14ymedio, Yankiel Gutiérrez Faife, Camajuaní, 9 October 2024 — It’s six in the morning, and at the bus stop in front of the Camajuaní Terminal – one of the busiest, next to that of the extinct Maceo cinema – there is no room for one more person. It has been like this for years, but the transport crisis raises the level of burden a little more every day. As the sun advances, the environment heats up.
The place has its characteristic smell – a mixture of urine, excrement and rotten garbage – but those who have to pass through there daily have lost, or almost lost, their sensitivity. The stop is one of the favorite corners for beggars to defecate, and there is no shortage of night owls far from home, who also arrive to take care of their needs.
At eight, when the sun begins to burn – there is no truce even in the last months of the year – those who can do so crowd under the small roof of the shelter to escape from the heat or, these days, from the rain. Those who can’t enter find another strategic point – a nearby tree, which will complicate the race to get on the bus, if it happens to arrive.
There is no shortage of solitary “botellerros” — ‘hitchhikers’ — doctors who display their white coats, pregnant women and the elderly are considered entitled. They prefer to try their luck a few meters beyond the crowd, in case the car of an acquaintance takes pity on them. Few brake, because as soon as someone is picked up, four or five other people will struggle to enter the vehicle, sometimes without the driver’s consent.
The bus stop is on Independencia Street, which the people of Camajuaní still call – as in the 19th century – Real Street. Officially, the avenue is only a section of the circuit that connects Santa Clara with Camajuaní, Remedios, Caibarién and the Cayería Norte, a tourist corridor where the white buses of the State Gaviota never stop, knowing the situation.
When a mandatory stop is made, tourists look out curiously through the dark windows. The cameras rise behind the glass, and from the stop you can almost hear the click: Cuban poverty is also a tourist attraction.
From the Maceo cinema – where the other important artery of the town, General Naya, ends – to the terminal, a small hill descends, which allows travelers to see the red silhouette of a Transmetro bus from afar. Everyone tenses their muscles. It’s time to run. A frequent strategy of drivers is to stop a few meters beyond the stop. The crowd races, and the line forms in order of agility. There is no shortage of blows, elbows, pushes.
When there is no luck, the bus passes by and the travelers, between looks and expressions of absolute despair, observe how it passes the cemetery towards Santa Clara. They will try again.
In the group there are all kinds of people, from students who travel daily to the Central University of Las Villas – just over 20 kilometers from the town – to farmers who live in Santa Fe, Carmita, Vega Alta, Los Paragüitas or the University neighborhood. For many, these names are their daily stations of the cross.
“You can spend an hour here without a single car passing,” says Ana, who studies medicine in Santa Clara. For her, completing the stretch to the ring road of the provincial capital is just the beginning. Then she will have to figure out how to get to the school, another overwhelming segment of the journey. With a little luck, the bus will arrive at the hospital area, but that will not completely solve her problem.
“Things have become very difficult. Many days I don’t get to my classes on time,” she says. Is it better to get a bed in a dorm? Ana thinks – like hundreds of Camajuaní students – that it’s not. The terrible state of the residence, the bad food and the difficult living conditions make it preferable to return home every day, despite the transport situation. Sometimes, she points out, she has to take a taxi to return, and she must prepare to spend.
Many travelers miss the “amarillos” — the “yellows” — individuals in yellow vests — the official “fishermen” of buses and State cars, who flagged down the drivers and forced them to stop.* Their work was far from ideal, since many were lazy and easily distracted by talking to acquaintances without spending time watching the traffic. But they did something. Their absence is the umpteenth effect of the migratory exodus and the search for other jobs, as they have apparently left the country in droves.
For Érika, a Camajuaní nurse employed in Santa Clara, what bothers her most about the situation is not only the wait but also the effect of the crisis on her pocketbook. “With current rates, I sometimes spend more than half of my salary on transportation. I’ve thought about quitting work,” she says. Her daily tour involves getting up before dawn and waiting at the stop, where “it’s a miracle to get a place on the first try.”
Not infrequently the shared ride becomes an “everyone for himself” event, even among acquaintances. It happened recently, Ana says, when the father of a friend – who works at the Party School and has, of course, a car – stopped to pick her up. “We had to leave a colleague behind because there was no room for anyone else,” she says.
The Camajuaní stop – which still has very expensive taxis and electric tricycles outside – is just one station on the arduous path of travelers, perhaps not even the worst. The Santa Clara Los Flamboyanes stop in the hospital area is more crowded, or the demolished intermunicipal terminal, which for more than a year has not seen the emblematic Girón circulating that connected both localities. At night, the wrecked bus had a cabaret name: the Queen of the Night.
Now, each trip translates into numbers: 150 pesos if it is done in a private truck, 250 to Caibarién; 20 pesos in state buses; and 500 pesos if a private vehicle is boarded, a figure that can be doubled if you go to the end of the Caibarien line. It doesn’t matter how much money the traveler has in his pocket: the bill, at the end of the month, doesn’t leave much.
*Translator’s note: It is (or was) supposedly mandatory for government vehicles to stop and fill empty seats, and this was enforced by the ‘amarillos’ in their yellow vests.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
