Carlos A. Fuente Sr. (1935–2016) grew Arturo Fuente from a small home business in Tampa into a factory in the Dominican Republic. Carlos Fuente Jr., known as Carlito, grew the wrapper that made Fuente Fuente OpusX a Dominican puro, and he is the public face of the company today. The brand profile is at Arturo Fuente. The factory is covered at Tabacalera A. Fuente.
Carlos Sr.
He was born in 1935 in Ybor City, a Cuban neighborhood of Tampa, the second son of Arturo Fuente and Cristina Trujillo. The family history and his company biography both say that as a child he had to roll fifty cigars a day on the porch before doing his homework. At that time the business was small, because the original factory had burned down in 1924.
In 1956 he bought his brother Arturo Oscar’s share of the company for one dollar. The business had $1,161 in assets, no debt, and sales of a few thousand cigars a year to local customers. He had married Anna Lopez, and according to the family, their son Carlito was born a year after the wedding. Carlos sold cigars on credit, opened accounts across Florida, and set his sights on New York. He bought buildings in Ybor City, had his parents live above the factory, and slept in the shop when there was a lot of work. Anna moved into the factory with the children rather than stay at home without him. This is the company’s own account, and it is more accurate than a story of overnight success.
The embargo cut off the supply of Cuban tobacco. He had bought bales of it in 1962, but when they ran out, the company had to start using tobacco from other countries. It tried Nicaragua and then Honduras, and lost factories in both to fire. In 1980 he and Carlito opened a factory in Santiago, Dominican Republic. He spent the rest of his working life running the family business from the Dominican Republic. He died in 2016. The company quotes his belief that a cigar should never be rushed, and that remains the factory’s guiding principle.
Carlos Jr.
Carlito grew up in the business and set out to prove that the Dominican Republic, known mainly for growing filler, could also grow wrapper. He wanted to grow shade wrapper in Dominican soil, even though growers told him that earlier attempts had failed. Working with the Oliva family, he planted tobacco on the land that became Chateau de la Fuente. The family dates the first harvest to 1992 and the release of OpusX to 18 November 1995, which was Arturo Fuente’s birthday. The cigar is a Dominican puro. The farm is not in the Santiago free-trade zone, but the cigars are rolled there.
He was also closely involved with the Hemingway line of figurados, released soon after the Santiago factory opened in 1980, which brought pointed cigars back to American shops. When visitors tour the company, they are sometimes taken to the Chateau rather than the rolling rooms, which reflects his personal interest in the farm.
Other family members, including in-laws, also work in the company. Cynthia and Wayne Suarez appear in public accounts of the family business. The company says four generations of the family have been involved, counting from Arturo.
One name, two roles
Carlos Sr. is the reason the company still exists: he bought it, expanded it, kept it going through the embargo and two factory fires, and set up the factory in the Dominican Republic. Carlos Jr. is the reason the company’s most famous cigar uses a Dominican-grown wrapper rather than an Ecuadorian wrapper over Dominican filler. The two worked together in Santiago for decades.
For the full history from Tampa to Santiago, see Arturo Fuente. For the other Cuban exile founder covered in this book, see José Orlando Padrón.
What Carlos Sr. changed
What’s remarkable is that Carlos Sr. decided a local Tampa cigar could be sold nationally, then that a national brand could survive without Cuban tobacco, and then that the company could start again in Santiago after two fires. That 1980 factory opening is what shaped the company.
What Carlos Jr. changed
Carlito’s wrapper project is often told as a simple success story. The fuller version is more interesting: years of small test plantings on land owned by the Oliva family, which agreed to be paid only if the project succeeded; a first harvest in 1992; the release of the cigar in 1995; and a three-year legal dispute over the trademark “Opus,” which the family won. The farm still exists, and OpusX still uses its wrapper leaf. It was a long effort to make the soil work, not a one-time success.
He also became the public face of the company in magazines and at cigar festivals. His father had been the factory manager; Carlos Jr. became known as the company’s blender.
Sources: Arturo Fuente official pages for Carlos A. Fuente Sr. and family history (arturofuente.com).