Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 12/Enrique Pendas

Overview
Enrique Pendas was a large-scale cigar manufacturer in Tampa, Florida. His contributions to both the cigar industry and Tampa community aided in the growth of the Tampa area. He was interviewed by the Federal Writers' Project in 1935.

Early Life
Enrique Pendas was born in Asturias, a province in Spain, on April 12, 1865. This was where he was raised and educated.

Career
At the age of 16, Pendas moved to Havana, Cuba and stayed there for 17 months. During his stay, he learned more about the cigar-making industry by working at the Romeo and Juliet Factory. He later moved to New York City in November 1883. Here, he worked at his uncle's industry, Lozano Pendas & Co. Pendas also started learning in English in New York City.

When he was 22, Pendas moved to Key West, Florida and established another branch for his uncle's company. He became the owner of this branch and hired many workers from cigar companies such as Sanchez and Haya. Pendas later moved to Tampa, Florida, where he started his own cigar-making business.

Durings its early years, Tampa was greatly underdeveloped, containing "swamps and pestilence". This didn't prevent Pendas from starting his business. Pendas created his first factory, which was later destroyed by a fire on December 31, 1894. This led Pendas to construct two more factories, one of which was completely built in 1909.

Pendas' company grew. It had a high cigar production rate. The company led many other companies to open factories, allowing for more than 200 cigar-making factories to emerge. The rising cigar industry increased employment, bringing immigrants from Cuba, Latin America and Europe to Florida.

Amidst Tampa's growth, the city saw the rise of new technologies as well as new industries(besides the cigar industry). Cigar-making companies started having machines that outperformed humans. They created more products, allowing for increased economic profit. Cigarette-making companies emerged and also had an increased production rate. Both industries contributed to the slow fall of Pendas' factories in competition, making Pendas' past production rate, a "pleasant memory" of the past.

Despite this situation, Pendas went on to hold various executive positions for different companies and associations. In 1915, he became the manager of the Havana American Cigar Co., a subdivision of the American Tobacco Company.He was also the director of Citizen American Bank, the vice president of Strand Amusement Comapny, and president of the Tampa Cigar Manufacturers Association.



Impact on Tampa
Pendas already had a great impact on Tampa's cigar industry by leading the way for more industrial establishments to emerge. To benefit cigar factory workers, Penddas assisted the creation of the "El Porvenir" Society, a healthcare organization. The society provided workers with medicines, hospitilization and full medical services, with a fee of $1.25 per month. Pendas also founded the Centro Espanol (a Spanish casino) and the Centro Asturiano Society. Both were greatly attributed to community development in the Tampa area.

Personal Life
Pendas was married to Rosalia Torrens and had 2 sons with her.

Later Life & Death
Later on in his life, Pendas extended his company to other areas including New York and Havana, Cuba. His factories in Cuba were known to have been one of the "largest Havana cigar companies in the world." Pendas' New York factory was temporarily closed during labor strikes and was later reopened.It was later bought by E. Regensburg and Sons on May 20, 1920.

Enrique Pendas died on December 31, 1935. On this day, he was commemorated with the closure of cigar factories in the Tampa area.

Great Depression's Impact on the Tampa Cigar Industry
The collapse of the economy in the late 1920s, or what we know as the Great Depression, had especially hard hit the Tampa cigar industry. Many cigar smokers quit smoking or looked for other alternatives such as pipes and cigarettes. This forced factories to lay off thousands of workers. .

Before the Great Depression, workers at cigar factories used tribunes as breaks from their work. Tribunes were simply platforms where workers would read newspapers or fictious pieces of work such as "romance or adventure" novels. In the wake of the Depression, these places of entertainment became places to stir violence. Workers started to voice out their opinions or radical ideas, which led workers to take part in violent strikes. Factories shut down until factory owners decided to ban tribunes at factories.

Workers even faced trouble from the "influx" of cigar makers from Cuba as well as other tobacco workers from Havana. The immigration of these workers increased tensions involving wages and heightened competition.

Mutual aid societies (such as Pendas' "El Porvenir") offered service to workers under circumstances brought by the Great Depression.

Worker unemployment was also resolved through WPA projects initiated by the government. These projects gave jobs to both skilled and unskilled laborers.

Immigrant Discrimination
From around 1886, immigrants from various parts of the world including Cuba, Spain and Siciliy, Italy fled to Florida with the hope of a new life away from the tough situations at home. Some of those immigrants were businessmen who decided to make investments and create industries, including the cigar industry. When the cigar industry was relocated from Cuba to Florida, there were multiple job openings allowing immigrants from the working class to fill those in. Within a 10-year span, Florida's population increased due to immigration.

Many white-owned Tampan businesses, however, did not offer working-class immigrants medical services as well as some others. Immigrants were discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity.

This is when mutual aid societies resolved the problem. Societies from each respective cultural enclave provided aid to individuals from their enclave.