By Victoria Burnett, The New York Times, November 4, 2011
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| A classic Chevy on the Malecon |
HAVANA — Until a
few weeks ago, Erik González’s decrepit car did little more than devour his
tiny income. He spent hundreds of dollars fixing the car, a 30-year-old
Moskvich that his grandfather passed down to him in 2000. Even when it worked,
Mr. González could rarely afford to buy gas.
Then, overnight,
the Soviet-made rattletrap became his nest egg.
Mr. González put the car up for sale last month when the government
published rules allowing Cubans to buy and sell used vehicles freely for the
first time in half a century.
The axle may be wonky, the carburetor shot, the battery on its last
legs and the headlights inoperable, but he believes his royal-blue Moskvich
will fetch at least $5,500, a small killing for a waiter whose state salary —
before tips and extras — is just $15 a month.
“This car has been bleeding me dry,” Mr. González said. “Now it’s an
asset that I can sell, and do something else with the money.”
Like the new law permitting home sales going into
effect this week, the changes headline President Raúl Castro’s efforts to remodel Cuba’s
hobbled economy and spur the private sector. After decades in which ownership
of such big-ticket items was frozen, the efforts promise to flush money into
the market at a time when Cuban officials are trying to stimulate private
enterprise and move hundreds of thousands of workers off the public payroll.
“The state has no business getting involved in a matter between two
individuals,” Mr. Castro told the National Assembly last December, criticizing
complex rules and “irrational prohibitions” that he said bred corruption.
“If I have a little car,” he added, “I have the right to sell it to
whomever I want.”
But like several of Mr. Castro’s other changes, the new law created a
pocket of economic liberty in a market that remains tightly controlled. Cubans
can purchase and own more than one used vehicle, and they will no longer lose
their car if they emigrate.
However, the right to buy a new car is still limited to a
narrow group of Cubans who earn some foreign currency, including doctors,
artists, musicians, members of airline flight crews and the handful of Cubans
who work at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay.
“There’s no logic to these rules,” said Leopoldo, a taxi driver who
works the road between Havana and Güira de Melena, about 20 miles away, in a
shiny 1985 Tatra. He asked that his full name not be used because he feared
angering the authorities.
“But there’s no logic to anything in this country,” Leopoldo added.
“They have kept so many restrictions in place for so many years, you wouldn’t
expect them to lift them all in one go.”
Still, the new rules have created a buzz on an island where owning a
car is a rare privilege and the number of vehicles per capita is among the
lowest in the hemisphere.
For-sale signs have begun appearing in car windows. Many people who
had bought cars illegally are scrambling to validate the trade. And Revolico, Cuba’s answer to Craigslist,
is replete with people promising to pay tens of thousands for a used Hyundai or
Kia.
But the tight grip on imports means cars will remain scarce and
command eye-popping prices, whatever their condition, economists and car
brokers say.
“A car that in another country you’d pay to destroy, you can sell here
for $14,000,” said Paul Gómez Valladares, a mechanic who was fixing the
bushings on a 1996 Lada Combi in a workshop shaded by mango trees.
Previously, Cubans could only legally trade cars that predate the 1959
revolution, hence the iconic American cars that still cruise the island’s
roads. But those are only a small fraction of the nation’s used cars.
Islanders bought and sold cars on the sly, but it was a risky business
that put off people like Mr. González and made buyers wary of paying large sums
for a vehicle they would not legally own.
Emilio Morales, president of the Miami-based Havana Consulting Group,
said the new rules — like earlier decisions to let Cubans own cellphones and
computers or work in the private sector — simply legalized what many Cubans
were already doing illicitly and would neither increase Cuba’s antiquated stock
of vehicles nor alleviate the country’s crushing transportation problem. The
move was intended to placate people, not stimulate the economy, Mr. Morales
said.
“This
is one of their political pressure valves,” he said.
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