Señales de humo
Casa de la Cultura, Danlí, Honduras. March, 2025.
Tobacco plants for cigar production grow favorably in the hot and humid parts of the tropics. In the Caribbean region, countries such as Cuba, The Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua enjoy a great reputation around the world. However, its antecedents date back to pre-Columbian times and since then, tobacco smoking has been a common practice for the inhabitants of these villages. Over the years and since colonial times, it has been an important part of the economy and exports to Europe, Asia as well as to the United States, being Texas the main state for Honduran cigars.
It is a symbol of male power that hides the participation of thousands of women workers who are exploited both in the cultivation stage and in the manufacture of cigars. This project has as its axis the context of the production of cigars as some reminiscences to my childhood. In that sense, the research for the realization of this inedit project consists of several stages over 7 years of work. Began in Danlí, El Paraíso (the place where I was born) and where there are more than 20 factories, as well as many tobacco plantations in the Jamastrán Valley area. From there, I have been exploring the aesthetic potential of this raw material and its exclusive business environment, where I have already collected. At the same time, I have been incorporating the processes of tobacco cultivation and its industrial transformation, in order to create a series of sculptures and videos that take as are ference the ancestral history and spiritual uses of tobacco in Mesoamerica.
