Wizards at handling scarcity in Cuba: residents turn to coal-powered cars and rainwater toilets

It’s two in the afternoon in Aguacate. A handful of residents of this small Cuban town sit in chairs that are lined up on the sidewalk; others go to the corner store to buy a drink to beat the heat. Some sell spare hardware, or they hang their laundry on rooftops. It’s just another day in the neighborhood. That is, until Juan Carlos Pino drives by.

He arrives slowly in the central plaza, honking and waving to everyone. They turn to see his famous coal-powered vehicle. Pino’s chest swells with pride. He parks it and, a few minutes later, a dozen people gather around. He shows off his car and answers all their questions. “But how did you get this thing running?” a woman asks, as she tries to take a photo. “Wow, it’s like something out of a movie!” an old friend tells him. Another onlooker calls a relative and gives them the exact coordinates, so that they can come running “to see this thing.”

“This thing” which is causing such a stir in Aguacate, a town of 6,000 inhabitants, located about an hour and a half from Havana, is the 56-year-old Cuban’s latest invention. He’s known in his community as Juan Carlos, the guy with the little Polish car. Six months ago, he traded a modest house he owned for a 1980 Polski Fiat 126p, but he barely got to use it for a couple of months. At the end of January, when Donald Trump issued an executive order blocking fuel deliveries to the island, Pino parked it in the shade for a whole month, until he decided to try running it on the leftover charcoal that many in Cuba are now learning to cook with. “Folks who have money buy gasoline. I have to get my hands dirty with charcoal,” he jokes.

The invention is the result of hours spent in front of the screen, watching YouTube videos by Edmundo Ramos, an Argentine engineer who struggled for 12 years through trial and error until he finally got his own car working. It took Pino two months to build the fuel tank, using scrap metal and recycled objects, which he welded to the back of the car. The charcoal — now carefully stored by his neighbors — is burned inside a modified propane tank, sealed with a transformer cap, next to a container made from a stainless steel milk jug.

The ritual begins half-an-hour before the final ignition. Pino and his nephew pour small pieces of charcoal into the tank and light them with some alcohol and a piece of cloth, before fanning the flames with another contraption made from a washing machine hose. Then, they wait. “It’s not a car for someone in a hurry,” they joke. When it finally starts up, he’s filled with pride… and so is the whole neighborhood. “They tell me I’m a magician,” this self-taught mechanic says with amusement.

He’s not the only one: Havana’s endless blackouts and water shortages have forced Cubans to work miracles with whatever they have handy. For instance, Dignora Michel collects rainwater to shower. Juana Pellicer cooks with firewood. And Aurelio Pedroso uses an old car battery to power a lightbulb. They’re the wizards of Cuba.

They call them “criollo inventions.” Nothing is thrown away, everything has a use. Something is salvaged from a broken appliance; bones are stretched into broth, while chicken skin is used for its fat. “If anyone knows how to invent, it’s Cubans. We’re specialists in surviving water and food shortages,” says Nadia González Álvarez, general manager of Quitrín, a textile company in Central Havana. “We’ve been doing this for decades… and we always come up with something,” she affirms, standing in front of a tiny workshop.

The oil embargo has impeded the arrival of the raw materials that the company imports from China. Four rolls of fabric, half-a-dozen bags of buttons and a handful of spare needles are taken out in dribs and drabs from a warehouse. “We’ve learned to be more efficient with the materials we have. Saving isn’t a bad thing,” she says.

Romina, on the other hand, is fed up with improvising. She has a three-year-old son whose daycare costs her the equivalent of eight dollars a month. And the salary she used to earn while working as an administrative assistant for the state barely covered her expenses for two out of every four weeks. “That is, if I didn’t eat every day,” she remarks irritably. She quit four months ago and now makes a living by doing manicures and odd jobs. In her modest home in the working-class Havana municipality of Cerro, the Yoruba deities Oxum and Yemanjá bless the station where she manicures the nails of her neighbors and friends for 500 Cuban pesos a day (a little less than one dollar at the black market exchange rate). “How long do I have to keep explaining to my son that there’s no more food?” she asks, exasperated.

