1953 Ricardo Suarez Lopez Road Map of Metropolitan Havana

This is a separately issued February 1953 map of Havana, Cuba drawn by Ricardo Suarez Lopez to celebrate the official opening of the Havana headquarters of the National Motor Company. Not to be mistaken for the American auto manufacturer of that name, National Motor Company was Cuba's importer of Ford automobiles.

Metropolitan Havana by Car

The map extends well beyond Central and Old Havana, embracing the Playa de Santa Fe at the western extreme of the map, and the Playa de Cojimar in the east. It reaches as far south as the Rio Almendares and the towns of El Cotorro and Rancho Boyero (including José Martí International Airport, under its former name of Aeropuerto de Rancho Boyeros). All major streets within the area are delineated, and the districts and neighborhoods of the city are easily located with a system of coordinates keyed to a table. In addition to automobile roads, railroads are marked. In the heart of the Palatino neighborhood on the southeast corner of Via Blanca and Primelles, the new Ford dealership is impossible to miss. The lower left corner of the map is occupied with an advertisement for Kendall motor oil; the verso of the map contains the folding map's outside cover, as well as a depiction of the facade of the company's new facilities.

American Cars in Cuba

In the first half of the twentieth century, Cuba imported most of its automobiles from the United States. In 1919, Cuba became the top importer of American cars. Following the 1959 Revolution, Cuban families could retain the cars they had purchased prior to the Revolution, but were not permitted to resell them, and Cuban citizens were no longer permitted to purchase cars for private use. Moreover, beginning in 1962, the American embargo would prevent the Cuban government for acquiring new American cars, with the result that tens of thousands of automobiles from the 1940s and 50s are still in use today - many of which would have been initially sold at the National Motor Company's Ford new dealership marked on and commemorated by this map. (Today, the location is a Peugeot dealership.) Such vehicles are meticulously cared for and considered both family treasures and national points of pride.

Publication History and Census

This map was completed for its separate publication in February 1953, and is credited to Ricardo Suarez Lopez, whose name we find associated with no other map, and for whom we are unable to find any biographical record. The format of the map's copyright conforms to conventions in Cuba in this period, but no printer's address is given, and it may even be that National Motor Company had an in-house press. We find one example of this map in OCLC, in the collection of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. We see no examples appearing on the market.