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Fidel Castro is 90. This bus is not much younger

August 14, 2016, 9:31 pm
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Public transportation in Santiago de Cuba.
   IN A LETTER released on his 90th birthday this past Saturday, Fidel Castro paid tribute to the advances that let him continue to contemplate the ways of the world ... and beyond.
   "Modern medical techniques have allowed me to scrutinize the universe," he wrote.
   For passengers on this 1958 Mercury truck converted into a people-carrier in Santiago, the view is less extensive.

Rebadged Ford pickups and medium-duty trucks were sold as
Mercurys in Canada – and also shipped to Cuba. 



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Polski power

August 21, 2016, 9:06 pm
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The little Polish-built Fiat 126p will go a long way on a litre.
  AN ASSOCIATED PRESS report in the Washington Post suggests that the Polski Fiat 126p is enjoying a "revival" in Cuba. I don't recall the tiny, Polish-built Fiat ever falling out of favour.
   Still, with Cuba's once-cheap black market diesel fuel shooting up in price because of Venezuelan cutbacks, it's not hard to see how the 126p, with frugal air-cooled two-cylinder engine, could gain added allure.
   The Polski Fiat was produced from 1973 through 2000 in Bielsko-Biała in south Poland. Cuba has some 10,000 Polskis, according to the article.



The 126p has long been an everyday sight in Cuba.





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Havana and Detroit: Sisters under a well-worn skin

September 8, 2016, 1:07 pm
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WDIV anchor and Havana 313 host Devin Scillian.
   VOLUPTUOUS, PRE-1960 American cars are the obvious link between Detroit and Havana. One city built them, the other relies on them.
   But the Michigan and Cuban capitals share more than pontoon fenders and Dagmar bumpers.
   There's the architecture – classic, often crumbling, with flashes of contemporary. 
   The permeating music – different in genres, yet descending from the same African roots.
   The vivid art – best represented, in the Motor City, by the product of two Mexico-born painters: Diego Rivera, whose working-man murals would be as at home in a Havana barrio as they are on the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Frida Kahlo, whose surreal folk-art images could command prime space in any Cuban gallery.
Made in Detroit. Driven daily in Havana.
   And beneath it all, murmuring like a Hemi-powered '55 Chrysler, the energy of a place alive and assured within its own well-worn skin.
   It follows, then, that as Cuba becomes more open to Americans, Detroiters might be better equipped than many of their fellow citizens in understanding and appreciating the island's largest city. Confirmation of this comes in Havana 313, an hour-long documentary produced by WDIV-TV, Detroit's "Local 4" NBC affiliate.


   First airing in December 2015, Havana 313 (313 is the Detroit area code) is a thoughtful tour of the Cuban capital led by news anchor Devin Scillian. Cars, of course, are much of the focus, but the documentary also delves into culture and attitudes and even, briefly, the Santeria religion.
   Always, Scillian is even-handed. Cuba, a last bastion of communism, has been unable to achieve equality, he observes while walking through the scattered garbage and scavenging dogs of an overcrowded neighbourhood. Yet in the same breath he acknowledges that all Cubans have access to health care and education and, if not liberty, at least freedom from fears of gun violence.
   "I'll leave it to you to decide whose poor people are better off," he says.
   Scillian is a country musician and best-selling children's author as well as an award-winning journalist, but for a Detroiter he isn't much of a car guy (maybe because he's a Kansas transplant). His interviews, then, with Cuban drivers and mechanics lack the technical nitty-gritty some of us might wish for. Still, we can't help but enjoy his awe as he watches a shop fabricate a body panel for a '55 Chevy based on a drawing in a parts catalogue.
   "You're basically running your own factory, your own assembly line .. that's insane," he tells the garage owner.

For viewers, a thoughtful tour of the Cuban capital.
   With scheduled air service resuming between the United States and Cuba after 55 years, more American camera crews will surely follow the WDIV-TV team to Havana. They too will exclaim over the cars and art and music and seek to measure Cuban life against their own.
   But it's hard to imagine them getting Cuba like Detroiters get Cuba.



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More from the Santiago transit file

September 18, 2016, 9:02 pm
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Mucho modificado based on what appears to be a General Motors heavy truck.
Even with the reworked roof, seating is cramped in this '56 Plymouth wagon.

