AGUACATE, Cuba: Juan Carlos Pino, a Cuban mechanic with an eighth-grade education, may have found a way to outsmart the US oil blockade.
Employing the kind of ingenuity many Cubans have developed over decades of US sanctions, Pino, 56, modified his 1980 Polish-built Fiat Polski to run on charcoal, a cheaper and more abundant fuel than gasoline since Washington cut off oil shipments to the Caribbean island in January.
Pino built the contraption from his workshop in Aguacate, population 5,000, a town about 70 km east of Havana that once thrived on a now-shuttered sugar refinery. In town, Pino is a celebrity with his two-cylinder Polski chugging about the pot-holed streets, its distinctive 60-liter fuel tank soldered to the back.
Townspeople gather to take selfies, some incredulous, others asking if he could make one for them.
“In a crisis like this, it’s the best option we have,” said Pino, who wants to modify a tractor next. “We need mobility, we need to be able to plant crops.”
Pino built his device entirely from scrap and repurposed items. The charcoal burns inside a converted propane tank that is sealed shut with the lid of a transformer. A filter is made from a stainless steel milk jug stuffed with old clothes.
Scarcity has long been a constant in Cuba, with its Soviet-style command economy. That has grown worse since the US deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, cutting off Venezuelan oil while threatening tariffs on any other countries that supply Cuba with fuel.
