Monday, August 03, 2009

Highway A Cross Section Of Cuba

Highway A Cross Section Of Cuba
by Jason Beaubien
August 2, 2009

I had no intention of driving across Cuba. I had a one-week visa, and I
didn't want to spend much of that time in a car. But in Cuba, sometimes
what you want, what you counted on, what you demand isn't available.

The Spanish phrase no hay, meaning "there's no fill-in-the-blank," was a
constant refrain on this trip.

No hay flights.

No hay rental cars.

No hay vegetables.

No hay fruit.

I flew into Havana and figured I'd catch a flight to the east of the
island for the annual July 26 speech being delivered by President Raul
Castro. But there were no flights and no bus seats left. So I decided to
do the American thing and drive.

Except the rental car agencies had a shortage of road-worthy vehicles.

I ended up in a filthy Samsung sedan for more than a $100 a day. The
trunk had been taped shut with packing tape, and the brakes squeaked
horribly — but at least it ran.

I traveled to Holguin — the home province of the Castro brothers — with
Nick Miroff, a reporter from GlobalPost. He brought an MP3 player loaded
with Cuban music.

We rolled out of Havana onto Cuba's main highway, the Autopista
Nacional, listening to Frank Delgado. The eight lanes of tarmac at times
were completely empty — a testament to the transportation crisis facing
the island.

At on-ramps and under the shade of bridges, hitchhikers frantically wave
money at passing cars trying to get them to stop.

We picked up a woman, her grandson and two big bags of fruit. They'd
been waiting in the sun for six and a half hours. A teenage girl was
traveling by herself to the beach to escape her strict revolutionary
father. She told us tales of Florida uncles who arrive each year bearing
designer jeans and political arguments over the communist regime.

A crane operator said he dreams of emigrating to the Dominican Republic
where he's heard he could earn 70 U.S. cents an hour.

In Cuba's state-controlled, Marxist economy, the black market is everywhere.

Along the highway, men jumped out of the bushes clasping strings of
onions and garlic, and thrusting plates of cheese at our car.

One cheese vendor sported a giant pair of binoculars around his neck to
watch for police. Other merchants who emerged from the underbrush were
selling avocados, mangoes and mameys.

About halfway across the island, the eight lanes of the National Highway
converge down to just two. What was a wide open freeway quickly clogs
with horse-drawn carts, bicyclists and tractors.

While gasoline is available, it's expensive — more than $4 a gallon.
This is a staggering sum for people who officially earn only $20 a month.

The roads are so empty in parts of the Camaguey Province that rice
farmers use the smooth surface of the highway to dry their crops. They
then scoop it into grain bags.

In Cuba, there's a sharp contrast between the state and the people.
Things associated with the state are bureaucratic and often don't work.
In one state-run restaurant that had run out of cheese, the waitress
snapped at us, "No, you can't have the Sandwich Cubano without cheese;
that's not authorized." But away from their official jobs, Cubans tend
to be warm, generous and chatty.

One moment we were being interrogated by a pair of stern police officers
outside a defunct sugar mill. Ten minutes later, we were laughing with a
woman who sells mango milkshakes in a nearby shack.

In the heavy, hot tropical air, the fruit concoctions slide down your
throat, as welcome as the late afternoon breeze. And then we get back on
the Cuban highway.

Highway A Cross Section Of Cuba : NPR (2 August 2009)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111474021&ft=1&f=1004

No comments: