Red Trillium Press

On our first trip to Cuba in 2000 I walked out of the Hotel National with my daughter to visit the Morro Castle. There in a line of Mercedes taxis was this beautifully restored red convertible with a white upholstery interior.  Not being an aficionado of cars I don't remember the model but it was a fine example of 1950's Detroit engineering. "Lets take that car." I was in heaven. Cigar in hand, we were cruising down the Malecon with the wind and sun in our faces watching in wide-eyed wonder as the city passed by. Soon we entered the tunnel under the Havana harbor: and ran into a wall of sooty exhaust so strong it burned my eyes and stuck to my teeth.  

Since that visit I have been traveling annually to Havana with my family for extended periods of time, once staying for ten months in 2003- 2004. Havana has numerous vehicles; brand new Mercedes, Fiats, Ford pickups, SUVs, Volvo trucks and buses from China - every type of new automobile one would see around the world. But the predominant vehicles are pre- Revolution models from the United States and Ladas from the former Soviet Union.

Early one morning I needed a taxi to transport our daughter to school. Dashing down the street to where the local black market taxis resided I was lucky to find a driver with a late model Lada. When I pull up to the house, Lilly's observation was- "Dad, don't tell me we are going in that! " What could be more fun than a ten minute drive to school watching the morning traffic through a spider web of cracked glass and pavement passing by under rusted floorboards? Wow- this driver is very considerate; we are going at very safe speed down the road. "Un momento, senor, Por favor, No problema!" He is out the door sucking madly on the fuel line to the carburetor. Five minutes later we are off and Lilly makes it to her school on time. The high sulfur content in the gas plays havoc with the fuel system. Our landlady's friend quickly provides dependable transportation with his motorcycle and sidecar. At $10 day for Lilly and I he earns in one day the equivalent of his Cuban monthly salary.

All over the city of Havana peso taxis drive prescribed routes, lumbering relics from Detroit providing transportation to those who can afford the 10 pesos. Most of my friends walk or ride the Camellos- buses with over 100 people aboard. One waits at the street corner for a botero going your direction, crowding in with six or seven other passengers, breathing in the cloud belched from the 1950's dump truck's eye level exhaust that travels along your desired route.  These vehicles are amazing; filled with Bondo, repainted a hundred times, wired together with mismatched parts, and shaking on every turn. They are symbolic of the confusing relationship between Cuba and the United States.

Laura Hidalgo Cabrer                Leando Al La Habana? - Going to downtown Havana?
Woodcut with handcoloring and presstype

Up to downtown Havana?... Please!... Coppelia?... 23rd and F?... San Lazaro and Galiano?... Prado Street? Could they be the key words to get to a certain destination? These and other similar phrases are commonly heard in the streets of this city. “Easy! Don’t slam the door, please!” “Hey, ‘driver, let me get off here.” Common expressions we hear when we take a botero (the driver of an old American cab car, or the car itself). Luckily, I can afford the ten Cuban pesos to catch the taxi. If these old cars weren’t still running, I don’t know how we would be able to move from one place to another.

 Undoubtedly, anyone of us has mentioned such phrases. It is precisely from this daily routine that I have drawn inspiration and desire to carry out this work. Here I represent one of the very many old American cars (a Pontiac) that used to run up and down the streets in Havana, and that even today, far from being a symbol of luxury and glamour, continue fulfilling, with dignity, their duty of taking passengers through the different routes of the city. The aforementioned idea is supported by the various texts that refer to the names of some Havana streets. It is the American automobile as a representative of the past, but still present in our today and in our tomorrow.

We go out every day and it is almost unbearable to wait, amidst the heat, the strong sunshine, and the thirst, for something that can take us to our destination. After a long and desperate wait, at last we decide to make the signal and stop the taxi, an American cacharro (a jaloppy on wheels), as we usually call them, or, sometimes, a beautiful model that seems to have been dug up directly from the past, and we simply refuse to believe our eyes. They are always there, running from one place to another, following any route, full of passengers traveling in the discomfort of the lack of space, but with the peacefulness of a safe arrival. Seeing these cars still running in throughout the city is, for me, a manifestation of an epoch of opulence, elegance, and power. It would seem that they were destined for eternity, destined for a mission that not even their owners, or their sons, ever imagined. It is the perpetuity of the American symbol in a stopped present.  

