Since direct travel to Cuba is difficult -- thanks to our government's abiding irritation with this little Caribbean upstart nation that has insisted on socialism as its economic form (read: "sharing what you have") -- one first flies to Cancun, Mexico. Spending the night in the "Zona des Hoteles" is my personal idea of hell: mile upon mile of chain hotels walling off the beach from the road (and not incidentally usurping the land that was once the home of small fishing villages and independent economies of self-employed fishermen, who are now sweeping floors and serving daiquiris made with pre-mixed, concentrated lime juice). Not to dwell on the negative, but my next door neighbors there, who somehow had managed to shoe-horn eight children into their room, spent the entire night slamming doors so loudly, screaming and laughing, that I met my floor mates in the hall, screaming and fuming at them, when I stuck my head out to investigate the din that made sleep impossible. My all-included dinner was what you might imagine, and despite the kindness of the staff, I was only too happy to have my obligatory wrist band cut off the next morning and leave for Havana.

The flight is only an hour, but it entails a cultural shift of many years. Disembarking, one goes through X-ray security and metal detectors before being admitted into Cuba and retrieving your suitcases. Lest one think this excessive, I suggest they read Reese Erlich's instructive new book titled "Dateline Havana." Most Americans know about the multiple attempts our government made to assassinate Fidel Castro, but I, for one, did not know that as a part of our plan to "destabilize" Cuba, we (meaning our government working through right-wing Cuban "terrorists" given safe-harbor in Miami) introduced swine flu from Africa, forcing the Cubans to kill more than 500,000 pigs, and dengue fever, which killed more than 150 Cubans, more than 100 of which were children. This is not to mention the bombing of liberal and moderate Cuban radio stations and newspapers in Miami, the bombing of the car of former Chilean socialist minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., or even the invasion of the Florida Election Commission in 2000 to stop the counting of more than 10,000 uncounted ballots in the presidential elecction. To date, none of these folks, in flagrant violation of U.S. law, and most certainly "terrorists" (consider the bombing of the Cuban plane, which killed the entire Cuban Olympic Fencing Team, masterminded by a man named Posada Carilles, who is living in the U.S. today) has been prosecuted by our government. I guess there are "those" terrorists and "our" terrorists, or something. Which all goes to say, I can understand the caution of the Cubans.

The searching of our luggage, for whatever reason, which may have taken over an hour and a half, was done with grace. We were threaded through the airport by a lovely young girl with a discreet lip-piercing who was holding a sign with my name on it when I disembarked. I identified myself and she neither moved nor acknowledged me for a long strange moment, until my guide, David, explained that I was, in fact, who I said I was. She led us to a room where we were served wonderful Cuban coffee and met the first of our two hosts.

Jose Antonio Candia is a marketing specialist for Habanos, the Cuban company that oversees the worldwide sale of its famous cigars. A slender young man in his 20s, smoking a thick robusto cigar, he introduces us to his companion, Nelson Alfonso, who represents a company called Golden Age Ltd., a Cuban government agency that is in charge of the distribution of cigars. Nelson is a dark-haired, olive-complected young man who later informs me that his people, like many Cubans, come from all over the globe: Russia, Italy, Lebanon. Both men are completely dedicated to the tobacco industry in an affecting way. They love cigars, love the culture, and feel that by distributing and selling them they are helping their country. (Cigars are Cuba's No. 1 export, and the fourth-largest provider of revenue to the state, after tourism, sugar, and nickel.)

Cuban cigars, like French wine, have "appellations." Just as one cannot call a sparkling wine Champagne if it is produced outside the Champagne region of France, the old Cuban marques of cigars: Uppman, Partaga, Romeo y Julietta, Monte Cristo, Bolivar, etc., are the same. Of course, nothing having to do with Cuba is simple. After the revolution, many of the wealthy tobacco families left Cuba with seeds and began new plantations in the Dominican Republic and other climates favorable to the growth of the plant. They also took the names with them. Since the laws of some countries affords the rights of the name to the individual, they have been able to compete somewhat with the Cubans, most notably in the United States, where Cuban products are prohibited. Since the United States represents 25 percent of the world tobacco market, they have taken a healthy bite from the Cuban industry, and are able to advertise in the United Sstates, giving them quite an advantage over the Cubans.

