HAVANA, February 1 (Silvio Herrera, AFPCP) – Travelers arriving in
Havana by train from other parts of the island may be searched as many as three
times by police who say they are looking for contraband.
The contraband in question is more often than not foodstuffs; the more
popular items are cheese, pork and coffee which are scarce in Havana and
somewhat more readily available in the more heavily agricultural provinces.
The police confiscate items from travelers on the more or less arbitrary
basis of what each agent considers illegal.
The gauntlet travelers run through starts inside the train. Cuban Railroads
has its own police force; its agents travel with every train, one to each
railroad car. With plenty of time on their hands, the agents methodically go
through everyone’s luggage and confiscate whatever they consider illegal.
When the train arrives at the station in Havana, there’s another team
of police who search travelers’ luggage. When they find a wedge of cheese
or a pork bundle missed by the train police, they confiscate it, reciting: "The
pork does not have the required health certificate," or "This is too
much [for your own consumption]; you must be bringing it in for sale."
Here, possession of more than the strictly necessary personal amount of, let’s
say, cheese, would be prima facie evidence of a traveler’s intent to sell
and profit by it and thus strictly forbidden and itself evidence that the
traveler may be capitalist scum.
And if the traveler has a family with whom he was hoping to share the excess
cheese, so does the policeman.
Outside the station, city police go through the travelers’ belongings a
third time.
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