To the great delight of Cubans living abroad who returned as tourists to visit family on the island, Raúl Castro dismantled several of the state prohibitions on Cuban nationals’ ability to partake or enjoy the country’s tourist facilities and services. One of the most useful of his reforms applied to rental cars. For the first time, foreigners or Cubans living abroad could assign the task of driving state agency rental cars to local residents. Most foreign drivers cannot decipher Cuba’s Soviet-era signage and thereby avoid the extreme vigilance of Cuban police tasked with traffic violation quotas in order to increase state revenues.
