A Cigar Family Charitable Foundation Built Educational Oasis in a Rural Outpost.
– by Eileen Robinson Smith
Today what you see when you drive the country dirt road to chateau de la fuente, the tobacco plantation of the arturo fuente cigar family, looks like a dream vision. A pristine yellow and white complex has risen from an uncultivated field: a school that goes from kindergarten to the 12th grade; a medical clinic; laboratory; pharmacy; a multi-use community centre; a baseball stadium; basketball, volleyball courts and more, including the remarkable arturo sandoval school of music. The cigar family charitable foundation built this rural miracle.
This year, 2012, the Fuentes celebrated their 100th anniversary of the Arturo Fuente Cigar Family. Arturo Fuente, grandfather and Carlos Fuente, Jr., immigrated to Florida from Havana in 1906. Just15, the boy came in search of the American dream — and found it.
It was 1992 when Carlos Fuente, Jr. (Carlito) and his father, Carlos Fuente, owners of the world-famous cigar operation, bought this land in the poverty-stricken Monsignor Noel Province that both society and the government of the Dominican Republic had neglected.
The land that was to be cultivated in tobacco for the outer layer or wrappers for Fuente Fuente Opus X cigars was originally cow pastures that were nothing but mud. The road was nearly impassable, even with a four-wheel drive. Ragged children would run alongside the car and beg…an activity that continued right up until 2004, when the charity that the Fuentes established, along with the Newman Family, their distributors/partners in the states, built the primary school within this complex. Formerly, a low percentage of kids went to school and many girls were pregnant by age 13. Hope was less prevalent. Malnutrition coupled with poor physical and dental health was common. The community at large did not have electricity, or safe drinking water.
Whereas kids used to beg for a couple of pesos, now it is the foundation that solicits donations for its cause. Since 2001 more than 25,000 donations have been received, including a bus from Metro Bus Company, a communal kitchen from a well-known restaurant group, and a baseball stadium sponsored by Marvin Shanken, publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine. Last August, a group of Chicagoans hosted a fundraiser that raised $125,000. An impressive, donor wall honours those who have made major contributions. Unlike many other NFP organizations, 100% of every dollar contributed goes directly to the charitable projects. The Fuentes and Newmans underwrite all administrative, legal, accounting, office, and marketing costs.
“There is no greater love than that of family”
One celebrity donor is Andy Garcia, anyone who saw him in “The Lost City,” saw scenes shot at Chateau Fuente. Garcia, also a Cuban-American, is an A-List friend of Carlos Fuente, Jr. Carlos even had a cameo role in that movie, which although filmed in the D.R. was about Havana. Andy Garcia returned in December 2011, this time to direct a film about the last 10 years of Hemingway’s life, a good deal of which was spent in Cuba. The school kids love the Hollywood action!
The school houses some 450 students. Representatives of the U. N. visited the complex in 2007. Carlito Fuente is participating in the Global Pact of the United Nations for the Millennium Goals. The school was selected as a recipient of their award and was considered a prototype for the Caribbean. As a point of reference, recently the Dominican government closed down a dozen private schools for not being up to standards. In a country, where litter is omnipresent and schools characteristically are dirty and scrawled with graffiti, this one still looks brand new, with landscaping as attractive as that of a gated, residential community. The students and their families take great pride in the complex and help maintain the grounds.
Although not in the original plan, the high school, opened in 2005. Some eight-graders took the initiative to approach Carlos and Eric Newman asking where they would continue their education. They convinced them to add a high school! In the first class of 2009, there were 29 graduates, 34 in 2010. In 2011, proud parents watched 29 kids get a high-school diploma. The entire aforementioned are attending the country’s universities, colleges, and technical schools, on scholarships.
Today, a group of American universities wants to partner with the Foundation to find exceptional students interested in specific fields, like engineering and environmental studies, and plan to offer them scholarships. Carlos interjects that “his” kids no longer dream of going north and becoming “Dominican Yorks,” but instead want to be educated and return to give back to their community.
