In the “Soviet era” of the Cuban Revolution, roughly 1961-1991, the US embargo prevented virtually all cars from being imported to Cuba except for those manufactured in the massive car factory of Togliatti (named after an Italian Communist), a Western Russian city Stalin designed from the ground up as the Communist response to the success of Ford plants. Yet this fact alone does not explain the paucity of most cars in Cuba, with the exception of those purchased before 1961: in socialist Cuba, owning a car at all was considered a privilege, mostly reserved for critical professionals (like medical doctors) who did not “abandon the front” and served the Revolution or agents of the Ministry of the Interior. Such Cubans’ service on behalf of state intelligence sometimes merited the right to purchase a Soviet car. (In other words, no matter how special you were, you didn’t get one for free!) The Moskvich or Volga, Soviet-styled “sports cars,” remained less common than the Lada. Yet the crimson-red Lada was infamously known as the marker of Cuba’s best veteran intelligence agents. Supposedly, only the best spies had access to such cars. In 2016, when I took this picture, two crimson Ladas, parked side by side, ensured a perfect, visitor-free location at the spring-fed creeks of eastern Cuba. As I observed, anyone venturing into the area beat a hasty retreat: after all, the owners might be “vets” and not active agents, but then again, these cars needed no more tales to tell! Baracoa, July 2016.