The world's only 1951 DeSoto dualie. We're sure of it.




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Santiago's two-wheeled taxis

October 4, 2016, 2:28 pm
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An operator collects his fare. The average ride is just 10 pesos.
    ELSEWHERE IN Cuba, the usual taxi is a Hyundai or a Lada for locals, a '56 Ford or similar classic for tourists.
   In Santiago, the usual taxi – for locals, and for visitors brave enough to board – is a Soviet-era MZ or Jawa motorcycle. Hundreds of these bikes-for-hire race up and down the southern city's hilly streets, piloted by young men who typically rent the machines from taxi brokers.
   The fare is just 10 pesos (50 cents Canadian), maybe 20 if the destination is farther than usual. But if you hail one, make sure to buckle the spare helmet the driver carries for passengers. And then hang on as he weaves casually through traffic, blue smoke from the bike's two-stroke engine mixing with diesel fumes from the trucks just inches away.
   Unlike in Havana and other cities, there seems to be little police effort to maintain vehicular calm. It's one more way in which Santiago is different.

Pedestrians are well advised to watch for the weaving bikes.
Two-stroke engines add to Santiago's pollution.
Many operators rent their motorcycles from taxi brokers.


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In pursuit of hire powers

October 28, 2016, 11:49 am
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   MOTORCYCLES MAY BE the most common type of taxi in Santiago, but they aren't the only choice. For travellers seeking more comfort and security – not to mention room for more than one passenger – here are some alternatives.


1. Gladway three-wheeler

Presence at the pumps would suggest that this trike is gas-powered, not electric.
    At one time, it was safe to assume that any motorized trike in Cuba – flatbed, van, tuk tuk-style taxi – was an Ape (pronounced ah-pay, hand gestures optional) from well-known Italian manufacturer Piaggio. Even the homegrown coco taxis in Havana and Varadero ride on Ape underpinnings. Now, three-wheelers from China have joined the Chinese buses and cars already common on Cuban roads. The Gladway above is a product of the Shandong Mulan plant in Jinan, south of Beijing. Parent company Gladway Holdings Ltd. specializes in electric vehicles, but also offers gas-powered models.


2. Peugeot 404

Nearly 2.9 million Peugeot 404s were produced over three decades.
   In other Cuban cities, late-model Hyundais and ageless Ladas make up the formal taxi fleets, while older cars – generally American – served as fixed-route and private cabs. Despite its private-ownership licence plate, however, this venerable Peugeot appeared to be part of an organized taxi service. Probably more comfortable than a Lada. (Peugeot 404s are plentiful in Cuba, though not usually in taxi livery.)


3. Stretch Lada

An attempt at budget luxury? No, just Cubans using what's on hand.
   To Western visitors who remember Ladas as cheap in price and uncertain in quality, these lengthened Ladas can seem like a ironic statement. Not the case. Cuba needs multi-passenger transportation, Cuba has many Soviet-made Ladas, not all operable – voilà! But if you want to think of them as a socialist barb aimed at the Cadillac, Lincoln and Mercedes stretch limos of the capitalist world, that's fine.


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Back in the U.S.A.?

November 2, 2016, 8:36 am
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Maybe available: a 1955 Ford Customline two-door sedan.
   The United States may be ready to welcome home cars it shipped to Cuba before 1960 – if, that is, Cuba is willing to part with any.
   Daniel Strohl of Hemmings Daily reports that the U.S. government has lifted a prohibition on items exported to Cuba from being returned to the United States, even for service or repair. The change is part of an easing of trade restrictions that form a big part of the Cuban embargo.
   "As written, the new regulation would plausibly allow Cubans to send their old American cars to the United States for restoration ... and even allow them to sell their cars to Americans," Strohl writes.
   But would the Cuban government allow its citizens to ship their cars north? In recent decades, the only cars to leave – at least officially – have been state-owned, and even those have been few. See 55 Reasons Why Cuba's Old Cars Will Keep On Rolling.


