Cuban Mechanics Keep American Cars Alive
Can American Mechanics Do the Same?
Many Americans carry a romantic image of Havana with them—old men playing chess in the park, imitating the slow, positional chess of former world champion José Raúl Capablanca, cafes overflowing with the rhythms of Afro-Cuban jazz and cigar smoke, and central to it all, moonlit streets filled with beautiful old American cars in perfect running conditions. International visitors gawk over the 50’s-era Cadillacs and Chryslers with perfect paint jobs that match the island’s vibrant sunset, still after all these years taking tourists and locals alike from Point A to Point B. These vehicles would make any car enthusiast drool and satisfy photographers by allowing them to shoot street-level architecture without worrying about a 2007 Camry ruining the shot.
Behind the nostalgia and cool factor lies the long tail of American cold-war-era policies. President Eisenhower took the first steps in a decades-long American policy of targeted political violence and economic sanctions, paranoid about the creep of Soviet-style communism to the Western Hemisphere following Fidel Castro’s 1959 overthrow of the U.S.-supported Batista dictatorship. Eisenhower feared the warming relations between Castro and the Soviets, evident in a letter to the British Prime Minister in 1960, “The critical element is the degree to which Cuba had been handed over to the Soviet Union as an instrument with which to undermine our position in Latin America and the world.” In the years since, U.S. administrations have addressed this fear by imposing deep sanctions on the island nation, and with very limited exceptions, never looked back on these policy decisions.
This embargo, or ‘el bloqueo,’ prevents new cars, tools, replacement parts, and raw materials from entering Cuba via the United States.
Nearly every country believes this is a bad policy. A 2023 UN resolution on the “necessity of ending” the embargo was only opposed by two nations: the U.S. and Israel. As a result of American sanctions, U.S.-manufactured cars ceased to enter Cuba, forcing locals to navigate the stranglehold; resulting in an extensive repair market. To keep these vintage cars running for 75 years with limited access to parts, Cuban mechanics relied upon creating new tools, re-using parts, and repurposing components from other cars and devices.
One mechanic describes the foundation of his craft in a YouTube video saying, “The tools have to be invented, they have to be imitated.”
Another insists on using a stick instead of a steering wheel if a replacement cannot be found. The embargo has directly restricted the means to keep these machines running, and yet, they persist.
Despite the American-led embargo, new cars can enter Cuba. As a reflection of the shifts in the global economy, Chinese vehicles, including EVs, are becoming increasingly available in Cuba. In a market where fuel supply is restricted (under the same trade restrictions that block American cars from entering)—EVs are an attractive option. China has been the leading producer of cars since 2008, and although you won’t see them on American streets, China is also the leading producer of EVs, creating over half of the world’s new EVs. In addition to whole cars, China is a major source of car parts, including those ultimately assembled in the United States.
The current U.S. administration has decided that in order to restore American manufacturing, it needs to impose steep tariffs against China. Although the full impact of these economic sanctions are yet to be seen, it almost certainly will result in an increase in costs to the consumer and a reduction of imports—and currently, imports account for about 50% of new car sales in the US. A tax on Chinese imports will impact the supply of new cars for Americans.
Cars are not a luxury good for most Americans. People need cars to get to work, the grocery store, visit friends and family. Just three years before the Cuban Revolution, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, leading to the creation of the Interstate Highway System and formalizing a shift from a human-centric dense urban America to a car-centric suburban sprawl. Americans now spend an average of an hour a day in their car.
So when car prices increase, and cars break down and die, perhaps we’ll be forced to take a second look at fixing them. Increasingly, however, new cars are becoming harder for owners (and small repair shops) to fix. A new car is as much a computer as it is pure machinery (“Everything is computer,” as Trump said), and comes installed with proprietary softwares that can make it difficult or impossible for a non-manufacturer-affiliated mechanic to fix. But repair people are always finding new workarounds and new methods. As one example from 2023, hackers jailbroke a Tesla to unlock pay-walled features using “low-cost, off-the-shelf hardware.”
This raises the possibility that the current administration is self-inflicting its own version of the Cuban embargo. What remains to be seen is if this will result in a resurgence of American auto repair. Maybe in 50 years, Chinese tourists will flock to Detroit to see 2024 RAV4s still on the road after decades of car mechanics kept them running with improvised tools and techniques.
—Stuart Davison