José Orlando Padrón (1926–2017) founded Padrón Cigars in Miami in September 1964. The cigars that carry his name are made in Nicaragua, but he was born and raised in Cuba. The company profile is at Padrón. This chapter is about the man.
Pinar del Río
He was born into a tobacco-farming family. The Padróns grew tobacco in Pinar del Río, the province in western Cuba that supplied the leaf Havana factories wanted. According to the company, the family were originally farmers from the Canary Islands. He worked in the fields as a boy. This is not a story added later for publicity; it was a normal childhood for many men who later rolled cigars in Florida.
He left Cuba in 1961. A company photograph names the steamship Covadonga, which sailed from Spain to New York on 22 November 1961. The story of the hammer begins in Miami in 1962. He was thirty-six years old, received sixty dollars a month in refugee aid, and had no job, so he mowed lawns during the day and did carpentry at night. Raul Fernandez, a friend at the Cuban Refugee Office, gave him a small hammer and told him to put it to use. He kept the hammer. The family still tells the story of el martillito (“the little hammer”) because the six hundred dollars he used to open the shop came from that carpentry work.
One roller
Padrón Cigars opened in September 1964 in a small room with one roller. Padrón sold the cigars himself in the evenings, after his gardening and carpentry work. He made a blend he trusted, aimed at Cuban exiles who could no longer buy the cigars they had smoked at home. He sold them for twenty-five cents each.
Nicaragua is the second country in his story. In the Estelí region he found land that reminded him of Cuba’s Vuelta Abajo. Company photos show him in Nicaragua in 1965 and inspecting the first shipment of Nicaraguan tobacco in 1967. By 1970 the cigars were being made in Nicaragua. They became puros of sun-grown tobacco from Cuban seed, while Miami remained the company’s American base.
His later years in business were not easy. Civil war, a fire at the Estelí factory, and bombings and extortion aimed at the Miami business. Yet, he stayed in the tobacco trade. The company did not abandon its plans in Nicaragua. Their patience in waiting for conditions to improve in Nicaragua has paid off, with an established presence and new roots established in the country.
Family
The 1926 Serie is named for the year of his birth. It was released in 2002 for his seventy-fifth birthday and is made with tobacco aged for five years, then box-pressed. The 1964 Anniversary series is named for the year the company was founded, marking thirty years since he opened the shop. The Family Reserve is the family’s private stock, made available to the public. His son Jorge Padrón is the company’s president, and other children also work in the business. José Orlando Padrón died on 5 December 2017.
He is not the name of a cigar size (vitola). He is the reason a Nicaraguan puro carries a Cuban family name. The page for the factory in Estelí is Padrón in Estelí. Reviews of the cigars are at reviews.
Three countries
Late in life he publicly thanked three countries: Cuba, where he was born; the United States, where he opened his business; and Nicaragua, where he found tobacco he described as a new Cuba. All three are essential to his story.
He stayed actively involved in the business. The company’s page on vertical integration shows old photographs of him inspecting tobacco next to newer photographs of Jorge doing the same. According to company photo captions, the tradition of a Christmas bonus for workers began in 1964. These are small details, but they show a man who considered the factory workers part of the brand.
After 2017
The company was not sold to outside investors when he died; Jorge was already president.
For another Cuban exile who kept a family brand going after a factory fire, see Carlos Fuente Sr. These two men built the two companies covered most fully in this book, but they built them in different ways.
The founding date
September 1964 is the company’s exact founding date. The 1964 Anniversary line, launched thirty years later, uses tobacco aged longer than the everyday series and is box-pressed. The everyday series carries the family name without the anniversary features.
According to the company, he worked eighteen-hour days in his early years in Miami as a gardener, carpenter, and salesman. The little hammer represents those long hours. The version of the story told on the company website comes from his son, and this book treats it as a family account from the company itself.
The fire in Estelí and the violence in Miami mean his life was not a simple immigrant success story. People tried to stop the business, but the name is still on the box today.
Sources: Padrón (padron.com): José O. Padrón biography, hammer story, photo gallery. Death year is public record.