Mictlan: Rojas Street Tacos Honors Dia de los Muertos with a Place-of-the-Dead Toro
A 6 x 52 box-pressed toro in dark Ecuadorian habano, limited to 1,500 boxes and timed for October 20, ahead of the November 1 and 2 remembrance.
Rojas Cigars is giving its Street Tacos line a limited edition for the Day of the Dead. The cigar is called Mictlan, it is scheduled for release on October 20, and it is built around the oldest story the line has told: Mexico, remembered properly. Halfwheel reported the announcement on October 12, with the company's details confirmed in an update on October 16.
Barbacoa and Carnitas are dishes. Mictlan is a cosmology.
Mictlan is a 6 x 52 box-pressed toro. The wrapper is a dark Ecuadorian habano, the binder Nicaraguan, and the filler a combination of Nicaraguan tobacco and Connecticut broadleaf grown in the United States, a blend the company describes as medium to full in body. The cigars are produced at the Rojas factory in Esteli, Nicaragua. Pricing is 12.50 dollars per cigar and 250 dollars for a box of 20, and production is limited to 1,500 boxes, a total run of 30,000 cigars.
The name is the blend’s thesis
According to the company, Mictlan means “place of the dead” in Nahuatl and refers to the underworld in Aztec belief, where most souls journeyed after death. The release is timed for Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican tradition observed on November 1 and 2, when families remember departed loved ones through offerings and gatherings that celebrate their lives and keep their memories alive. In its press release the company put the intent plainly: “This release pays tribute to Mexico’s ancestral heritage and its traditions of honoring those who have passed.”
The presentation follows the theme without turning it into costume. The box lid carries the line's skull in a sombrero, now surrounded by marigolds and smaller skulls against black, with Mictlan lettered beneath and founder Noel Rojas's signature at the corner. The bands repeat the skull motif in black, red, and gold. It is the most elaborate artwork the Street Tacos line has carried, and it is artwork with a calendar: a box designed for the weeks when the ofrendas are built.
From Barbacoa to Mictlan
The Street Tacos series was announced in November 2020, and its first cigar, the Barbacoa, debuted in March 2021: a cigar named for the Caribbean and Mexican meat preparation whose name eventually became the word barbecue. The Carnitas Robusto followed as the line's second release in 2022, named for Mexico's version of pulled pork, and the family has since grown sideways into Breakfast Tacos and into Cinco de Mayo limited editions, which reached their third release this year. The pattern is consistent: a Mexican table, a date on the calendar, and a blend built for the occasion.
The original Barbacoa set the template in full: an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper over a Nicaraguan binder and filler from the Somoto region, offered in a 6 x 50 toro and a 5 1/2 x 46 short corona at eight to nine dollars, and made at Tabacalera Flor de San Luis in Esteli. The small ring gauges only motto on its band was Noel Rojas's calling card from the start. Production has since moved to Rojas's own factory, but the motto, and the skull, have stayed.
Mictlan is the pattern's most serious turn. Barbacoa and Carnitas are dishes; Cinco de Mayo is a celebration; Mictlan is a cosmology. Moving the line from food to the underworld is a deliberate deepening, and the blend follows it, with the broadleaf in the filler doing the weight work behind the profile the company describes as medium to full.
Release timing and the run
The October 20 release date places Mictlan in stores with a full week and more to spare before November 1, close enough to the holiday to be bought for it and early enough not to miss it. At 1,500 boxes it is a true limited edition by Rojas's scale, but not a token one: 30,000 cigars will reach more humidor doors than the micro-runs that define much of the limited market, at a 12.50 dollar price that keeps the cigar in the line's working range rather than the trophy range.
That may be the most fitting thing about it. Dia de los Muertos is not an exclusive observance; it is a popular one, kept at kitchen tables and cemetery gates by families, with food, flowers, and photographs. A 12.50 dollar limited toro with the underworld on its band, released in time to be smoked in the first days of November, understands its subject. The dead, in this tradition, are visited. Mictlan is built to be part of the visit.
