Ancient Marquilla From Cuba

A marquilla is a cigarette wrapper, which we today would call a soft pack.  it was small, quite small in fact, designed to hold small cigarettes, each being about two and a half inches long. In the 1860s in Cuba there were lots of cigarettes being made, as this was the latest tobacco fad.  Uncountable numbers were smoked.  The entrepreneurs on the island began to package the coffin nails, attracting attention to their brands with the use of colorful imagery the packaging.  The imaginative Cuban printers used social customs and mores, holidays, calendars, religious themes, military uniforms, wildlife, comical situations, and produced some downright bizarre pictures.There were three large cigarette manufacturers in Havana at this time and one of them was La Honradez, which means Integrity in Spanish.  By buying La Honradez you could be assured that your cigarette contained more than factory sweepings.  This example of a La Honradez wrapper is from the Album de los Aminales series and is entitled 'Mouthful for a Big Shot'.  The outrageous image shows a restaurant scene with waiters as dogs serving the head of slave to a dining alligator.  I needed a double-take.  Yes that is what is happening here.  A blow struck for the lowly alligator.  In 1860, the only one lower in the Cuban social pecking order? - the black man, the slave.