Plugging the Embargo Loophole

How cigars played a starring role in the U.S. embargo on Cuba, tightening sanctions that remain 60 years later

- PETER KORNBLUH

Only a month after John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, in February 1961, the new president asked his Secretary of State for recommendations on instituting a “full embargo” against Cuba. In an effort to undermine Cuba’s revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, Kennedy’s predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had already terminated U.S. exports to Cuba and cut imports of Cuban sugar. Now, Kennedy wanted to know if an embargo on all Cuban imports would “make things more difficult for Castro,” and “be in the public interest?”

“The principal items still imported from Cuba are tobacco, molasses and fresh fruits and vegetables,” Secretary of State Dean Rusk responded in a secret report. But a full trade embargo would particularly affect Cuban cigars. “About five million dollars’ worth of high-quality cigars were imported from Cuba in 1960,” Rusk informed the President. “An embargo on Cuban cigars would result in considerable inconvenience to United States consumers,” he wrote, “as cigars of comparable quality could not be obtained from other sources.”