Nelson and Jose are philosophical about this. They are less philosophical about the imitation of Cohibas, the Rolls-Royce of Cuban cigars. Developed after the revolution, Cohibas became famous as the cigar of Fidel himself, and developed incredible branding and status from that association. The General Cigar Co., an American firm, simply copied the brand, the logo, the band, etc., and insisted that it was not "registered" as a trademark. The Cubans are quick to point out: a) that they were not allowed to register it, and b) that the brand was made famous by them. "If you developed your own soft-drink and began selling it as Coke, what do you think would happen?" said Jose. The Cubans have been pressing a suit in the United States for 12 years, and it surprised me to learn, that even after all this history of malice, they are not jaded about our court system and expect justice. They recently won a ruling on their behalf and though it has been appealed, they have hopes to win in the Supreme Court.

Eventually, our bags our cleared, our coffee cups are drained and we are released to the balmy winds of Cuba. Three minutes from the clean and modern airport, I am surprised to see a farmer plowing an extensive field with a team of oxen. Then we pass a cart on the road drawn by an ox and I am reminded of the costs the U.S. trade embargo has levied on Cuba. It is a poor country and must struggle for the resources of energy, cash, etc., that many countries take for granted. It's not, as neo-cons and free-market ideologues would have us believe, simply because the economy is socialist -- France, Britain and Italy have all been socialist countries at one time or another, and thrived. It is because as soon as it became clear that Fidel intended a communist model in Cuba, the United States reacted as if he were a syphilitic they had caught in the first lady's bed. Thus began the relentless 50-year struggle to overthrow, undermine and suborn the Cuban revolution -- an unseemly intention where the richest, most powerful country in the world dedicated inordinate amounts of resources to destabilizing a tiny Caribbean nation and, if they couldn't assassinate its leader, tried in whatever way they could to destabilize its economy and terrorize its people. Isn't that how we would define terrorism, or have I missed something?

The struggle has compounded the fortunes for the Mafiosi of Miami who receive millions in make-work grants for the totally ineffectual Radio Marti, our government's propaganda radio station that is jammed by the Cuban government so no one hears it. It has also impoverished the Cuban people who continue to invent their way out of one difficulty after another and somehow manage to survive.

On the ride in from the airport, I was delighted to see the gaily, hand-painted vehicles of my childhood cruising the road in good working order: a lime-green '53 Ford, a deep blue '46 Plymouth, a cerulean '55 Olds, and a multicolored red '52 Cadillac. Still running, patched and improvised by resourceful mechanics and loving owners, these old American behemoths have found an approximation of eternal life in Cuba, and continue, in their stately, modestly ruined manner, to cruise the boulevards, past the once-grand mansions of Cuba, like ancient doyennes of an antiquated beauty contest.

Like Syria, buildings here line the road, and one cannot quite tell if they are abandoned, operating, or in the process of being built. There is a level of decrepitude that covers much of the environment like a fine mist, and so the high-gloss that one associates with successful industry in the States is missing here. This is not to say that the Cubans cannot mount impressive displays.

The Jose Mari Memorial is an inspiring spire, set in the midst of a great plaza where more than a million people at a time have gathered to hear Fidel's famous four- and five-hour speeches, which are a combination of pep rallies, analysis of current events and political educational for the masses. It is a tall, imposing tower set in the center of a grand traffic circle like a giant spool around which the traffic of Havana winds itself up daily.

On the entire wall of a rectangular building, which must be 25 stories high, a quick pen-and-ink sketch of Che Guevara has been rendered in steel, over the words, "Hasta la Victoria Siempre" (Until Victory Forever). This is the Ministry of the Interior, and it's something of a modest thrill to see an official government building honoring a charismatic revolutionary. This young, post-revolutionary society is much closer to its roots than America is. Though such honors to revolution may, in time, turn out to be not much more than the reflexive homage we offer to our own revolutionaries like Jefferson and Adams -- scrubbing them of relevance by larding them glory. Today, however, it seems fresh.

