La Voz de Tabaco

La Voz de Tabaco was one of several well-heard Cuban broadcasters of the 1930s, on both MW and SW. The station was operated by the Federation of Tobacco Growers of Eastern Cuba. Between 1935 until 1939, they produced a new QSL each year picturing the new Miss Cuban Cigars. In 1939, one of the primary members of the Federation decided that the warm transmitter building would be a good place to dry his tobacco crop. The bales were stacked too close to the transmitter and caught fire, destroying the entire building, and bankrupting the Federation. The station never recoverd.

One of the more unusual features of this QSL is that it was actually printed on a fine grade of tobacco leaf used as the outside wrapping of some of the finest Cuban cigars. That is one of the reasons so few copies of this QSL still exist - few cigar aficionados could resist wrapping the QSL around one of their favorite stoogies for a first-class smoke.

From the Bill Pugh collection

Dead DXers' Stuff is a subsidiary of The BLANDX Corporation