Old Cars in Cuba: Nurtured but Not Loved

Wherever you go in Havana, you'll find classic American cars plying the streets. Cars that look American on the outside often have Russian parts inside. Maintaining these vintage cars can be very time consuming for their owners. It's been difficult for many Cubans to purchase new cars since Castro took over in the late 50s, and countless families have managed to maintain the cars they possessed prior to the revolution. This has turned Havana into a classic car fanatic's paradise. About 150,000 cars existed at the time of the 1959 revolution, shortly after which the Detroit auto giants and all American manufacturers were forced to stop sending goods to Cuba to conform to the United States' embargo. Freshly painted four-door 1956 Chevy Bel Air car is far more typical than the ones that art directors love to put on the covers of books about Cuba to evoke a melancholy feeling. Movies about Cuba like "Buena Vista Social Club" turn the jalopies into objects of nostalgia by panning lovingly over a wheel-less Chrysler here or a Plymouth stalled in traffic there. Yet to get dewy-eyed about old American cars in Cuba is to get whimsical about our trade embargo against the island.

There is a feeling abroad in the land that Cubans love old American cars. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cubans love new American cars, not old ones, but the newest ones that they can get their hands on are 45 years old.To own one of these vintages, known as cacharros, or less commonly, bartavias, in Cuba defines who you are, how you spend your time and how you wish to be known. When your plugs don't spark, when a faulty brake line can't be repaired, when your engine sputters into a coma, when you run into any difficulty, you fabricate the equipment yourself, share with a friend, buy from a stranger. Or you put your car on blocks until the right part appears the next day, month or year. But when your motor purrs, when you accelerate effortlessly from second to third gear, when the doors click into place, you momentarily forget your difficulties and glide for blocks with a prideful smile, until you inevitably run into one of regular problems. Could there be a more appealing metaphor for today's Cuba than cars from yesterday's America?

Cuba nicely exploits the fleeting nostalgia that envelopes foreigners when they first visit the island, so much that a government agency rents spiffy reconditioned old convertibles for visitors to tool around in. Capitalizing on the past is a time-honored enterprise throughout the world, and Cuba is simply taking advantage of its own limited resources. Most resourceful are the shade-tree mechanics who create parts. A 2002 film, "Yank Tanks," profiles these "doctors," who think nothing of transplanting a Czech engine under a Buick hood or a Russian carburetor within a De Soto chassis. One fellow fabricates chrome bumpers on his patio, while another makes brake shoes in his home workshop.

I once saw a functioning 1934 Plymouth on the streets of Sancti Spíritus, a town of about 100,000 in the country's interior, and I know how that sensation of visiting a living museum of old cars can unexpectedly creep up on you. Informally, when Cuba hands sit around and consider the opportunities that could arise when the United States and Cuba return to their senses, some fantasize about getting into construction or electronics, industries that may burst wide open.

Tom Miller

UNIT 6

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