Her husband goes in and out of the house, emptying the buckets of water that the service worker from the neighborhood’s shared tanker truck helped him carry. The 12 buckets have to last for the next 48 hours. In the kitchen, there are a dozen soda bottles filled with the rainwater that Romina managed to collect during the last few days of the storm. “At least it rained. It can’t all be bad,” she consoles herself.

Romina was one of about 20 mothers who, less than a month ago, took over the main street with empty buckets of water and wooden logs, bringing traffic to a standstill. Shortly afterward, the authorities arrived, threatening to arrest them. “I told them straight up: at least [in jail], we’d have something to shower with,” Mariana explains. A former English teacher, she has also resigned herself to giving up her profession in order to work as a manicurist.

Both women have already experienced every emotion: anger, rage, weariness. Now, Mariana says, only despair remains. She shamefully shows her kitchen to EL PAÍS and sadly explains why it’s full of flies. “We’ve been without water for 19 days and they haven’t collected the garbage for a week,” she sighs. Her boyfriend comes out of the room wearing a black balaclava. He has an order coming in for the courier service that he works for. Mariana’s expression softens as he walks by: “Every little bit helps.”

Indignation is everywhere. The Cuban Observatory of Conflicts (OCC) reported 1,245 protests, complaints and expressions of criticism across the country, mainly over the last month. Power outages, water cuts, fuel shortages and soaring food prices have spontaneously ignited thousands of Cubans throughout the island.

On Tuesday, March 31, the arrival of a Russian oil tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of crude oil lifted spirits somewhat. However, the OCC anticipates that, given the persistence of structural shortages, tensions will remain high in Cuba.

“Tell me if this isn’t enough to drive you crazy”

Aurelio Pedroso clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes. The power just went out again. And so, the same old ritual begins: he rushes to unplug his cell phone and flashlight chargers, fearing that, when the power is restored, they’ll be damaged by surges. None of the devices are above 70% charge. From under the table, he pulls out a car battery, a power inverter, as well as two cables with black and red clamps. “The ‘positive’ goes here and the ‘negative’ goes here,” he explains. He connects a 16-foot extension cord with a light bulb at the end. “Like God said on the day of creation, ‘Let there be light!’” he exclaims, the bulb illuminating his face.

Resignation to the scarcity doesn’t dim Cubans’ hope that their inventions will work. “This makes our daily lives more bearable,” says Margarita Díaz, Aurelio’s 59-year-old wife, from the doorway of their terrace.

When the power goes out, a collective sigh can be heard around Havana. In the wealthier neighborhoods like Miramar, where this couple lives, the hum of generators starts filling the air.

Tonight, the heat has prevented them from being able to fall asleep. The sight of the therapeutic ice packs in her freezer, softened and watery, kept Margarita awake, her knees swelling from so much walking. “The little gasoline we’ve saved is reserved for Aurelio’s oncology appointments. Not for anything else,” she explains.

Aurelio, a retired journalist, took advantage of the early hours of the morning to begin weaving the last of his stories. He typed up his text as soon as he heard the system “click,” announcing that the lights had returned.

“Tell me you aren’t worried about those elderly people who live alone; those who, in an emergency, have no other option than to shout to the neighbor, because calling an ambulance would be a waste of time.” He reads this from a text on his old computer, with the screen brightness turned down to the lowest setting. “Tell me if you were ever involved in a war; if you don’t suddenly miss having a rifle, [so that you can] tell this man (Donald Trump), ‘yes, come, bring us your candidate.’”

He continues: “Upon returning home, almost without strength – exhausted by so many hardships, which no human being deserves – tell me if you ever thought that you’d spend your last years like this.” The 74-year-old man then concludes: “Tell me if this isn’t enough to drive you crazy and make you want to curse a few people.” His wife, who listens resignedly, smoking a cigarette with a melted ice pack under her knee, asks him to turn off the laptop. “Put it away, because when the battery dies, you won’t be able to write again, Aurelio.”

Translated by Avik Jain Chatlani.

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