Luis Lamothe Duribe                        Adentro - Inside
Linoleum

The print portrays a typical scene inside a ten-peso Cuban taxi. It is very common to see these old American cars, carrying their inevitable six passengers, tightly packed inside. These old cars are like museums on wheels, where one can find, among the other five passengers, any kind of people according to class, educational level, sex or age. Nobody knows one another, but, after a few minutes of tight traveling, you might be enthusiastically talking to a student, a delinquent, a surgeon, a factory worker, a transvestite... you name it!

It seems a little surrealist, but these old vehicles contribute to solve, to a great extent, the city transportation problems, and they have deservedly become part of our national identity.





Orlando Montalván                De La Serie Mas con Menos - The Series: More with Less
Calligraphy

Men have always dreamed of being able to travel in time. It is in Cuba where this dream comes true. Day after day, when we walk along the streets of Havana, and we feel that time does not elapse any more. Our time machine has stopped forever, showing us the elegance of everything that was and won’t be again. The city shows us its buildings, bars, restaurants, old cars; its neon signs, and, sometimes, even the people, are part of this delicious time traveling adventure.

How is it possible to keep these old cars running, cars which are more than sixty years old? Questions like this are frequently posed, and the answer is simple: the combination of the ingenuity of their owners and the fact that necessity is the mother of invention make it possible for many of these vehicles to get to our days in perfect health.

Sometimes, the conservation of these cars turns into a cult. The owners meet to exchange ideas or just talk about their latest touch of creativity for their precious old classics on wheels.  Of course all of them, the city, the people and cars – in a country far from modernity, are always sunbathing.

Julio César Peña Peralta                La Realidad Dentro La Realidad -Reality within reality
Lithography and linoleum

This is a small-sized print with an artistic vision – definitely not romantic -of old American cars in Cuba. Even though there are still beautiful old cars running here, my work does not portray the charming part of the story. On the contrary, it depicts these patriarchs on wheels, with a strong smell of gasoline, petrol, or kerosene – unbearable for allergic passengers - carrying lots of riders throughout Havana in long, uncomfortable trips. I also want to highlight the inventiveness of the Cuban, who has been able to adapt or invent the necessary spare parts in order to create a mongrel vehicle with Russian KP-3 truck seats, tires from different vehicles (of course, two tires of one kind, and the other two... who knows?), a truck engine, an Aleco (Moskvich) valve, and the fuel, well, the fuel...whatever solution or mixture serves to keep them running. The innumerable sessions of car-body works they have received make many of these veterans resemble packs of wandering Dalmatians. But the boteros (taxi drivers) are there, solving the problem with their almendrones (old American cars).





Yordanis García Delgado                Carro Futura - Futuristic Car
Lithography
The objective of my work consists in the necessity of expressing the multiple adaptations old American cars have undergone throughout their long lives in Cuba. Their owners are obliged to make prodigies with the mechanical, aesthetic, and structural components of the vehicles so as to keep them running. That is why my print shows an adaptation of a horse-drawn Oldsmobile, molded as if it were a carriage from colonial times. The central figure of this piece, although a result of my imagination, is not very far from reality. The lack of spare parts, the difficulty to find the money with which to pay for the tires, the car-paint, the car-body works, or the upholstery worthy of the majesty of these models are a permanent headache for the owners. For that reason, they have to squeeze their imagination in order to substitute, from the automobile’s most crucial spare part to the most insignificant screw, so as not to irremediably lose a classic car jewel.

In our country, there is a great lack of resources to keep these cars running, that is why those of the Lada or Moskovich have substituted many of the original parts in the Chevrolet, Mercury or Buick cars or any other makes. The same happens with the fuel, and in this case, our ingenious mechanics have even changed the original engine of the vehicle for another (maybe from a truck) that uses less expensive fuel, diesel, instead of gasoline. That is the reason why I think it is important to communicate through my print what will happen to these cars in the future, when their original aesthetics begins to get lost in time due to the successive mutations they have suffered throughout their lives.

