HAVANA — Looks like it will be close, but no giant cigar, for Cuba‘s stogie-rolling king Jose Castelar. The 64-year-old former world-record holder has teamed up with five assistants, using nearly 93 ...

Ana Perez reached into a pile of Connecticut shade tobacco leaves and placed one on the small table in front of her. She began spraying the leaf with water and carving it up with a chaveta knife.

In Cuban, Dominican and Honduran cigar factories decades ago, a man — El Lector, or “he who reads” — used to sit in a chair in front of the rows of cigar rollers bent over their desks. His job was to ...