HISTORY OF DCPR
Porto Rico American Tobacco Corporation
Porto Rico Leaf Company was organized and chartered by Spain around 1506, this became Porto Rico Tobaco Company and later Porto Rico American Tobacco Corporation, in 1898 which in turn became Puerto Rico Tobacco Corporation in the 1920's and has operated until today. PRTC started making Don Collins Cigars in 1991. see www.don-collins.com
In the year 1899 and thereafter, either the American or Continental Companies, for cash or stock, at an aggregate cost of fifty millions of dollars ($50,000,000), bought and closed up some thirty competing corporations and partnerships theretofore engaged in interstate and foreign commerce as manufacturers, sellers, and distributors of tobacco and related commodities, the interested parties covenanting not to engage in the business. Likewise the two corporations acquired for cash, by issuing stock, and otherwise, control of many competing corporations, now going concerns, with plants in various states, and Porto Rico, which manufactured, bought, sold, and distributed tobacco products or related articles throughout the United States and foreign countries, and took from the parties in interest covenants not to engage in the tobacco business.
The Porto Rican-American Tobacco Company (Porto Rico)-Capital $1,799,600. In 1899 the American Company caused the organization of the Porto Rican-American Tobacco Company, which took over the partnership business Rucabado y Portela,-manufacturer of cigars and cigarettes,-with covenants not to compete. These companies became consolidated in the late 1800’s as Puerto Rico Tobacco Corporation, our company name today.
 |
| Porto Rico Tobacco Corporation Stock Issue |
The most reputed tobacco growing district of Vuelta Abajo became the major theater of operations during the 1897 and 1898 campaigns of the second war for independence (1895-1898). The conflict dislocated production and the relocation policies of the Spanish regime severely constrained the time that growers and work hands could dedicate to the plantations.
At the end of the war, large areas of the heavy and sandy clay soils were barren and laid to waste. Seed for the 1898-99 harvest was scarce and needed to be imported from other areas as corporate and individual planters required excellent seed to maintain the markets and international reputation of their leaf. According to the authoritative Angel González del Valle growers generally imported it from Puerto Rico. Tobacco leaf was the third leading export before the U.S. invasion and, soon after, it would be second only to sugar. Tobacco cultivation and growing in Puerto Rico experienced three major changes during the second half of the nineteenth century. The first refers to the nature of the commodity produced in the mountainsides and the narrow river-valleys of the eastern highlands.
 |
| Taino Indian Tobacco Farm in Puerto Rico (c. 1500 AD) |
The leaf that slowly ascended and spread to the Cordillera Central was not the leaf consumed domestically as chaws of tobacco and the inferior grades exported for the inexpensive markets in Europe; it was a superior leaf, if employed, in the manufacture of cigars. For instance, a nineteenth-century observer considered the leaf from Cidra excellent and, as early as 1878, merchants and manufacturers, who were then called "fabricants", identified the tobacco of the highland municipality of Sabana del Palmar by the trade name of Comerío and considered it the best in the island.
