Che's Chevrolet, Fidel's Oldsmobile
On the Road in Cuba
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Vintage U.S.-made cars on the streets of Havana provide a common representation of Cuba. Journalist Richard Schweid, who traveled throughout the island to research the story of motor vehicles in Cuba today and yesterday, gets behind the wheel and behind the stereotype in this colorful chronicle of cars, buses, and trucks. In his captivating, sometimes gritty, voice, Schweid blends previously untapped historical sources with his personal experiences, spinning a car-centered history of life on the island over the past century.
Packard, Studebaker, Edsel, De Soto: cars long extinct in the United States can be seen at work every day on Cuba's streets. Havana and Santiago de Cuba today are home to some 60,000 North American cars, all dating back to at least 1959, the year the Cuban Revolution prevailed. Though hardly a new part has arrived in Cuba since 1960, the cars are still on the road, held together with mechanical ingenuity and willpower.
Visiting car mechanics, tracking down records in dusty archives, and talking with car-crazy Cubans of all types, Schweid juxtaposes historic moments (Fidel Castro riding to the Bay of Pigs in an Oldsmobile) with the quotidian (a weary mother's two-cent bus ride home after a long day) and composes a rich, engaging picture of the Cuban people and their history. The narrative is complemented by fifty-two historic black-and-white photographs and eight color photographs by contemporary Cuban photographer Adalberto Roque.
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Schweid, who worked on the Oscar-nominated documentary Balseros, about Cuban refugees, continues to demonstrate his keen understanding of Cuban culture with this unusual book. He uses the American car industry as a theme to dramatize Fulgencio Batista's and Castro's Cuba. He places heroes of the Cuban revolution into two categories: flesh and blood patriots, like Camilo Cienfuegos and Abel Santamaria, and unsung North American heroes such as Ford, Chevrolet, Studebaker, Chrysler and others that carry the loads and transport the people. Schweid explains that Cubans adore and depend on American cars, and when Castro's restrictions made these vehicles unavailable, Cubans made them last indefinitely by repeatedly fixing them, despite their resemblance to aging citizens with "liver spots of discolored paint, an inability to retain their fluids, and a coughing ignition...." Through car-related anecdotes, the story incorporates viewpoints from musicians, painters, plumbers and mechanics, with the image of an old car effectively defining the country's economic and social status. The book has a neatly structured, often dryly factual tone, and some of the details will appeal more to auto aficionados than general readers. However, the photos featuring such subjects as Batista and son in the younger Batista's 1956 Corvette, or Che Guevara driving a Studebaker, with his second wife, Aleida March add supplemental force to Schweid's knowledgeable text. Photos, map.