Her soft cries competed with the sounds of the crickets on a rural Nicaraguan night in August of 1998 when Josine, a tired jenny, gave birth to her first and only foal in the stable of a tobacco plantation. The father, Harold, nervously looked on as his young donkey took his first steady steps, looked around, saw nothing of interest, and plopped back down in the soft damp hay to begin licking himself contently.
"So what should we call him?" Harold asked. They wanted to give him a name that fit his dark brown coat along with the cigar plantation that birthed him. The answer was easy Josine said, "we shall call him Maduro." "Ah, Maduro the burro" Harold said, "that is perfect."
While Maduro had humble beginnings, his donkey family tree went back many years to his ancestors who transported silk for thousands of miles along the fabled Silk Road from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean. His ancestors eventually immigrated to England around 43 AD in support of the Roman conquest of Britain. Generations later they wound up as part of another military operation as pack animals. This time it was 1550 and they were part of Oliver Cromwell's invasion of Ireland.
His ancestors stayed in the Irish countryside and worked there for hundreds of years assisting humble farmers with their crops. They sometimes even served as guards, protecting the livestock from predators. How Maduro's parents got to Central America from Ireland is shrouded in mystery. Neither Harold nor Josine would say much about it but the rumor around the plantation was that Harold had killed a man so they'd stowed away on a ship from the Dublin Port under cover of darkness with no plan other than getting out of Ireland. Fortunately for them the cargo was horses bound for Central America and they went undetected.
By the time Maduro was a young colt he could patiently carry weight four times more than what Harold could and he was independent from his parents on the tobacco farm. He spent long days assisting harvesters by transporting bundles of cut tobacco plants from the fields to the barns for curing. In the evenings he would sit and listen to the worker's stories around the campfire wondering what life was like outside of this small agricultural town of Estelí . He had his favorite workers and they would often sneak him a cigar to enjoy as long as he never took a lit cigar back to the stables.
By 2018 both his parents had been long gone and he yearned for a more exciting life in the city. He no longer wanted to just hear the stories around the campfire, he wanted to live them. While Estelí was a good place to live and find work as it had become the center of Nicaraguan cigar production over the past 20 years, Maduro longed for more. As one of the three principal tobacco-growing regions in Nicaragua, Estelí is known for producing many of the major brands known today. Situated on the Pan American Highway, Estelí is just north of the capital city of Managua and the big city life was calling for Maduro.
So Maduro left the farm, and slowly walked alone to Managua because walking slowly is just exactly what donkeys do. He stopped at the first cigar lounge he found, ordered a single malt scotch (neat with just a tiny splash of cold water) and plopped down on a leather couch while trying not to think about what the leather was from (he was pretty sure it wasn't donkey). Pushing those thoughts out of his head, he lit up a big oily maduro and sighed. 20 years on a farm was enough. It was time to live the good life.
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