Dania Fleites Díaz                            Untitled
Calligraphy

This work represents a self-portrait of a 1949 Plymouth. It was the first car I owned, with which I shared ten years of my life. It is shown as a playing card because it had two stages. When it was bought –an old car already, about to be sold for scrap. Later, it turned into a beautiful automobile, to which I became very attached. Maybe because I could perceive that, despite being a big car, it had a kind of a feminine touch.

In spite of the fact that transportation problems are common in Cuba, it is precisely that detail which has contributed to the conservation of these old American cars. On the one hand, they portray an economic problem, but, on the other, this type of old fashioned (and out-of-the-market) product enriches our lives from the aesthetic point of view.

I personally feel a certain fascination for those vehicles, since they are seen as oddities in these times where everything looks the same. That is why I insist on keeping - smoothly running – the 1954 Chevrolet which takes me everywhere nowadays.

Jesús Roberto Reyes Romeu (Chucho)                Aquera - Outside
Linoleum

This print portrays a common scene in the streets of Havana nowadays. In our city, hundreds of American cars survive thanks to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the local mechanics who, without any spare parts available, make real wonders in order to keep them running.
In the print, one can see a group of friends helping the owner of an old 1951 Ford start his car. Everyone’s efforts, together with the driver’s skillfulness, contribute to keep this old jewel running along the streets of Havana.





Hanoi Pérez Cordero                                                Untitled
Silkscreen

 My work responds to a personal interpretation of artistic research about the history of my life. The surgery I was submitted to when I was four years old became the center of my interest. The collection of documents, facts, and all kinds of records, as well as the medical history and X-ray tests has allowed me to develop some proposals which belong more in a symbolic field than in a documentary-historical one.

The mark is a key content for me that is why graphics has been a very important means within my work.
A person’s life is a set of factual stories and experiences that make up his/her biography. With this in mind, I have decided to tackle this topic (which is also a vital and ordinary element in any Cuban’s life story) establishing a parallel between my own marked body, and the marks of these other bodies (the old American cars), which have been submitted, throughout their own history, to very many surgeries.






Isolina Limonta Rodríguez                                                Dreams
Lithography

This work is about emigration. In Cuba, old American cars have prevailed in spite of time, showing their capacity to function as a dwelling space, a means of transportation, and, even as a means of navigation.

The print portrays a sailing American Ford escorted by one of my feminine figures flying next to the vehicle. The old American car is an important part of our transportation system, and it has survived, in spite of the current modernity of urban transport.

If I could present a special award to transportation in Cuba, I wouldn’t hesitate to give it to the old American car, an example of adaptability to any technology.

Alejandro Ramón  Saínz Alfonso                              Soaring in time
Silkscreen printing and linoleum

The print describes a scene showing a black American car from the 1950’s, without a definite make, suspended in the air, above the sea, in the precise moment in which a fishing net flies next to it. The car is tied to a child-made paper rocket, thus depicting both the automobile and the paper plane as a unit, in order to travel beyond time and space.

All this is portrayed within a childish landscape of Cuban flags, and heart-shaped cobwebs –with Spiderman and all- drawn by my son on the linoleum. It gave me the idea of the continuity and complicity of never-ending dreams and journeys, which last for generations, without ever stopping, for the good fortune of those who put their minds to fly.

Almendrones is a collaborative project with ten Cuban printmakers I have gotten to know while working in six different print shops in Havana. Each artist's work reflects their reality of living in Cuba where recycling of materials is a necessity of life and a creative art form. They offer here a reflection of their lived experience with American Cars from the nineteen thirties, through the fifties.

Almendrones are the backbone of transportation, held together with pride, ingenuity and desperation. Stuck in the past, working in the present, hoping for a chance at prosperity. Given a different economic opportunity these cacharros would disappear in a flash, replaced by comfortable air conditioning, fuel efficiency, and sleek contemporary design.