Hecho en Miami

And yet walk into any premium cigar shop in the United States these days and you can still buy famous Cuban brands: Cohiba, Romeo y Julieta, H. Uppman — all made in the Dominican Republic. So who owns those brands? The answer is trickier than you might think.

In a series of lawsuits in the Seventies, families claiming original ownership of the Cuban names established new, "parallel" trademarks — essentially American versions of island brands. As the worldwide cigar market grew in the Eighties, many of the families sold the treasured names to a handful of mega-corporations who increasingly dominated the market. Of these companies, one has so far emerged the leader: Altadis. Based in Spain, it is the largest maker and distributor of cigars in the world. In 2000 Altadis S.A. — parent of American subsidiary Altadis U.S.A. — slyly obtained a 50 percent interest in Habanos S.A., an arm of Cuba's state tobacco monopoly, making it the only company authorized to sell Cuban trademarks internationally.

In 2002 General Cigar Company — a subsidiary of Swedish Match, the second-largest cigar seller in the world — sued Altadis, claiming the latter sought to establish a worldwide monopoly. A judge threw out the suit. Altadis has continued to grow: Recently the company declined an 11.5 billion-euro offer from British rival Imperial Tobacco to buy it.

The firm has been riding a resurgence in the premium cigar trade. Sales in the last five years have risen steadily from $3.9 billion nationally in 1999 to $5.6 billion in 2006. Starting in 2000 Juan Penton began trying to get his cut of the leaf.

Late on a warm Friday night in Little Havana, Calle Ocho is filled with revelers noisily making their way home from a night of drinking and dancing. Peter Bello, owner of Cuba Tobacco Trading Cigar Shop, stands at the door of his establishment. Tall, with slicked-back hair, a light silk shirt, and casually expensive pants, he scans the crowd for customers.

Inside the shop, but visible from the street through a large window, a few well-dressed middle age men stretch out on couches, puffing on long Robustos, reaching languid arms out occasionally to ash. Behind them, through a glass door, is another room, large and covered in wood paneling, which houses Bello's cigars. Arranged for display on a large central table are the premium brands. There are all sorts — long, fat Churchill's, petite coronas (short, thick sausagelike cigars made of black tobacco leaves). The room has a rich, delirious smell.

Bello leads the way to the back, offering this cigar and that. He has pudgy, boyish features that are almost friendly — but when a visitor mentions Juan Penton, his face goes rigid and his eyes sharpen. Days before, on the phone, Bello refused to speak a word about Penton. Now there is a faint note of menace in his voice. "I don't know him," he says. But when pressed, his answer changes. "I have nothing to do with that man," he growls. "Everything he says is bullshit, total bullshit."

Juan Penton was born in Havana on October 25, 1962, and spent a good part of his late twenties trying to leave Cuba — it ultimately took him ten tries to escape. "Something always happened," he says.

Once, for his fifth or sixth escape attempt, Penton scraped together 150,000 pesos ($2000) to buy a boat and then assembled a small group, including someone with a working engine. They made it seven or eight miles out when the boat sprung a leak. It was sinking too fast to pump, so — much to Penton's dismay — someone threw the engine overboard. Then, seeing a Cuban police boat approaching, Penton jumped into the water. He swam back to the island all night, alone, reaching shore just before dawn and hauling himself up the steps of the first house he saw. "My arms and legs were trembling, shaking," he remembers. The owners took him in and fed him.

Penton describes himself as a rebel in Cuba. He belonged to the Alianza Democrática Popular (ADEPO), a human rights group. Among other things ADEPO members would author letters denouncing the Cuban president and take them to government offices to be notarized. "They would write, öI denounce Fidel for this or that,' and then they would get it stamped, so that it was official, so that they had to acknowledge it," Penton says proudly. He was often detained, he says, but always released.

In 1992 the Cuban government cracked down. Human Rights Watch reported the convictions of three ADEPO members for "illegal association," among other charges.

More determined than ever to leave, Penton traveled to Santa Clara, where he found a man who agreed to take him to the United States. "I went, and there was the boat, and it was incredible," he remembers, with the delight of a man who has himself jerry-rigged all manner of vessels. This "boat" was an assemblage of tubes of galvanized metal stuffed between bits of old, rusted iron grill work. A pump had been commandeered from an old power plant. "It was madness," Penton recalls, shaking his head, "but it had a motor that worked."

When it finally left the unlikely vessel had 42 passengers aboard. Amazingly the crew reached the Bahamas, where they were spotted by members of the Miami-based activist group Hermanos Al Rescate, who dropped supplies and notified the Coast Guard. Penton was detained for six months in Guantanamo, then released to the United States.