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The Remarkable Story of Fortune Magazine's Confusion Over Cuba

November 7, 2016, 8:53 pm
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The Q60 does Havana. Source: www.fortune.com
   WE KNOW THAT some American news outlets get Cuba, and for that matter, get cars. Fortune appears lacking on both counts.
   Sad evidence of this is supplied in "The Amazing Tale of How Cuba Saw Its First New U.S. Car in 58 Years," a web piece in which staffer Sue Callaway accompanies Infiniti design boss Alfonso Albaisa on his first visit to the island his parents left in 1962.
   Also on the trip: a pre-production 2017 Infiniti Q60 coupe for Albaisa to show off in a country where, in his words, "the romance of the automobile is still completely alive."
   U.S. car?
   Despite the contributions to its styling by Infiniti's San Diego design centre, the Q60 is about as American as sukiyaki.
   Just like its predecessor, the Infiniti G37, the Q60 shares its platform with the Nissan 370Z. And it's built at the same Tochigi factory as the 370Z.
   It's Japanese.
   Perhaps Fortune was confusing it with the similarly named QX60, the sole Infiniti model produced at Nissan's plant in Smyrna, Tenn. But one's an artfully penned coupe, just introduced for the 2017 model year, and the other's an SUV-crossover-family-truckster-thing that's been around for years.
   And could even the QX, Tennessee assembly notwithstanding, be considered an American car, any more than a Toyota Camry (Georgetown, Ky.) or Honda Accord (Marysville, Ohio)?


Albaisa with a smaller version of the coupe he designed, finished
 in the same Dynamic Sunstone Red as the car he took to Cuba.
   But hey, Cuba got to eyeball its first new car from somewhere else in 58 years, right? Er, no.
   Cubans have been exposed to plenty of new American models, brought in by diplomats and foreign companies doing business on the island. I've come across made-in-the-U.S.A. Chevrolet and Ford pickup trucks bearing the logo of Sherritt Resources, the Canadian natural resources company with a big presence in Cuba.
   And they've seen many new Asian and European cars, especially since import restrictions were eased in 2013. They saw lots of new Soviet cars, too, even if those cars looked old right out of the box.
   So when Fortunista Callaway says in an accompanying video that "Infiniti makes history for America" by sending a Q60 coupe to Havana for some sight-seeing, I'm not sure what she means.
   Or what the magazine means with its breathless "Amazing Tale" headline.
   But I guess "Here's an Account of a Miami Man's Visit to the Island of His Parents Along With a Sports Car He Designed for a Japanese Automaker" wouldn't have had the same punch.



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Trump and Cuba: A tortuous timeline

November 12, 2016, 12:21 pm
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Car guy: A younger Donald Trump with his 1956 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud.
   WHAT IS Donald Trump's position on Cuba? As with so many other policy questions, his record offer no clear picture:
  • Late 1998: With the mood in Washington suggesting an easing of tensions between the U.S. and Cuba, Trump Hotels and Casinos sends consultants to Havana to explore business opportunities. The $68,000 trip was in violation of the U.S. trade embargo, according to a recent Newsweek report.
  • June 5, 1999: In an op-ed piece for the Miami Herald, Trump writes that he has rejected invitations from European groups to back projects in Cuba because investing there "would directly subsidize the oppression of the Cuban people." He calls for the U.S. embargo to remain until Cuba has a change of government.
  • 2012-2013: Trump associates travel to Cuba to study potential opportunities for a golf resort, Bloomberg reports.
  • September 2015: Seeking the nomination for president, Trump breaks with most fellow Republicans by speaking in favour of normalized relations. “The concept of opening with Cuba is fine,” he says, adding, “but we should have made a better deal.”
  • October 2016: Asked by Jim Defede of CBS4 in Miami whether he would break off relations with Cuba, Trump responds: "I would do whatever you have to do to get a strong agreement. And people want an agreement, I like the idea of an agreement, but it has to be a real agreement."
  • November 2016: Trump running-mate Mike Pence says Trump would repeal President Barak Obama's executive order that removed Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. As well, says Pence, “We will support continuing the embargo until real political and religious freedoms are a reality for all the people of Cuba.” His comments come just days before Trump is elected president with key support from Cuban American voters in Florida.
   So, best guess: lots of tough talk, maybe a reinstatement of Cuba on the terrorism list, but an administration attuned to American business interest in the island's tasty development potential. How that will work is hard to say, but here's one thing to keep in mind. Donald Trump likes cars.



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The earliest Escalade?

November 20, 2016, 5:14 pm
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Plying the streets of Santiago de Cuba is the Cadillac of people carriers.
   I CAN THINK of just two possible explanation for this great red machine.

