Nestor Plasencia

Nestor Plasencia, Sr. (born circa 1950), is a tobacco grower and cigar maker of Cuban descent whose factories in Honduras and Nicaragua produce over 30 million cigars a year. Contracting out the use of his factories to Rocky Patel and other leading brands, Plasencia remains one of the leading figures in the Central American cigar industry.

Biography

Early years

Nestor Plasencia, Sr. was born in about 1950 in Cuba to a tobacco growing family which emigrated after the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

After the revolution

The Plasencia family remained closely involved in the tobacco industry in Central America, with Nestor's uncle Herminio Plasencia continuing to be active in day-to-day operations in growing operations into the 1990s.

During the early 1980s, Plasencia lost his tobacco farms and factories in Nicaragua as a result of the Sandinista revolution. During this interval he moved his focus across the border to neighboring Honduras.

Nestor Plasencia today again operates two factories in Nicaragua — a 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m²) unit opened in 1992 in the town of Ocotal and a smaller building in the country's cigar capital, Estelí. Plasencia's primary operations remain in Honduras, however, centered in two buildings in Danlí and smaller units in the villages of El Paraíso and Morocelí.

Plasencia

Plasencia is a walled market city in the province of Cáceres, Extremadura, Western Spain. As of 2013, it has a population of 41,047.

Situated on the bank of the Jerte River, Plasencia has a historic quarter that is a consequence of the city's strategic location along the Silver Route, or Ruta de la Plata. Since the 15th century, the noblemen of the region began to move to Plasencia, defining its current appearance.

History

Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Although Plasencia was not founded until 1186, pieces of pottery found in Boquique’s Cave provide evidence that this territory was inhabited long before. Pascual Madoz's dictionary details that this ancient territory, either called Ambroz or Ambracia, was originally given the name Ambrosia before becoming Plasencia.

In the same year that the city was founded, Alfonso VIII of Castile gave the city its independence and the Diocese of Plasencia was created. The original motto of the city, Ut placeat Deo et Hominibus, means to please God and man. Ten years after its birth, Plasencia was taken over by the Almohad Caliphate, a Moroccan Berber-Muslim dynasty that dominated the Iberian peninsula throughout much of the 12th century. King Alfonso VIII and his forces recaptured the city within the same day.