With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late December 1991, Cuba’s previously privileged pricing and supply guarantees of Soviet oil also disappeared. For the next several years, public transportation ceased to exist throughout the island. Not only could workers not get to work but fears soared that unintended idleness might lead to a national strike. China, once famous for substituting bicycles for motorized transportation during the Mao years, supplied a solution: millions of cheap but tough “Flying Pidgeon”-brand bicycles that the Cuban government resold to citizens at twenty-five to thirty pesos each, a price that constituted a fourth of the average worker’s government paycheck. Since the government failed to import spare parts, a brisk trade in hand-made inner tubes and home-brewed chain oil surged. In this picture, my cousins carry out their daily inspection of my bike after coming from Havana’s Instituto de Historia de Cuba.
