t’s late February and the fields of the Vuelta Abajo, Cuba’s prime tobacco growing region, are in the throes of harvest. From the town of Consulacion del Sur to the village of San Juan y Martinez and beyond, cigar tobacco is growing from small sun-grown plants just a month old to five-foot-high wrapper tobacco that is protected under cheesecloth. There’s a slow, methodical pace to the harvest. Dusty, rusty trucks rumble down the region’s roads with workers standing in back. Horses trot by with carts laden with freshly picked tobacco. Oxen plough picked fields, and men and women stroll through the plantations