Carlos Fuente, Jr. is a deeply caring, sensitive, and sincere person, who transmits his intensity, energy, passion, and dreams to those he encounters. He draws in dedicated people like the American Director of the Foundation, David Luther and instructor Tony Kattengell, who has a six-degree black belt in karate and a successful martial arts school in San Jose, CA. He trains two students to become “senseis,” who are then in charge of training their fellow students. He donates his skills, because: “Once, someone gave me a chance.”
The Foundation’s generosity has extended to the community, with an astounding litany of outreach projects which include construction of clean water stations; extension of electricity to homes; building of bridges over rivers; implementing programmes of sanitation; repairing existing community health facilities and schools; establishing nutrition, prenatal and preventive medicine programmes. The complex services 104,000 people year round, from 20 rural and urban communities. Also, it teaches adults how to start and maintain micro-businesses, like selling the honey that is produced on the Foundation’s bee farm.
The clinic administrator is Dr. Sousa. Whether making sure the kids get two square meals a day and a vitamin pill, or testing them for hepatitis, she truly cares. The complex offers general medicine, pediatrics, family planning/gynecology and immunizations. These services have helped save the lives of countless people in the community, especially due to early detection. “There is no greater love than that of family,” Carlito says ardently. Now he has an extended family with two branches — his cigar family of friends and associates who have helped make all this possible, and the children and families in the surrounding communities who consider him their beloved patriarch. He is a dream-maker.
Throughout 2012 the Fuentes celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Arturo Fuente Cigar Family. Arturo Fuente, grandfather of Carlos Fuente, Jr., immigrated to Florida from Havana in 1906. Just 15, the boy came in search of the American dream – and found it. He began the family business in 1912 in Tampa, after working for years in other area cigar factories. At the time, there were some 200 such factories which produced as many as 500 million cigars a year. Ships left the port daily with these handmade, artisan products. Then and in the decades that followed, it was the fashion that both men and women wore hats, tropical fedoras for the men, and these men would have cigars in their breast pockets.
In celebration of their being the oldest Cuban-American family to have survived the vagaries of time, fashion, and economics, The Fuentes planned major celebrations throughout 2012. In their honour, Cigar Aficionado did a major magazine feature on the family, and the well-known, Dominican architect, Juan Romero, desiged a Victorian-style gift shop at Chateau Fuente to house products and vintage memorabilias. Here cigar rollers will demonstrate their craft. Carlos Fuente, Jr., the most celebrated cigar-maker on the planet, will be on hand often to personally greet visitors. The experience can be likened to going to Colombia and meeting Juan Valdez. Coming soon is a guest house where donors can stay while they volunteer their time. A preliminary design is in place, but it needs funding.
Thirty-five years ago, Carlos, Jr, and his father and namesake, put away bales of their finest tobacco in anticipation of this anniversary. The bales were aging in two of their warehouses in Santiago’s Free Zone. Last year Hurricane Irene passed through the Dominican Republic. On a dark and stormy night, lightning struck, and the buildings and bales caught fire. By the time Carlos came on the scene, a mushroom cloud had risen and the aroma was pungent. With stalwart resignation, he simply said: “The angels are having a big night!”
The next morning, the good news was that bad news had imbued him with incredible energy. At a time when he had been feeling stressed and somewhat overwhelmed, he bounced back. His great pride in what his family had accomplished boiled over and he began planning anew for the anniversary. Hadn’t they overcome tremendous obstacles? The Fuentes have had eight fires in their 100 years. They have gone through countless hurricanes and floods and two revolutions some of which have cost them their entire business. They lost everything in Nicaragua when the Sandanistas burned down their factory. As there were not too many countries where cigars are made, the Dominican Republic was a good choice.
In addition to paying tribute to his family’s heritage, Carlos wants to raise his nine-year-old son, yet another Carlos, in the family tradition. Whereas, he had grown up in a small, wooden house, crowded with three generations, Carlito lives in a hilltop home with a pillared gazebo adorned with the mythical goddess of tobacco. That small house was in a Cubano barrio called Ybor City in Tampa. As a teenager, Carlos was street savvy but didn’t go out of his neighbourhood for fear of being beat up by the local racists. Carlito, the only boy in a family of three girls, goes to private school and enjoys a privileged lifestyle. The Fuentes have come a long way.
See: www.cf-cf.org