The Reason Why Cuba Has So Many Vintage Cars

As nationalism in Cuba began growing for a number of years in the latter half of the 19th century, the Spanish government ignored the Cuban people, who were calling for more equality in regards to the criminal codes and freedom for enslaved people, and instead chose to raise taxes on the island nation and to ban reformists from having meetings, according to PBS. However, the fuse finally blew when Cuban sugar planter Carlos Manuel de Cespedes instigated a revolution by writing a new constitution that emancipated the enslaved, rebelled against Spanish rule, and called for the United States to annex the country in what would be known as the Ten Years' War.

By 1878, the war had ended in a failure for the revolutionaries. Hope would arrive in 1895, when the Spanish-American War led to an American victory, which resulted in the annexation of Cuba, according to Nations Online. The country then faced a series of coups and authoritarian regimes, often backed by the U.S., for the next half of the 20th century. During this time, due to a lack of their own car manufacturing industry, the Cuban government often imported American cars, according to Lonely Planet. But a new revolution was about to change these friendly relations, as the Cuban people began to have enough of not being able to govern themselves independently.

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