1. Back in 1957, a group of up-and-comers in the Cadillac division of General Motors hit upon an idea for a bold new model that would combine the refinement and style of a passenger car with the people- and cargo-hauling capability of a truck. They called it a "utility-sports vehicle." Surreptitiously, they removed a 60-S sedan body from the assembly line and, toiling at night in the basement of the Cadillac headquarters, replaced its tail fins and rear roofline with a tall, wedge-fronted box. They weren't good welders, but hey, it was a prototype. After spraying the body a bright Dakotah Red and mounting it on a pickup truck chassis, they presented their creation to Cadillac general manager James Roche. "This," they told him, "is how we can grow our brand." Alas, they had seriously misjudged their reception. The normally restrained Roche was furious. "Destroy this immediately," he ordered, "and never again use 'grow' as a transitive verb." Crestfallen, the conspirators slunk away. That night, though, gathered in a Clark Street tavern, they decided to disregard Roche's order and instead hide the prototype in some foreign market until the time was right to present it once more. "Someday," they said, "the world will be ready for a Cadillac utility-sports vehicle." And indeed, 42 years later, Cadillac would decide to introduce a luxury car-truck-combination that it would call the Escalade. By then, however, the 1957 effort was long-forgotten, and Cadillac instead looked to the GMC Yukon Denali as the basis for its new offering. And the prototype? It rolls on still in a far corner of Cuba, appearing much the same as it did the day it emerged from the Cadillac HQ basement, except that some wag painted the tips of the Dagmar bumpers the same red as the body colour.

2. It's just another use-what's-at-hand amalgamation in a country that can't afford to let vehicle bits go to waste.

But which of these explanations is correct? Your guess is at least as good as mine.

FC Barcelona decals may have been meant as camouflage.




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Fidel Castro Ruz, 1926-2016

November 26, 2016, 10:49 am
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Sergio Martinez's 'Quijote de America' in Vedado, Havana. 

   "He often told interviewers that he identified with Don Quixote, and like Quixote he struggled against threats both real and imagined ..."– Anthony DePalmanov in the New York Times, Nov. 26, 2016.


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Lost to history: Fidel Castro's Lincoln Continental

December 17, 2016, 12:39 pm
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Streamlined as a speed boat, the 1940s Continental was an immediate classic. 
   V-12 ENGINE purring, the big Lincoln rolls along U.S. 1 through Florida.
   Since leaving New York five days ago, the two couples inside have caught only glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean. But after St. Augustine the road swings east, and now, between the palm trees that whisper to them of Cuba, they see the saltwater channels of the Intercoastal Waterway and know the ocean is near.
   Soon they will be crossing it on their way home to Havana.
It is December 1948. The driver, one casual hand on the Bakelite wheel, is a tall and voluble 22-year-old law student named Fidel Castro. His brother-in-law, Rafael Diaz-Balart, rides next to him. In the back seat are Castro's wife of 10 weeks, Mirta Diaz-Balart, and Rafael's wife Hilda.
   Other vehicles will figure in Fidel Castro's long and eventful life – the Buick he crashes into a curb in the attack on the Moncada Barracks, the Land Rover from which he leads his guerrilla fighters in the Sierra Maestra, the Soviet jeeps he favours as Cuban leader in Cold War defiance of the United States.
   Yet none will say as much about Castro, his aspirations, his image of himself, as this sleek and rich-looking 1947 Lincoln Continental coupe. This is the car of movie stars Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth and Mickey Rooney, of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
   This is a car that commands attention.
Young marrieds Fidel and Mirta.
   It's a bit surprising, then, that Castro's Continental has had little notice in the history books.
   One mention comes in Rafael Díaz-Balart's memoir, Cuba: Intrahistoria, Una Lucha Sin Tregua, published nearly six decades after that journey down the Eastern Seaboard.   Rafael and Hilda, also recently married, were living in New York when Fidel and Mirta arrived from Miami on an extended honeymoon. The two had met through Rafael, Fidel's close friend from law school.
   With wedding cash from their parents, the couple decided to stay on in New York. They rented a room in Díaz-Balart's building on West 82nd Street while Fidel taught himself English.   Castro also found time in New York to buy the one-year-old Lincoln, his brother-in-law writes.
   "He only had the money to buy a new car like a Pontiac," Diaz-Balart would later tell Georgie Anne Geyer, author of Guerrilla Prince: The Untold Story of Fidel Castro. "But Fidel fell in love with his enormous Lincoln. It was grandissimo, huge ..."
   The acquisition was yet more remarkable given another Castro purchase in New York as recorded by Geyer – a copy of Karl Marx's Das Kapital. Could there be a more visible symbol of the capitalism Marx excoriates than this 18-foot-long luxury car?
   Another friend from the time, however, said the choice was fully in character.
   "Fidel was very ostentatious; he took his wedding money to buy that car – and that was just like him," Luis Conte Agüero told the Miami Herald in 2008.

