Previous | Next :: Car Trouble #6 : Havana : Cuba | August 4, 2007, 8:14 pm

This is the sixth and final image in an edited set from pictures I made a while back in Havana........ it is specifically of 'car trouble' but for me this set of pictures kind of sums up my experience of Cuba and especially life in Havana.

In the end after over an hour of the mechanic's fiddling about the car finally is able to start and drive away.

The people working on the car did not at first realize I was making pictures of them after some quite long period when they noticed me and I spoke to them they were then too afraid to give their names or any details about their relationship with each other or the old car.

While I watched them working on the car all the life in the streets of Havana passed by. All the charisma, industry, character and poverty of the population could be witnessed casually passing the struggle to make this decaying vintage car roll. These images somehow seemed representative of Cuba to me. In the end the car finally moves maybe Cuba will move too.

Look back to the comments below the first of this car trouble series to see some discussion and thoughts on the rights and wrongs of the Castro regime.

Cheers Jez XX

PS..........I flew back across the the Atlantic from London today and watched that award winning German Movie "The Lives of Others" about a Stazi Man (East German Secret Police) who edited his reports to protect the writer and his girlfriend he was tasked to watch and frame........ he was sort of too nice to be a proper Stalinist..... it put me in mind of Cuba...... Stalinism and the Caribbean.....it isn't really right.... that Caribbean view and sentiment isn't really designed for full on Stalinism.

Cheers Jez XX