14ymedio, Manzanillo, 1 April 2024 — An esplanade full of garbage surrounds the Manzanillo railway station, where abandonment prevails, from the old terminal to the mechanical traffic lights. Trains that arrive in that station in Granma province often suffer accidents and derailments. The most recent of them – that of the Havana-Manzanillo train, which occurred on March 26, without injuries – made the fears of those who pass daily on the damaged rails come true. The key is in the track clamping system, which has been unmaintained for decades. Light years away from modern railroad tracks, those of Cuba still use wooden ties, completely rotten in several segments and with rusty nails.
As it is common for the railroad ties to detach from the track, the correct separation between the two tracks is mismatched, and when the train arrives, it does not find a stable track for its movement. That was the cause of the derailment of March 26, in addition to the illegible signage, the precariousness of the equipment and the rusty mechanisms of the tracks, which make a quick diversion action impossible in case of emergency.
“It’s a real danger,” says Enrique, a railway worker in Manzanillo, who warns that it’s just a matter of time before the poor condition of the tracks causes a major accident. Another pressing problem is the “shameful” state of the terminal, Enrique says. The side of the building that leads to the platform is the most dangerous: the eaves, which have been losing tiles and beams, are supported by thin wooden supports, rotted by the rain. The stench, plague of insects and pollution are also the ’daily bread’, he adds.
Now, after the accident – which stoked the concerns of railway workers as well as passengers – Enrique and his colleagues demand urgent maintenance of the structure and a solution to the mountains of garbage that, day by day, accumulate in front of the station. “The Communal Services do not have the means of transport, nor do they have enough workers to clean the solid waste found on the railroad tracks, which makes the train pass through actual landfills, with the consequent danger that this entails.”
On the other hand, “there are resources to militarize the station,” Enrique says. After some strange derailments that occurred in 2019 in several parts of the Island, for which several people were sanctioned, the authorities established a base of the Youth Labor Army (EJT) near the Manzanillo station.
The presence of the military near the tracks bothers workers such as Enrique, who despairs in the face of the unstoppable degradation of the railway infrastructure, in contrast to the neatness of the monument dedicated to the Communist militant Jesús Menéndez Larrondo, a sugar union leader, killed in 1948 at the Manzanillo station.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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