Whenever I am in Miami I always try to visit them to say "hi," talk about cigars, and smoke a few Padrons - plus they make a wonderful cup of cafe cubano. I always enjoy myself during these informal chats as they are the most gracious of gentlemen and splendid hosts. So I asked if they would mind if I taped one of our "talks" to share with the readers on CigarNexus.

Although it is an interview, it is a rather informal one. You will see by the transcript that it is more like a running conversation. Jose Padron Sr. answered most of the questions, but his son Jorge did the translation from Spanish to English on behalf of his father. So the responses labeled "JP" are Jorge retelling what his dad just said to me. While those responses labeled "Jorge" are those he added on his own to our discussion. It is a lighthearted dialogue full of seldom heard tidbits about the Padrons and their cigars.

One thing this transcript may not convey is the mood of the moment. We were all sitting around an old beat-up desk smoking Exclusivos in the back of their old factory now offices as we chatted. The conversation was lively and fast paced with rapid fire Spanish exchanges between Jorge, Orlando, and their father. Everyone was laughing as they shared the story of their history with me. If nothing else, the one undeniable feeling I get whenever I talk with the Padrons is one of happiness. They are truly a family whose love and respect for one an another shows and to share some time with them always makes me think lovingly of my own father and my two sons.

SS: What did you think of the article about you in Cigar Aficionado?

JP: The story in "Cigar Afficionado" is a really good story, but it does not cover a lot of things that happened in his life. They're mentioned, but the details are not... A big problem that he's had is trying to save his raw materials throughout the war in Nicaragua he had to move...

SS: Move to Honduras...

JP: Move to Honduras, move to Tampa, to El Salvador, rented a charter plane to get the bales - he chartered two planes to move six hundred bales of tobacco out of Nicaragua, which then had to go to El Salvador, from El Salvador they went to Honduras... He put his tobacco, part of it was in Managua. Next to Samosa's bunker... not next to it, but like block away.

SS: That's pretty close...

JP: They burned, they destroyed it. He had to charter a plane, get that tobacco out of there, into El Salvador; from El Salvador into Honduras, and then from there to Tampa.

SS: That's a lot of frequent flyer miles.

Jorge: That's right. And all to save six hundred bales of tobacco.

JP: And then after all that was over with...

SS: You ended up right across the border.

JP: Yes... we ended up moving back to Honduras. There was so much instability, you didn't know if to take it to one place, so he figured "Let's take it to Miami, and save it there."

SS: So you opened the factory in Honduras because you're fleeing the Sandinistas, correct? And you started the factory there, did you have the people that were working for you in Nicaragua, did they come also? Or did you have to start from scratch?

JP: A lot of the people from Nicaragua went to Honduras.

SS: Now what year was this?

Jorge: '78.

SS: 1978.

JP: Yes.

SS: Okay 1964, you begin here. 1967-68 you're doing well in the US, and then you move to Nicaragua in...

Jorge: 1970.

SS: And then you had to move to Honduras...

Jorge: In '78.

SS: In '78. And how long did you spend in Honduras?

Jorge: We're still there. Also in '78 our factory got burned.

JP: May 24th, 1978, the factory in Nicaragua was destroyed - and a warehouse of tobacco. What saved us was that he had already spread out the tobacco he had in four different warehouses so we only lost a part of it. A month later after the burning of the factory, he was already producing cigars again in another warehouse that he had rented.

SS: Also In Nicaragua?

Jorge: Yes, in Esteli.

SS: So Jose went back right to Nicaragua as soon as possible?

Jorge: He went back right away.

JP: At that time in Nicaragua we were making almost six million cigars a year.

SS: The cigars that were being made in Honduras, they were still Nicaraguan puros, though, they were and still are the same cigars, just made in a different place?

Jorge: Exactly. That's right.

Jorge: When he returned he had no factory in Nicaragua so...

JP: After a thirty month period he rented a space and he started producing cigars again. Eventually he bought a new factory in Esteli, that wasn't really a factory that was an improvisation in order to make some cigars, eventually he bought a factory in downtown Esteli from another manufacturer that was leaving because he was afraid for his life, and the man wanted $50,000 for the factory and he said, "Look, I'll give you fifteen thousand or eighteen thousand dollars, because I may be buying ashes here."

Jorge: They ended up settling for a very low price, like nineteen thousand dollars and then he started that factory again and they operated that factory along with the one in Honduras up to 1985, when Reagan placed the embargo.

