Corralling the Bulls? / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado #Cuba

DSC06925Marcos bought a dilapidated jalopy from the fifties. To do this he sold the house of his widowed mother and brought her to live with him, because she’s 70 and wants to be with her only son and two grandchildren. With the help of his teenage offspring, Marcos repaired, painted and took out a license to use the car as a taxi alternating with his eldest son.

They’ve done well enough in the business that they’re thinking of buying another “antique car” so the first-born can drive that and he and the younger son, who just turned 18 and is preparing to get a driver’s license, could share time at the helm of the other.

The kids seem to have the same entrepreneurial spirit as their father, but are more practical and think they could renovate the family SoHo with a new and modern car which the State doesn’t sell; it might be more profitable because they would save on repairs and fuel.

But the microenterprise of “Marcos and Sons” is destined to prosper more slowly and with difficulty because of the constraints placed on it by the authorities, those who want Cubans without political pedigree who yearn to be entrepreneurs to conform to what they authorize, to walk when they could run, to remain silent when they could speak, to crawl when they are capable of flying, to hold off instead of charging ahead, to keep their heads down and get by like oxen.

December 23 2012