   WITH SOFA-SOFT seats, hydraulic power windows and Adjust-O-Matic radio, the white Lincoln was well-appointed. But it was styling, not comfort, that set it apart.
   The inspiration for the Continental was a bespoke "personal car" created by Lincoln designer E.T. “Bob” Gregorie for Ford Motor Co. president Edsel Ford. Based on a Lincoln Zephyr, Gregorie's car was streamlined like a speed boat, with a great prow-like hood over the 12-cylinder engine and a canvas roof that wrapped around the rear seat. The spare tire sat proud above the rear bumper, offering a parting fillip.


'Bob' Gregorie's Continental prototype. Henry Ford Museum photo.

   Some claim Ford had been taken by the look of sports cars he saw on a trip to Europe and asked Gregorie to create a custom car with a "continental" style. But the designer himself is said to have disputed this, and others have noted that the close-coupled two-door body style had been a U.S. design motif since at least the 1920s.
   Gregorie's custom one-off was shipped to Ford's winter home in Florida. It was a hit. "Ford turned heads wherever he drove and, according to Lincoln lore, received no fewer than 200 requests to purchase his chic new automobile," writes Matt Anderson, a curator at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.
   The Continental was soon approved for limited production, with 350 cabriolet models and another 54 coupes assembled for its 1940 debut. The list price was US$2,840.   After the Second World War the Continental returned to the market, now with a heavy "egg-crate" grille and a US$4,392 base price. Its biggest year was 1947 when 1,569 convertibles and coupes, Fidel's among them, were produced.
Ornate grille was the largest postwar change. Henry Ford Museum photo.
   Noteworthy for its looks, the Continental was average in other respects. Its three-speed manual transmission and transverse leaf springs were common for the day. The 292-cubic-inch engine was 12-cylinder smooth, but with an output of just 125 horsepower, acceleration was middling.
   Worse, that flathead powerplant, the last V-12 to be employed in a U.S. production car, was known to overheat and burn oil. Some of its problems were addressed in the postwar models, but Fidel's car broke down repeatedly on the trip south, Cuban author Norberto Fuentes relates.
   Still, it brought them to Miami, where the story of the Lincoln becomes muddied. According to Fuente's fictionalized "auto-biography" of Castro, the Diaz-Balarts flew on to Havana while Fidel and Mirta drove to Key West to catch an auto ferry to Cuba.
   It's a romantic image – the newlyweds in their big white car skipping along the Florida Keys via the Overseas Highway, built to replace a rail line that had been destroyed in a hurricane a decade before. But we know auto ferry service would not be available from Key West until 1956, seven years later.

   DOES THIS mean Fidel and Mirta found some other vessel to take their car from Key West? Did they never drive through the keys, instead shipping the Lincoln by rail ferry from Miami? Did they leave it behind in the United States?
   According to Fuentes, the Continental did reach Havana, where Castro lacked the cash to pay the import duties.
   "Once again, El Chino (fellow student Alfredo Esquivel) came to the rescue," Fuentes writes in Castro's voice. "He mobilized some of our classmates, the Granados brothers – one of whom, Raúl, was one of our buddies on our outings to the brothels – whose parents owned a farm, and they sold one or two cows to pay the customs fees."
Hilda Diaz-Balart with sons
 Rafael, left, and Lincoln.
   We know what became of the people on that road trip. How Castro and Mirta would divorce, how Castro would overthrow the Batista government and rigidly control a communist Cuba for decades. How Rafael Diaz-Balart would break with Fidel and eventually settle in Florida, how two of Rafael and Hilda's four sons (one named Lincoln, though not for Fidel's car) would be elected to the U.S. Congress.
   Equally documented is how Ford would drop the Lincoln Continental after 1948 and revive the model name repeatedly in subsequent years, and how the classic long-hood, short-deck proportions of the first-generation Continental would influence American car design to this day.
   What we don't know is the fate of the particular white Continental that carried Fidel and his companions south in that final month of 1948. Perhaps it found its way back to New York. Perhaps it mouldered away in Cuba, surrendering its parts so more prosaic cars could drive on.
   Or perhaps, just perhaps, it remains whole and in daily use in some corner of the island, unrecognized by history but as grand to those who see it now as it was on the day it caught the eye of a young Fidel Castro and reflected to him an image of himself.



