Assoc (re)puke: In Cuba, license plates tag drivers, not the car

[Billy Burnett]

In Cuba, license plates tag drivers, not the car
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/10/AR2010021002626.html

The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 10, 2010; 3:34 PM

HAVANA -- It's Cuba's twist on "you are what you drive": Here, you are your license plate.

A rainbow of colors and an alphabet soup of codes tell the discerning eye how important you are in the egalitarian revolution as you whiz by - your nationality, what you do for a living and often how high you rank at work.

"The kind of car you drive says something," says Norberto Leon, a retiree who collects pocket change for watching parked cars. "The license plate, it says more."

Cuba's painstaking color-coding of license plates - a system copied from the former Soviet Union - is one way authorities have kept tabs on people and their vehicles for decades.

The government owns most cars. They have blue plates with letters and numbers that indicate when and where the vehicle can operate and whether the driver can use it for personal as well as professional reasons.

Inspectors wait along highways out of town and other high-traffic areas, stopping official cars to check their route sheets and to make sure they aren't being used for a jaunt to the beach.

Executives at government-run firms - who get caramel-colored plates - have more leeway. But even they may only be allowed to use their cars to get to and from work.

"It's a form of control," said Weichel Guera, a National Office of Statistics chauffeur who is assigned a government sedan that he can use only to ferry top officials during business hours. He and his Lada spend most of their time parked outside the statistics building.

In the Soviet Union, Cuba's benefactor in many regards, all plates were black and white, and the first two letters specified the province where the vehicle was registered. The third letter denoted either state or private ownership.

The Soviets also assigned numbers for embassy license plates based on a country's recognition of the Bolshevik Revolution: Plates for Britain - the first to accept the czar's ouster - are still 001.

In Cuba, the first letter in the license plate indicates which of 14 provinces the car hails from, such as "H" for Havana. The letter "K" means the car is privately owned - either by a person or by a foreign firm.

Military vehicles have mint-green, rear-only plates; olive-green plates are for vehicles issued by the Ministry of the Interior, including Fidel Castro's fleet of armored Mercedes 280s, which were built between 1982 and 1984.

Black plates are for foreign diplomats, who don't have to adhere to traffic laws. White-plated vehicles of Cuban government ministers or heads of state organizations also drive as if they have diplomatic immunity - though technically they don't.

The last three digits on diplomatic plates often denote the professional rank of the driver. So, if you're stuck behind a gray Mercedes with black license plate 179-004, that means the fourth most-important officer from the Russian embassy is likely behind the wheel.

"Everyone's supposed to be equal under socialism, but when a late-model sedan with black license plates roars down Quinta Avenida (Fifth Avenue) in Havana, the driver is saying, 'Look out, I'm a big shot,'" said Tracey Eaton, a U.S. journalist once posted in Havana who now writes the blog "Along the Malecon."

For years, officials' cars were Iron-Curtain imports, as Cubans were encouraged to drive Ladas or other boxy, smelly and slow models. Now many official sedans are imported from China or bought from Havana's Peugeot, Fiat and Mercedes dealerships, adding diversity to the white-plated fleet.

Rental cars get maroon plates. Foreign journalists, religious leaders and Cubans working for overseas firms have neon-orange ones.

Red "provisional" plates allow vehicles to circulate while authorities sort out just what color tag they should get.

Most of the half-century-old American roadsters that create a moving museum along the island's potholed streets have yellow license plates, meaning they are vehicles owned by ordinary Cubans.

The holdovers from Detroit's chrome-and-tail-fin era are still prominent on the roads because Cubans with non-VIP jobs can buy and sell only cars manufactured before the Castros took power in 1959. Buying newer vehicles requires government permission - including justifying how you can afford a car when the communist state controls well over 90 percent of the economy and pays employees an average of about $20 a month.

"It's normal," insisted Leonardo Rodriguez, 49, whose faded, baby-blue 1957 Buick Special has yellow plates and a front grill wide enough for a family of five to picnic atop.

"Maybe it's confusing for a foreigner, but for us it's not.

FYI, in Cuba the majority of the cars are not American classics.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Thanks for making your point. I'm convinced most US Americans believe all they've got

are those 1950's classic cars.

I wanted to mention some people in the US have been contemplating making people with DUI's drive with license tags designating them as DUI people with a record.

Interesting article. Thanks.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Bear in mind that the source is the Washington Psst and the Associated Pukes.

Always ask what their agenda is, in writing about a leftist Latin American country, especially Cuba, because they ALWAYS have one.

A piece of the agenda here is pretty naked--to paint the Cuban revolution as hypocritical, to create a sense of the deprivation of ordinary Cubans, and to stress Cuba's old ties to the Soviet Union, of thirty years ago.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me for the police to monitor the lawful use of government vehicles, which seems to be one of the main purposes of the license IDs. If vehicle and gas are paid for by the government, the user shouldn't be taking the car on side trips to the beach. Our own government could probably save us a A LOT of money by stricter monitoring of the use of government vehicles. And this point contradicts the thesis of the article, that, in Cuba, "license plates tag drivers, not the car." In this instance, they are ID-ing government-provided cars and monitoring their use. I think most of our government agencies and corporations use mileage as the control, but maybe Cubans are cleverer at altering odometers. This is just a different method of doing the same thing.

And the notion of tags in the license number is used here, as well. Don't all government vehicles have "E" in the license plate number? Further, we distinguish states--the origin of the car--by color and design, and that fact is definitely used by police forces and more than likely by government spies--along with other spying methods including many illegal and unconstitutional ones--to track people across state lines for beneficial and non-beneficial purposes. Licensing in general--including drivers' licenses--is used to track people for both good and bad purposes. So what's the big deal about Cuba's license plates?

It's a non-story--with a bit of cultural interest, heavily skewed to the negative. The Washington Psst and the Associated Pukes do NOT publish stories about Cuba that are not cut-and-pasted from Langley. I don't know if I've grasped the full CIA agenda here. But, believe me, there is one.

[Mika]

3. For the RWnuts it is an oppressive gov that monitors & reduces gov waste.

The goal of the US RW is to get rid of gov (Cuba's and the US's), that way "oppressive" gov won't exist. Turn it all over to the capitalist corporations. Privatize. Privatize. Privatize.

---

[Judi Lynn]

4. Just noticed Eusebio Leal, Cuban historian, is restoring another great building in your photo.

Looks like they are almost rebuilding it, doesn't it?

Too cool.

Cuba's government had its priorities straight in using the money they had left after the Batista clowns stripped the Cuban Treasury before taking off, to build the HUMAN intrastructure, creating enough food, safe lodging, education, and medical care for everyone before tackling more superficial things like refurbishing the old buildings.

It has been pointed out that NO papers publish images of all the new housing created for Cubans away from the crumbling downtown buildings. Isn't that amazing? THAT'S what most people think Cuba looks like. Even all the tv reporters drag their butts over to do their stories with the old buildings crumbling in the background.

Talk about stacking the deck!

They'd better start easing off that perception molding as this country approaches the time of allowing ordinary Americans their right to go to Cuba. They don't want people arriving in crowds to see everything has been TOTALLY misrepresented to them their whole lives by our own media, and government voices. It looks bad, doesn't it?

http://www.havanatimes.org.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/gallery/people/galeria%20109.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com.nyud.net:8090/2003/2053790886_cf02fb89e0.jpg http://www.sloppyjoes.org.nyud.net:8090/images/sloppy-joes-old-havana-building-2007.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com.nyud.net:8090/3616/3438545302_9753448534.jpg

http://www.4321.co.il.nyud.net:8090/property/photographs1/x887229560.jpg

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