Fabrica de Tabacos Joya de Nicaragua
Nicaragua's oldest cigar factory, opened in Esteli in 1968, damaged in the revolution, nationalised, and restored to private operation in the 1990s.
The factory opened in 1968 as the Nicaragua Cigar Company, founded by the Cuban exiles Simon Camacho and Juan Francisco Bermejo. It was the first premium cigar operation in the country and the seed from which Esteli's entire industry grew; almost every later Nicaraguan factory drew on rollers trained there or on the supply networks it established. It remains in operation on the same site.
The building was damaged during the fighting of 1979 and rebuilt by its own workforce, then taken into state ownership as the revolutionary government consolidated industry and the American embargo closed its main export market. It operated under state control through the 1980s. Alejandro Martinez Cuenca took it over under a rental arrangement in 1992, and it was renamed Tabacos Puros de Nicaragua, recovering the Joya de Nicaragua trademark in 1994.
The plant sits in central Esteli and draws leaf from Esteli, Condega and Jalapa. It produces the full Joya de Nicaragua range and has also handled contract work. Its claim to be the oldest working cigar factory in Nicaragua is uncontested. As the country's first cigar factory it is also the reference point for Esteli's development from a growing area into a manufacturing centre, a shift that took place within a single generation.