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December 31, 2016, 4:00 pm
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     AFTER A momentous 2016 – Fidel's death, Obama's visit, Venezuela's vanishing support – we have to wonder what's in store for Cuba in 2017.
   One thing, however, we can confidently predict. It will never lose its groove.





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A 1961 (and later) Volkswagen Beetle

January 27, 2017, 8:51 pm
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Front bumper with 'towel rack' is an original feature.
     MOST VOLKSWAGENBeetles in Cuba appear to be of 1970s vintage and almost certainly came from Brazil, where the original Type 1 body style remained in production long after it was retired elsewhere.
   This Santiago bug, however, dates to 1961, according to a notation painted on its rear deck lid.
   Many of its parts – the headlights and taillights, the "VW1302" badge, the housing for the rear licence plate lamp – are clearly from a later era. But the hole on the hood just below the centre chrome strip confirms the Beetle's age. It's the mounting point for the Wolfsburg crest (missing on this car) that was dropped after 1962.

With metric speedometer, this bug wasn't intended for the U.S. market.

'VW1302' badge is at least a decade newer than the car.



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Going topless for the tourists

February 23, 2017, 5:38 pm
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​Open-air 1958 Chevrolet seen in Havana in 2011 was once a hardtop. More cars are losing their roofs for the tourist trade, according to Havana writer Conner Gorry.
   CONNER GORRY is flipping her lid over the number of convertible conversions in Cuba's largest city.
   The American ex-pat and Here Is Havana author says collective taxis are being pulled from their routes serving locals to have their roofs sliced off so they can ferry visitors on open-top tours of the capital.
   Her fantasy? Watching "fun- and sun-seeking tourists from Kansas jump into the convertible and instead of traveling around ‘Disneyland Havana,’ they’re taken into the dark, gritty depths of Jesús María, La Timba, Fanguito, Los Pocitos and Coco Solo, ending up in Mantilla … and left there."
   She bemoans the "incalculable" environmental damage from "all these cars without catalytic converters"– perhaps unaware that most every vehicle in Cuba runs on leaded gasoline or low-grade diesel, neither of which is catalytic-friendly. A few more won't make a discernible difference.
   Gorry's resentment of those who come for Cuba's "classic car cliché" is part of a larger lament about boorish tourist behaviour, from drunken college kids to line-jumpers to people who refuse to acknowledge that Spanish, not English, is the language of the land.
   She's wise enough to recognize, however, that her gripes could seem churlish given Cuba's dire need for tourist dollars. On the convertibles, she concedes that the conversion work provides jobs for many, and the car owners can earn far more than they could with local fares.




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Further on the topic of catalytic converters

February 27, 2017, 4:12 pm
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A 1950 Chevy makes its smoky way along Francisco Vicente Aguilera in Santiago.



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Island Cruisers

March 30, 2017, 4:17 pm
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   NEXT TO the Willys Jeep, the Toyota Land Cruiser 40 series (best known as the FJ40) could be the most common vehicle in eastern Cuba. Rugged and long-lived, it serves as a ranch truck in the countryside and a taxi in the cities.

Rounded grille identifies this soft-top FJ40 in Santiago as a 1978 or earlier model.

Battery is mounted behind the bumper of this J40 in the seaside village of Siboney, perhaps so it can be easily removed at night as an anti-theft measure.






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December 24, 2018, 10:03 am
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Don't take the wheel – or the tiller

December 26, 2018, 10:41 am
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Toufik Benhamiche tours Havana before the boating accident. Facebook photo

AS LONG noted here, visitors should think twice about driving a car in Cuba. Get into an accident and you could find yourself trapped on the island for months of judicial process – followed, perhaps, by a jail sentence.

