Before Fidel Castro's revolution, Cuba had a very close relationship with the United States. Relationship that goes back to the times of the Independence of Cuba from Spain, a campaign in which the northern country collaborated enthusiastically. At the time of Prohibition, when alcohol was not allowed to be sold in the United States, it was common for people to cross the sea to get drunk and gamble in the casinos of Havana.
But one day Castro arrived, threw out the dictator Batista, and founded a new country. Until it established relations with the Soviet Union, the future of the new Cuba was uncertain, but once it was allied with the other power on the planet, it remained more or less at peace. From that troubled time the streets are full of witnesses: American cars and Russian cars abound. But the most picturesque are undoubtedly the first. Today they are one of the most typical postcards of Cuba: the old Havana cars.
Classic cars, although they are original, to survive the precariousness of Cuban society, today they have parts from other cars or inventions of their owners that have served to extend their lives. And many of them have achieved what does not yet exist in Cuba: the union of capitalism with communism. Is that some cars have Russian mechanical parts. The «patent plates», Patents, Cuban license plates, as you prefer to tell them, they have different colors:
- yellow: they are privately owned
- white: belong to government ministers
- black: they belong to diplomats.
- red: they are rental cars
- blue: they are government vehicles
- dark red: they are tourist cars
- green: they are military cars
- oranges: they are cars of churches or foreign companies.
More information - Classic cars in Cuba
Source and photo - Visit Cuba