Bodyshop Workers - Artists with Metal and Torches

Bodyshop Workers: Artists with Metal and Torches / 14ymedio, Marcelo
Hernandez

14ymedio, Marcello Hernandez, 10 September 2016 – The noise drowns out
all talking. There is hammering, the sound of metal being cut, and a
polisher that buzzes relentlessly. In the bodyshop belonging to Manolo –
called El Gordo, the Fat Guy – located in Santiago de las Vegas, Friday
looks like any other day: it is full of cars needing a new fender, trunk
or door. The recent authorization for the sale of industrial gases on a
wholesale basis to the self-employed barely alters the routine at this
hectic place.

Manolo has specialized in making parts for '55, '56 and '57 Chevrolets,
but his workshop also attends to the "chariots of Real Socialism" as he
ironically calls the Soviet-made Ladas and Moskvitches. Creating rear
columns is his favorite work; three decades ago he graduated from a
university specialty that he has never engaged in.

This metal artist assures 14ymedio the new commercial flexibility,
focused on the activities of sheet metal work, blacksmithing and
oxy-welding, "will change the current situation very little."

"They have taken a long time to take this step, but at least it's
something," he says.

The wholesale authorization began with the enactment of Resolution 335,
of August 31, 2016, published in the Official Gazette No. 25. The move
comes three years after chapistero – bodyshop worker – was approved as
one of the forms of self-employment Cubans can engage in and for which
they must obtain a license. During this time these "professionals of the
torch" have had to continue paying retail prices or make their purchases
on the informal market.

Since 2013, the retail sale of oxygen and acetylene has been approved in
the TRD chains (TRD literally stands for "Hard Currency Collection
Stores"), and in CIMEX stores (also State-owned), along with empty
cylinders necessary to store these gases. Now the authorization also
includes wholesale trade in nitrogen and argon.

However, Manolo says that "the cylinders are supposedly for sale in the
hard currency stores," but he has never been able to buy them there,
because the supply is unstable and "they are always out of them."

"It was much easier and cheaper to get it the under the table," he
explained to this newspaper. A practice common among all the bodyshops
that abound across the country.

Three years ago the authorities explained that the decision to grant
licenses for these and other trades was taken because they had created
the conditions in the country to market "raw materials, equipment and
other supplies in the store network and at specific points" but the
delay in providing these resources has been a concern among those
intended to benefit from the measure.

A few blocks from Manolo's workshop is the competition. Augustine has a
more modest shop with no signage, but as of a couple of years ago he has
begun to carve out a loyal clientele. He cannot benefit from the new
option buying his gas wholesale because he lives in Havana without the
necessary permit to reside in the city, after migrating from his native
Camagüey.

"Nobody knows what it costs to jump from rental to rental and the cost
of renting a half-hidden place in the outback to work in the only thing
I know how to do, bodywork on cars," he explains.

Without a legal residence in the Cuban capital he can not even apply for
a license to do bodywork. "Without that they're not going to sell me so
much as a match to light the wick, so I'll have to keep paying 400 pesos
for a couple of cylinders."

He can't even take advantage of the service that leases the empty
cylinders on a monthly fee basis, nor can he contract with the state
company to transport the cylinders to his bodyshop, two of the measures
announced Friday, available to licensed individuals.

Augustine is concerned that the official information published by the
newspaper Granma did not specify what the new "wholesale prices" will be
in the "territorial units of the Industrial Gases Company." Nor did it
detail if the metal sheets of the different sizes needed to create body
parts will also be offered.

"The biggest problem we have now is the tools," complains the bodyshop
worker. "They will sell the gas, but where are the shears, the presses,
the good cutters, the bending and stamping machines that are lacking in
any body shop?" he asks.

In the middle of Augustine's workshop is a Chevrolet dismantled into
pieces that he is beginning to restore to the gloss of yesteryear. "This
is done with patience, this is a job that you must know how to wait
for," he says.

Source: Bodyshop Workers: Artists with Metal and Torches / 14ymedio,
Marcelo Hernandez – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/bodyshop-workers-artists-with-metal-and-torches-14ymedio-marcelo-hernandez/