HAVANA — Jose Obdilio Duran’s ’57 Chevy has holes in its mottled floor, a passenger window that can’t be rolled up and no inside panels on its doors. But the 71-year-old retiree wants to put the car to work — applying for one of the first taxi licenses this communist country has granted in a decade.
About 60 would-be taxi drivers lined up early Friday at a Transport Ministry office in central Havana to fill out forms for permission to use their own cars as taxis — a rare dose of the free market on an island whose economy is dominated almost entirely by the state.
The private taxis are meant to help alleviate chronic transportation problems. In the capital, many people have to hitchhike to work. Things are so grave in the countryside that entire families wait by the highway for hours for transportation from one town to another.
Those willing to brave long lines at bus stops and endure sardine-like conditions can squeeze aboard former Soviet- bloc coaches that still list destinations such as East Berlin. Cuba has used credit to buy thousands of new buses from China, but they are mostly used to carry tourists.
“This is one of the best decisions the state has ever made,” said Luis Pozo, 67, another retiree seeking a license for his Russian-built 1988 Moscovich. Pozo said he didn’t think the small free-market opening was out of step with the ideals of Cuba’s revolution.
“It’s not like anybody is going to get rich from this,” he said.