This advice applies to more than cars.

Toufik Benhamiche, a 47-year-old Montrealer, has been unable to leave Cuba since a July 2017 boating accident in which a fellow Canadian tourist was killed.

This week, Benhamiche learned he must remain on the island for at least another year fighting a criminal negligence conviction that if upheld could see him jailed for a further four years.

A statement released by his family on Dec. 26 said Benhamiche was convicted a second time by the provincial court of Ciego de Avila after Cuba's Supreme Court overturned an initial finding of guilt. Benhamiche, living in a rented apartment, is launching a new appeal while calling on the government of Canada to press Cuba to grant him an exit visa so he can rejoin his wife and two daughters in the Montreal suburb of Mascouche.

The family was nearing the end of a one-week vacation in Cayo Coco when it signed up for an "adventure tour" that is a common excursion in the tourist region.

Benhamiche had never driven a boat but said he was told it was easy. Moments after they were underway, however, the boar veered back to the wharf and flew in the air. Jennifer Ann Marie Innis, a 33-year-old mother of three from Woodstock, Ont., was struck by the propeller and died.

Barred from working or living with his family, Benhamiche can only count the passing days, his wife, Kahina Bensaadi, told Montreal's LaPresse earlier this year.

"To keep him still means to sentence him to prison."



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Unsafe assumptions: Where Toufik Benhamiche went wrong

December 30, 2018, 4:24 pm
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Toufik Benhamiche faces a four-year term in a Cuban prison. Family photo.

IN CANADA and other developed countries, we're accustomed to safeguards. 

Open the door of a microwave oven in mid-cycle and the device shuts down before damaging electromagnetic waves can escape. Lose your grip on a zip line and a harness keeps you from crashing to the ground. 

Such fail-safes are there to protect us from injury – and protect manufacturers and service providers from legal liability. Sometimes the measures and warnings seem ridiculous – "Do not use lit match or open flame to check fuel level"– but we accept them in the spirit of too much is better than too little.

It's when we carry our assumptions about safety elsewhere that we can get into trouble.

Toufik Benhamiche would have expected that driving a small boat with a big engine was simple and straightforward – otherwise, why would a Cuban tour operator allow a novice to take the controls after a few moments of dockside instruction?

He didn't know that in Cuba, a place of intersections without stop signs and beaches without lifeguards, the onus is on the individual to assess risks and act accordingly.

Such a look-after-yourself attitude might seem incongruous in a Marxist-Leninist state founded on the principle of the social safety net. It becomes easier to understand, however, when you see the island's crumbling infrastructure and realize just how stretched are its resources.

It was amid these conflicting assumptions that the Algerian immigrant to Canada, with no experience operating a boat, would find himself squeezed with his wife and two young daughters into a two-seat runabout with 40-horsepower Yamaha Enduro outboard motor.

Disaster came quickly.

"I followed the boat ahead of me, and at some point, for some unexplained reason, the boat turned and turned back towards the wharf," Benhamiche told the QMI news agency.

"I did not understand. It took two seconds and I hit the boat near the dock. We flew in the air and we came across the wharf."

The boat's propeller struck another Canadian, Jennifer Ann Marie Innis of Woodstock, Ont., on the head. The 33-year-old mother of three died of her injuries.

In two trials, Benhamiche's Cuban lawyer sought to show that the tour operator, a subcontractor to Canada's Sunwing Vacations, violated safety standards. Employees of the marina were unfamiliar with a procedures manual, the court heard, and the engine cut-off switch on Benhamiche's boat was never checked after the accident.

Twice, the court has found the Quebec man guilty of criminal negligence.

What would have happened if the same accident took place in Canada? First, a thorough investigation, with witness accounts gathered and the boat examined in minute detail. Given what we know, it would seem certain that the operators would be charged.

Benhamiche? Perhaps, if the Crown felt he was also culpable, and that there was a reasonable chance of conviction. Yet even with a guilty verdict, it's hard to imagine him serving time.

In Cuba, should his latest appeal fail and should the Canadian government be unable to extricate him, he could very well find himself in prison. Never mind the tour operator's part in this (and put aside, for a moment, the thought that the island would hardly want to admit that its attractions are inherently dangerous).

He was driving, and that makes him responsible.

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