Without a free market for over almost 60 years, Cubans have been forced to make do without most things. Turns out your average Cuban is pretty ingenious. Randy Batista, Jorge Lavoy, and Gabriela Azcuy, decided to start collecting examples of how Cubans have repurposed almost everything into something. From turning Soviet washing machines into lawnmowers and electric coils into water heaters, the collection highlights how hardship forces creativity. Produced by Rob Rothschild at Heartwood Soundstage in Gainesville, Florida.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:39

Necessity is the mother of invention. And one of the places in the world that has had to be the most inventive is in Cuba, for about the last 60 years and here as our guest today , uh, where it's a pleasure to have Randy Batista , uh , long time local. Randy, you've done a little bit of everything. So it's hard to describe. We also have , uh, Gabby Azcuy , who's the curator of the exhibit , um , that we're going to be talking about and Jorge Lavoy. Uh, welcome all of you.

Randy Batisa: 1:11

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 1:11

First of all, let's tell listeners what we're actually talking about. There is an exhibit called, Cuban Ingenuity, the Artistry of the Everyday Inventor. It is opening soon, or at least a sneak peek on March the ninth, and it's going to run through the end of the year. And , um , basically I'm going to let Gabby give a very short description , uh, before we talk about it more in detail, what exactly is this , uh, exhibit about and what are people going to see when they walk in the door?

Gabby Azcuy: 1:38

So Cuba Ingenuity is a compilation of videos, objects , and graphics that will be in the West Gallery in the Cade Museum. We will have around 45, 50 objects of different sites, medium, small, and , uh , some , uh, videos that will project the reality in these days in Havana.

Richard Miles: 1:56

So , um , Gabby, just to clarify you and Jorge , um , did you personally select or curate all of these , uh, all the objects in the exhibit?

Jorge Lavoy: 2:04

Yeah, that's, that's correct. We , um, we did three trips to Cuba to find and bringing all these objects from there. So was a really hard task for us because we have , uh, as Cubans, we don't think that , uh, we have like awesome inventions or , uh, um, appealing objects to, you know, to maybe , uh, people from, you know , um , U.S. or countries that have a lot of , uh, progress medicine , you know, big, big countries with , um, you know, a bunch of tools and resources. So as Cuban's, you have , uh , the idea of , uh, just invent and it's normal for you. You spend your whole life doing that. So it was really hard to , for , for us finding , uh, the, the good example of ingenuity, because for us, maybe we have our washer machine model converted in a lawnmower, and maybe we think that this is normal people don't to see these like a cool thing. So for that reason, we have Ann Gilroy , she's a curator of the Tomo Center and she was all the time, like our U.S. eyes seeing the other part, Oh, there bring