Story and photos: Anastasia Walsh. Sun-Sentinel. November
6, 2000. Story
and photos.
Cradling a naked baby in her arms, Santa Ortiz waits under the scorching sun
on a flatbed truck packed with more than 100 hitchhikers. She tries to shelter
him from the sun and the jostling caused as a steady stream of desperate
travelers climbing onto the truck headed for Havana, about 400 miles to the
west. Although it is still morning, it has already been a long day for Ortiz,
who has traveled with two children since 6 a.m.
"What luck to catch a ride that will take us all the way to Havana!"
says Ortiz, relieved to see the truck's driver return after running errands in
Las Tunas while his passengers waited patiently.
In the weeks I traveled through Cuba by bus, cart, truck, horse and
motorcycle, I began to understand why Ortiz was so happy to be riding 15
straight hours on a truck packed with people, some piglets and a pair of chicks.
She wouldn't have to sleep overnight on the ground at a government-sanctioned
hitchhiking point along the highway or in a crowded waiting room at a bus or
train station.
In Cuba, people get through long trips traveled in hot and uncomfortably
close quarters by sharing water, food, rum and conversation. They have been
getting around by any means available since the Soviet-subsidized mass
transportation system collapsed in the early 1990s.
"The (mass transportation system) situation is critical, the
insufficiency extraordinary, especially in rural areas," said Manuel
Alepuz, general director of the Association of the Investigation and Production
of Transportation in Havana.
Cuba doesn't have enough hard currency to buy the oil, vehicles and spare
parts it needs to maintain an efficient system, he explained -- a situation
worsened by the 38-year-old American trade embargo.
Until 1991, Cuba traded raw sugar to the Soviet Union for about 13 million
tons of oil a year. Since 1992, the government has been able to import only
about 5 million tons of oil a year, Alepuz says, enough to keep most factories
running and electricity in hospitals, schools and most homes.
But mass transportation became a luxury Cuba could no longer afford, one of
countless sacrifices of the "Special Period," a time of forced
frugality.
The Cuban government has found ways around some of the commuting and
traveling problems. The first was a government-sponsored program to encourage
bicycling. More than a million "Flying Pigeon" bicycles were imported
from China in the early 1990s and sold for $1 a piece, said Alepuz. Children
were taught to assemble bicycles in schools, and Cuban factories began to
produce a cheap, plain model.
The government also created official hitchhiking points along roads and
highways, complete with officials dressed in yellow uniforms to stop all state
vehicles for hitchhikers.
In 1995 the government created a fleet of 180 camellos (camels), lumbering
18-wheel trucks converted into buses with twin sections that resemble the humps
on a camel. The 60-foot trucks continue to be the backbone of mass
transportation in Havana.
American classic cars from the 1940s and 1950s, still running on the
ingenuity of Cuban mechanics, also serve as taxis all over the island.
But these measures haven't been enough to meet all of Cuba's commuting
needs, especially in areas outside Havana. In some towns and rural areas, the
horse and carriage has become practical again. People also make their own taxi
carts, pulled by motorcycles or bicycles.
The situation has created a natural camaraderie between strangers crammed in
small spaces, who prefer to laugh, share, converse and help each other with
their bags than argue or lament their personal discomfort.
"We consider traveling here a sport, and you must bring with you a
sporting spirit," says hitchhiker Ester Alonzo, 54. "Don't think about
being in a hurry, and don't let anything upset you. You will always arrive –
somehow."
This package was designed by Donna Pazdera, sun-sentinel.com
producer/writer | 