A
fan made from a boat propeller, an old washing machine motor and welded steel
rods in El Gabriel, Cuba.
Just
outside Havana, in the childhood bedroom of illustrator Edel Rodriguez,
a washing machine engine welded to a boat propeller has become a
makeshift fan. This kind of cobbled-together contraption is common in
Cuba. So are stoves that run on diesel from trucks, satellite dishes
made of garbage can lids and lunch trays, and taxi signs consisting of
old fuel canisters.
|
A truck with a box and seats mounted on the chassis, in La Salud, Cuba. |
Cubans are masters of invention. They have to
be. In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower slapped the first trade
embargo on the country, and in 1961, just before leaving office, he
broke off diplomatic relations. But it was after the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991 and the loss of oil imports that shortages
escalated in severity. The country lost about 80 percent of its imports,
and the economy shrank by 34 percent.
“The Cuban home became a laboratory for inventions and survival.”So
Cubans learned to make do. When something breaks, they patch it up.
When something doesn’t work, they fix it. And when something is
altogether lost, they invent it. They grill meat on metal chairs. They
seal the bottoms of cars, transforming them into boats. From the
suffering of 30 years of isolation has sprung a generation of amateur
engineers, inventors and welders.“A market started with people
who can rig things up,” said Rodriguez, who was born and raised in the
small Cuban farm town, El Gabriel. In 1980, at age 9, he fled to Miami
with his family on the Mariel boatlift, and he now lives in New Jersey.
“It’s what Cubans have been in the last 60 years – just really inventive
with things.”
|
A washing machine motor is used to power a key copier. |
Ernesto
Oroza, a Cuban-born designer who now lives in Miami, said several
factors played a role in the DIY phenomenon. A high percentage of Cubans
had engineering degrees, thanks to a system of free education. Many
became intimately familiar with the mechanics of the standardized
socialist products found in most homes — the Soviet-designed Aurika
washing machine, for example, and the Orbita fan. Plus, no one was
untouched by the crisis.
“Musicians, medical doctors, workers,
homemakers, athletes and architects all had to dedicate themselves to
making their own things and meeting the emerging needs of the family,”
Oroza wrote over email in Spanish. “The Cuban home became a laboratory
for inventions and survival.”
Oroza, who has spent decades
collecting, studying and writing about these objects, has a name for the
phenomenon: “technological disobedience.” Cubans, he said, weren’t
deterred by complexity or scale and they learned to disrespect the
“authority” of objects. That meant rethinking their original purpose and
life cycle.
|
They were used to chop
vegetables and shred coconut. |
People
scoured the city for plastic objects and industrial discards and swiped
garbage from city dumpsters, which they’d grind up and inject into
molds to make toys, dishes, electrical switches and footwear. The
magazine Popular Mechanics was a hot commodity on the island.
“Industrial
products were tinkered with and examined by hand,” he said. “Cubans
dissected the industrial culture, opening everything up, repairing and
altering every type of object.”
Washing machine motors were
especially sought after.
With the warm weather in Cuba, people could do
without the dryers. So they found other uses. These motors powered fans,
lawnmowers, shoe repair tools and key copiers.
They were used to chop vegetables and, below, to shred coconut.
With
the warm weather in Cuba, people could do without washing machine
dryers. So they found other uses. These motors powered fans,
lawnmowers,
shoe repair tools and key copiers.
In
1992, The Cuban military issued a book called “Con Nuestros Propios
Esfuerzos” (With Our Own Efforts) that detailed crowdsourced ideas on
manipulating, repairing or reusing everyday objects. Among them was a
recipe to turn grapefruit rind into a “steak” by marinating it with
lemon juice, onion and garlic and frying it up on a pan.
With
rations so scarce, so much of the average Cuban day is spent hunting for
the basics, said Rodriguez, who has returned several times since he
left to visit family in Cuba.
“You get up at 7 in the morning, and
say, ‘Where is there bread? Where do you get milk? Do you know anyone
who has this?’ There’s no food in the government stores. Everything has
to be hustled by connection, by someone you know or farmers. And most of
it can’t be had by legal means.”
Cars, buses and other
transportation vehicles are also scarce, and many Cubans illegally
convert bicycles into makeshift motorcycles called rikimbilis
by attaching small motors. The bikes make a “deafening noise,” Oroza
said, and riders seek alternative routes through cities to avoid traffic
police. Large boxes welded to trucks become buses and the bottoms of
old cars are sealed shut and turned into boats, used by defectors.
Parents also reinvent old plastic containers as toys like helicopters, cars and puppets.
|
The rikimbili, prohibited, but widely used in Cuba, is made of a bicycle with a motor attached. |
“These
are people that live with objects that are always disemboweled, the
electronic guts exposed, while others keep things as if they were
palimpsests, scraped clean of their prior functions,” Oroza said. “And
both of these practices essentially lead to a dismantling of the
object’s identity.”
See more photos of Cuban inventions here >>