Fascinating stories are just waiting to be found in the archives if only we investigate the heritage kept within them. The documents kept can reveal previously unknown facts and offer new perspectives on historical events, personalities and cultures, thus enriching our understanding of the past and contributing to a more comprehensive view of history.
This is the case of the over 2,500 SAME Ariete tractors sold to Fidel Castro’s Cuban government between 1967 and 1972.
From the company organ “4RM – Quattro ruote motrici” of that era, we read:
In light of the agreement between SAME and the Republic of Cuba, 2,503 Aries tractors were supplied to the National Planning Council. After subjecting machines of various makes from around the world to the most demanding tests, the engineers chose SAME four-wheel drive tractors. SAME Aries tractors will plant new fields with rice, a crop of the future, as established by the Cuban government in Plan Arroz, the famous “Rice Plan”.
A typewritten document, found on the back of a photograph, offers more insight into this particular order, which was a real springboard for the internationalisation of SAME worldwide:
The first hundred or so of the 2,500 tractors commissioned by Fidel Castro left for Cuba: these were part of an initial supply contract for 15 billion Italian lire […] SAME tractors were chosen as the best solution for the needs of the agricultural transformation programme – the transition from intensive sugar cane monoculture to rice and coffee production.
This is also reflected in the machine registration records kept in the SDF Historical Archives. Browsing line by line through these records, the word “Cuba” leaps out in red, and is repeated throughout the records for a total of 2,503 times. These records are valuable documents as they provide information on the sales of individual tractors, identified by their chassis number.
The figure is truly astonishing when you consider that a total of 7,752 Ariete tractors were built in that period! We can rightly say that it was indeed a revolutionary machine.
Exports did not stop in Cuba, and the Ariete reached even more distant countries and was sold in the most unimaginable markets.
If you are interested in discovering the journey of the Aries and the characteristics that made it capable of adapting to the most diverse conditions, you can watch the video produced by the Historical Archives for the Archivissima 2023 festival, which every year celebrates the importance of historical archives, repositories of stories waiting to be discovered.