Collection: Honduran Cigars

When the Spanish landed in Honduras in search of precious metals, they came across Mayan tobacco. The Mayans, a trading people who built one of their most beautiful cities in Copan, spread the use of tobacco.

Harvested for local consumption, Copaneco (the local variety of tobacco) was a wild plant that was not cultivated until 1719.

The planters gathered and processed the leaves before sending them to Guatemala City, Mexico or Spain. But the journey to Spain was too long, the roads were bad and haunted by smugglers. The Copaneco so vaunted by the colonial authorities could not compete with the prices in Mexico or Cuba. So for almost two centuries, it remained the most popular tobacco in Central America, without succeeding in gaining a foothold beyond.