JP: In 1979, during the worst time of the war in Esteli, that factory had between five hundred and six hundred bales of tobacco inside. The factory was put out of operation because of the war. The workers took care of the factory and the tobacco so they wouldn't burn it and throughout that whole war...

SS: You paid them off in cigars, didn't you?

Jorge: (laugh) Well my father sent a truckload of clothing to the border of Honduras and Nicaragua for all the workers at one point. The workers were very loyal and they were the ones that protected the factory during that war. We had six hundred bales of tobacco and nothing got damaged...

SS: How did the workers defend the factory, with guns?

Jorge: Yeah, they were living in the factory. They had four people there.

SS: Like a fort? They actually defended it?

Jorge: Exactly like a fort.

Jorge: The factory has bullet holes inside. It's a high ceiling and you see on the top it has bullet holes, but nothing was lost.

SS: What year were you able to return to Nicaragua and have operations normal again?

Jorge: Well, normal - just up to the last couple of years it's been back to - not even close to what we had back then, but we're getting closer to that. We're producing three and a half million cigars between two factories, we were producing five almost six million with one factory in the seventies. So it has definitely set us back.

SS: What about the farms, though, they must have taken tremendous damage during the war?

Jorge: We lost one of the farms - the farm that you see that picture of the tractor - that farm was lost. This group of vandals came in and took over the farm, destroyed the sheds, they sold the wood of the barns, they sold the zinc, everything - took it apart, haven't been able to do anything with that.

JP: Throughout this whole ordeal, obviously we've had to decrease our production, but it's been for the purpose, he realizing that we could not produce the same amount of cigars that we were producing before and maintaining the quality that we had. So the only way to do it was to cut back on production.

Jorge: And that's why the production is where it is now. It's still not even close to where we were and it's been already seven years. We went back to Nicaragua in 1990 after Chamorra won the election. We went back to Nicaragua and started getting everything back to normal again, fixing the factory, obviously throughout five years there were some damages to the building, all that had to be repaired.

SS: The embargo was lifted the same year, was it not, 1990?

Jorge: Exactly.

JP: The day they lifted the embargo he was already in Esteli painting with a group of people, fixing the factory. He had an idea it was going to happen.

SS: You knew it was going to happen. Now that the factory is in Esteli and it seems to be producing fine, things seem pretty stable now in Nicaragua, for the most part, I mean Nicaragua has a long history of....

JP: There's still alot of problems, but it's definitely more stable.

SS: Do you think you'll ever combine the two factories or you'll keep the two factories for security?

JP: For right now we plan to keep both factories open because it's never good to have all your eggs in one basket. In Nicaragua you can't make plans for more than twenty-four hours in advance because you never know, they might have a road blocked off, you might leave Esteli in the morning to going to Managua and you can't because they have the road blocked off, it's a nightmare. (laugh)

Jorge: I was just there about two weeks ago. We were going to visit one of our farms, we left at six in the morning and itÕs a three hour drive, they had - have you seen what's going on in Nicaragua with all the problems with the university students? Well there's an agricultural university between Esteli and Jalapa - when we get there it was like six o'clock in the morning - burning tires, because there's only one road that goes in either direction...

SS: Why don't you explain to people who are not familiar with it what the dispute is over.

JP: It's all about a six percent tax, part of the budget that is allocated for the universities, that is collected from the tax payers. But the problemis that the universities want to control six percent of where the money goes and the government is saying that they want to control the six percent of where the money goes. So the whole dispute is over who is going to control the money.

Jorge: And then we're going to visit one of our farms and that's when we run into these people. They have big boulders all across the road and burning big tractor tires in protest. So they have in either direction thirty cars are pulled over, they cannot go through to the other side. This is one of the problems that occur in Nicaragua, you can lose a whole day there until they start letting people through. Not to mention you're at some sort of risk with all the problems that are going on.

SS: That's a lot of investment to have to worry about.

JP: That's one of the sacrifices that we have to make. The pride of having our own brand and also the responsibility to the people who have helped us throughout the years and our workers - we have people that have been working or us twenty plus years, who have started with us and now their kids are starting to work with us too. It's almost like a family type thing, many of our close employees are people that have been with us since the beginning. The person that's in charge of the factory in Honduras was one of the first three rollers that we had in Nicaragua.

SS: I was going to ask that question. Whatever happened to the first roller that made the fumas?

JP: He died.

SS: That's it, huh?

JP: He was smoking it, too. (sly smile)

SS: Well, maybe I won't buy any of those! (laugh)