American car-makers have not shipped spare parts to Cuba since 1960, but an estimated 60,000 of these cars from the 40s and 50s still roam the roads of the island. Some operate as taxis and many have been carefully maintained over half a decade by individual owners. Watch an MSNBC video on this here.
The report points out the irony of these cars in Cuba (beyond the obvious—that the companies that are bankrupt at home still thrive in a country that the United States has had mutually icy relations with for years): the state-run tourism industry actually uses the nostalgia invoked by these American cars to draw foreigners to the island. Check out this advertisement, from the Cuban tourism industry’s own official site, for example:
Meanwhile, Cuba’s state media, in reports on the U.S. financial crisis, have highlighted events like GM’s bankruptcy as symptomatic of everything gone wrong with the United States and the failure of unbridled U.S.-style capitalism.
