---
title: Cuba’s DIY Inventions from 30 Years of Isolation — HIGH T3CH
url: https://hight3ch.com/cubas-diy-inventions-from-30-years-of-isolation/
date: 2016-03-13
---

# Cuba’s DIY Inventions from 30 Years of Isolation

In 1991, Cuba’s economy began to implode. “The Special Period in the Time of Peace” was the government’s euphemism for what was a culmination of 30 years worth of isolation. It began in the 60s, with engineers leaving Cuba for America. Ernesto Oroza, a designer and artist, studied the innovations created during this period. He found that the general population had created homespun, Frankenstein-like machines for their survival, made from everyday objects. Oroza began to collect these machines, and would later contextualize it as “art” in a movement he dubbed “Technological Disobedience.”