Recently
I had the opportunity of visiting Cuba.
Today the island of Cuba is known for many things. These include outstanding health care and
educational systems. Cuba is also known
as a nation that the government in Washington doesn’t like very much. This dislike centers on someone by the name
of Fidel Castro.
Another
striking characteristic of Cuba is the fact that there are many cars that were
made in the United States more than 56 years ago. These cars continue to transport
passengers. This blog attempts to give
some perspective about why Cuba has so many of these cars.
Auto manufacturing in the USA
First,
you should know that I worked in the auto manufacturing industry in this
country for about 21 years. Given this
experience, I have some information about what it means to build a car. First, we need to consider that there are
perhaps a thousand parts needed to build every automobile. Tools need to be constructed to build each
one of these parts. The investment required
to tool up for manufacturing a new model car might be in the billions of
dollars. The electricity required to
power up even one factory might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars every
month.
Transportation
workers then need to bring all these parts to the assembly plant. Here workers assemble automobiles at the rate
of about one car per minute. If the
assembly plant lacks even one part, production stops and the plant closes down
until all the parts are available. This
means that if even one part is missing at the assembly plant, the
auto-manufacturing corporation will begin to loose about $30,000 every minute.
After
someone purchases a car we know that it needs to be maintained. An auto repair shop might need to invest
hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to have the equipment required to
repair cars. Auto mechanics need to
invest tens of thousands of dollars in order to purchase the tools they will
need to repair cars.
Auto repair in Africa, Asia, and Latin America
One
of the most compelling facts of life that we all live with is the immense
disparity of wealth that exists in the world.
Much of the rest of the world lacks the basic every day conveniences
most working people have in the United States.
About
forty percent of the world’s population lives on two dollars per day or
less. There are about one billion people
in the world who lack direct access to water and electricity. Many of these same one billion people do not
have enough food to eat. The United
Nations estimates that these conditions contributed to the deaths of about 30,000
children every day.
Certainly
people who have an income of two dollars per day are not thinking about
purchasing a car that might cost between $5,000 and $30,000. Much of the world’s population isn’t thinking
about purchasing tens of thousands of dollars worth of tools to repair
cars. Even if someone from Asia, Africa,
or Latin America had the tools to repair cars, car parts would need to be
imported at exorbitant prices.
Ingenious
methods have been used to throughout these areas of the world to keep cars
running. An auto mechanic in this
country will change spark plugs after a given number of miles. Workers who do not have access to spark plugs
might clean the contacts so the spark plugs might last indefinitely. Cuba doesn’t have good access to
anti-freeze. The Cuban auto mechanics
use a concoction made out of hair shampoo that effectively cools engines.
In
large areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America only the very affluent have the
resources to purchase cars. Because most
of these nations do not manufacture cars, the purchase of autos from third countries
is an immense drain on already depleted economies.
Cuban transportation
The
Cuban people are well aware of all these problems. The percentage of Cubans who can read is
among the best of any nation in the world.
The Cuban infant mortality rate is among the lowest in the world.
When
Cuba had its revolution in 1959, the economy was not equipped to manufacture
cars. Given these enormous limitations,
the Cubans have attempted to develop a transportation system that everyone has
access to. As a part of this enormous challenge
Cubans have been repairing U.S. made cars for over half a century. We should keep in mind that because of the
U.S. imposed economic embargo, Cuba hasn’t been able to import replacement
parts from the United States.
These
are some of the facts we might consider when we think about what we confronted
when leaving the hotel we stayed at in Havana.
The smell of smog from auto exhaust was in the air. Yes, the cost of pollution control parts for
autos is extremely expensive and Cuba simply doesn’t have the resources to
purchase these parts. However, we might
also consider that in the city of Santiago, Chile residents have been
encouraged to use gas masks when coming and going to their jobs.
So,
when we look at the beautiful 56 old Cuban cars, we might consider some of the
ideas in this blog.
