Why you should care
Because everyone’s gotta get somewhere, somehow.
Cuba’s taxi drivers, known as boteros, drive folks around bustling Havana in cars that hark back to 1940s and ’50s America. These cabs, called máquinas, cost roughly 10 Cuban pesos per ride (the bus costs about half a peso). Most of the vehicles landed before the U.S. embargo; for years, owners and drivers have had to rely upon parts from other vehicles and machines to stay on the road. To escape high gas prices, a huge number of the máquinas have been adjusted to use the least amount of fuel possible. But whatever their form, they’re a testament to the frigid relations that kept Cuba’s collective cabs caught in a Cold War bubble … one that has just burst.