Our taxi takes us down the Avenida Paseo, which reminds me of the stately quarters of New Orleans. Grand homes sit placidly in the shadow of thick, leafy trees. The streets are wide and calm, and the grillwork on the houses is ornate and fanciful. Finally, at the famous Malecon, the sea-wall that rings Havana, we are delivered to the Nacional Hotel -- once the home of Hollywood stars such as Errol Flynn and Orson Welles, and gangsters like Meyer Lansky and Al Capone in the glory years when the American Mafia controlled Cuba like a personal fiefdom. (See the "Godfather" trilogy for a quick, painless, history lesson on the subject.)

We are greeted like visiting royalty by the entire office staff of the hotel who accompany us, en masse, for a quick tour of the VIP second floor, and escort us to the largest hotel suite I have ever personally entered, which has just been vacated by the president of China, who was here on a state visit recently. Door after door is opened by the excited staff, revealing a large formal dining room, living room, then three elegant bedrooms, all with views of the Malecon, the hotel gardens and pool, and "rum-dark sea" leading to Miami's dappled shores where the angry old emigres are hatching their lethal plots, while their children drink rum, snort coke, dance their asses off and say, "Who cares?"

After unpacking, resting awhile, and discovering, to my delight, an internet connection in my room (I had been warned that they did not exist) I descend to the lobby and meet more of our hosts. Jorge Fernandez Maique (prounounced "Mikey", his nickname) is the director of marketing operations for Habano. His deputy, Gonzalo de Navarrete, is Spanish. Both men are young, full of energy and love for cigars, and both are smoking robusto purros (Spanish for cigars) as is one of their compatriots, an extremely dark-skinned Afro-Cuban woman named Heloise who wields the cigar with great, unaffected, elan, complementing her grand smile.

The firm Habanos is a corporation that exists to commercialize Cuban brands of cigars. They are a global enterprise for an industry worth about $385 million annually. They are partnered, on the distribution side, with a British company called Imperial Tobacco, which inherited their previous relationship when it bought a French and Spanish company called Altadis. Altadis had stepped up to the plate when the fall of Russia left the Cubans stranded for capital and in serious trouble. They offered money and support and helped rescues the tobacco industry, and the Cubans felt honor-bound to repay them, and so entered a partnership with them. Together, they are the official distribution vehicle for Cuban product.

This week, they will be introducing new "younger" brands to what they hope will be a growing audience. We discuss the inevitable collisions of tradition and growing markets for some time before Gonzalo, an avid student of history and politics, begins instructing me in the history of tobacco and cigars.

The plant itself is indigenous to Peru and brought to the Caribbean by native people, where it was used by them as a mild intoxicant to introduce them to the Gods. On Oct. 28, 1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived in Cuba thinking he had reached India, he was entranced to see the Araguacos wrapping bundles of leaves in other leaves, firing them, and inhaling the smoke through their nostrils. When he asked what they were called, he was told, "Cohoba."

Cut to post-revolutionary Cuba. As a way of combating the prostitution and degeneracy of pre-revolutionary Cuba, Castro opened a series of tobacco factories where young women (much better than men at tasting and rolling cigars) could be gainfully employed. The cigars they made were unbranded and made readily available to the people. One day, as Fidel and a bodyguard were traveling together, in the Vuelta Abajo region, Fidel commented on the fine aroma of his bodyguard's cigar. He tried one, loved it, and under the guidance of Celia Sanchez, one of Cuba's great marketing geniuses, the Cohiba cigar was born.

Like blending wines or Scotch, the making of cigars with recognizable tastes and characteristics is no easy matter. A tobacco plant's leaves are different at the bottom, the middle, and the top. Furthermore, tobacco grown in different regions of Cuba, like grapes in different regions of France, have different characteristics and tastes. A cigar is a mixture of "fillers" different tobaccos, wrapped in a binder-leaf, and then covered with a "wrapper" -- the most perfect, unblemished, shade-grown leaves. Each factory has degustadores or catadores -- women who smoke each day's product to insure that the quality and taste are uniform. Mikey laughs and says, "They are just better than we are." (Meaning men.) If too much rain or sun has thickened or thinned the leaves, changing the taste, these women will demand that such-and-such a field be closed and replaced by product from another. These leaves are then mildly fermented and stored for up to five years, while the fermentation drives off the ammonias and acidity in the leaves, and also creates stockpiles for insured continuity.

This article has been corrected.

Peter Coyote is an actor and author. "Sleeping Where I Fall," his memoir of the 1960s counter-culture, will be re-released in May 2009.