INTERNATIONAL WORKERS DAY
14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Matanzas, 1 May 2025 – The colours on the billboard leap out at you in the middle of the terrace around the Ayllón Viaduct bus stop. The grassed area has already been worn away by the constant flow of people and by the drought. It the middle of all this parched earth with all its attendant long faces brought on by the transport crisis, the huge billboard inviting you to the First of May procession seems to have landed from a parallel universe.
“Together we’ll do it, for Cuba”, the poster’s text assures us, and it shows us a linesman from the Electric Company and a pioneer character holding a Cuban flag and wearing a kufiya – the traditional Arabic headscarf which Yasser Arafat converted into a political symbol for the Palestinians. And all the while, the country suffers long power cuts and an economic crisis without precedent.
Just a few metres from the hoarding, the actual reality of the situation becomes clear. This Wednesday the bus stop was particularly crowded with desperate travellers, waiting. Some of them had managed to find some shade to sit in, but others, because of lack of space or lack of patience were more dispersed and were forced to wait out on the pavement under the sun, their gaze fixed out there on the road, arm ready to be raised if and when they caught sight of any private transport, annoyance painted on their faces.
Yunior, 43, wears a cap to shield himself from the unrelenting heat of the sun. He arrives at the bus stop after his day’s work in a nearby state department office every afternoon after five o’clock. With his back to the giant Labour Day billboard, the employee pins all his hopes on any driver from an official organisation who might take pity on someone like him who needs transport back to somewhere near his home.
The Viaduct bus stop is always crowded with people headed out towards the outskirts of the city, to Cárdenas or Varadero. “The bus inspector is here between two and three in the afternoon, and he gets on the first bus that passes. Although his presence doesn’t even guarantee either that the buses will actually stop”, Yunior explains. A commotion causes him to turn towards a state registered vehicle which has just picked up two women. Although a crowd of people rushes towards the car, there is only room for those two.
The guy from Matanzas does a quick calculation. “The lorries that head towards Cárdenas charge 200 or 250 pesos, but after 4pm there are hardly any of them. When I manage to board one of them it costs me 50 to get to Peñas Altas and then I have to continue on foot”. In the little more than twenty working days that he has each month Yunior spends a third of his salary on getting to and from work.
The number of people waiting for transport keeps increasing and spreads across the tarmac from the traffic lights behind the Sauto Theatre and up to the Viaduct bus stop. There are even some who stand as far down as the bridge, keeping apart from the crowd in order to keep their options open if a car should suddenly appear with an empty seat. However Yunio stays next to the billboard. “There’ll be a bit of shade from the billboard here shortly and even if I haven’t found a lift yet, at least I won’t end up being baked by the sun”. Even propaganda can have its unexpected uses.
Although the Cuban authorities have emphasised that this year’s First of May celebrations will have a lower consumption of fuel, at the Viaduct bus stop people do their own sums and calculate the impact of the event. The local press describes the events of next Thursday morning thus: “On the main thoroughfares, workers, students and representatives of all social sectors will show their support for the Revolution and will reaffirm their commitment to the development of the province”.
“No matter how little fuel they use it’s obvious that the leaders aren’t going to travel from their houses to the procession on foot”, one woman is heard to say: she is one of the lucky ones who this Wednesday managed to find some shade and a bit of wall to sit on beneath the bus shelter. A state employee, like the majority waiting for public transport, she says that in recent months the number of people waiting at Viaduct has increased.
It’s not only the shortage of fuel but also the fall in tourism that has lengthened the amount of time spent waiting here. “Before, when the Transtur buses to and from from Varadero had empty seats they would stop here and take people on board”, she remembers. But the frequency of those buses has plummeted. Just like for many of the others waiting here for a bus, for her the next two days of festivity will merely be a pause in the unwanted drama of trying to get from A to B.
Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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