native groves. 
