4 legs replacing 4 wheels in rural Cuba

4 legs replacing 4 wheels in rural Cuba

With a lack of cars, buggies rule the road

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
The Washington Post
Posted October 29 2006

CASILDA, Cuba · Tiny flames jump and sputter in the night, suspended
above the road as if held by an invisible wand.

The uninitiated must pull up close on these unlit roads to realize the
flames are leaping from small buckets that dangle from wires on the back
of horse-drawn buggies.

In the near absence of cars, these buggies serve as taxis and local
buses in rural areas of Cuba, and the flaming buckets function as
homemade taillights.

Countless chroniclers of Cuba have observed that the vintage American
cars in Havana -- the fabulous, hulking Buicks and finned Chryslers --
make the capital feel like a city frozen in the 1950s.

But outside Havana, in the vast expanse of the Caribbean's largest
island, the ambience often leans more toward the 1850s.

The roads are there. It's just that the cars are not.

In the 41/2 decades since Fidel Castro's 1959 victory, small-town Cubans
have watched the cars that once lined their avenues cough and gasp and
eventually die, not to be replaced.

What remains are mostly vehicles that Castro's government considers
essential to the country's development -- heavy trucks to haul workers
and equipment to state-run farms, and tractors to till the fields and
drag bundles of cut sugar cane.

Transportation is a huge problem throughout the island, even in Havana,
where many of the vehicles still on the road are connected to state-run
tourism or government activities.

Hitchhikers are everywhere, and people wait hours to ride oversize buses
that seem to break down as often as they run.

Castro's supporters blame the U.S. trade embargo for the transportation
woes and especially for the dearth of personal cars.

Cuba makes no cars of its own. Non-U.S. automakers that might normally
be eager to ship vehicles and replacement parts to the island are
hampered because of U.S. trade rules.

Ships are prohibited from entering U.S. ports for six months after
making deliveries to Cuba, effectively blocking access for those
companies to the world's largest market.

Castro's critics view the situation differently, blaming the failings of
Cuba's economic policies after years of communist rule.

The government's weak financial position makes it impossible for it to
place large enough orders to overcome the limitations created by the
trade embargo.

Either way, the result is that Irela Estela, a dermatologist who might
have glided home in a sleek European sedan in another country, waited
under the shade of a tree one recent afternoon for the sound of horses'
hooves.

Estela, who says she is "thirty-something," is among the growing number
of Cubans who were born after Castro's revolution 47 years ago and know
no other Cuba.

Like so many of her contemporaries, she has never owned a car, and she
seldom rides in one.

Up the street, a brown nag approached.

The nag plodded so slowly that a youth on a bicycle sped past. Estela
waited, arms crossed, for the sleepy-eyed horse. Its name, curiously,
was Speedy.

The 11/4-mile ride to Casilda from Trinidad, a beautifully preserved
colonial-era town about five hours southeast of Havana by car, costs
Estela about 5 cents. It's not much, but the government pays her only
about $30 a month for her work, treating the sunburns and bug bites that
afflict European and Canadian tourists at nearby beach resorts.

Speedy seldom hauls the tourists. His owner, a part-time pig farmer
named Ernesto Vuelta Ortega, sighs when he sees tourists whiz past on
chauffeur-driven scooters covered by bright yellow, egg-shaped shells.

The scooter ride from the beach into town costs almost $5 -- a pittance
for vacationers but a fortune for the average Cuban.

"Yes, that's for the rich folks," Vuelta Ortega said.


http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/caribbean/sfl-hcubacars29oct29,0,628163.story?coll=sfla-news-caribbean