Slow Train to Guantanamo, page 20
The carriages on this train are unquestioningly Chinese, to match the locomotive, with bright red plastic seats. But this is a train clearly more suited to crossing the dusty plains of Tibet or northern China than dealing with the tropical humidity of Cuba. For a start, this is the first train – the first vehicle of any sort – I have been on which has windows that don’t open. Several of the others – trains, cars, buses – didn’t necessarily have windows at all, but this has a full set. And, apart from a few small vents on every other row of seats, they don’t open.
They aren’t supposed to, because from the roof of each carriage a bulky air conditioning unit is suspended. Which would be all well and good if any of them actually worked. They don’t. The result is an atmosphere more akin to a sauna than a train carriage and an ever more exotic, not to say risqué, attitude towards clothing. Almost everyone on the train under forty – and quite a few above – are dressed in a style I can only describe as rainbow-metal-punk. T-shirts are bright red, bright yellow or purple, invariably printed with some outlandish usually motorbike or rock band-branded logo, often, particularly but not exclusively on the girls, picked out in silver glitter. Jeans, whole or cut-off, are skin-tight – it is one of those accidental blessings that rationing and the Cuban inattention to food means there aren’t many fat people, though those there are wear the same stuff – while belts, particularly the blokes’, are big, brash metal-buckled affairs with the more studs the better.
But without air conditioning or open windows, absolutely every one of us is bathed in sweat. So when we come to a halt at a village of sorts and vendors with iced mango juice and cold water come on board, they are stormed and sold out within seconds. I opt for the water. I’m not sure that thick mango juice, however cold, would make its way down my throat. I could do with something to eat too, but all there is on offer is thick slabs of something vaguely green and definitely gelatinous which I’m told is guava jam. I decide to pass.
The village where we have stopped – little more than a few tin-roofed shacks – is called Mir, which has to be another of those throwbacks to the old alliance with Moscow. Mir is Russian for both ‘the world’ and ‘peace’ – a dual meaning which is based deep in the roots of Orthodox theology – but was mostly used during the Soviet period in the expression ‘mir y druzhba’ – peace and friendship – the all but ubiquitous politically correct toast when representatives of different nationalities gathered together.
There is then a 20 minute delay because the unimaginable has happened: a group of ticket inspectors has joined the train. This ought to seem reasonable enough, although in most other countries they would travel with the train for a stop or two rather than halt it to carry out their checks. But somehow here it seems peculiarly pointless; apart from me, almost everybody on the train has paid virtually nothing for their tickets. I have to pinch myself to remember that it is not actually nothing, and that Cuban wages are extremely low. But even in that scheme of things the ordinary Cuban – if he or she can get a ticket at all, which is mostly down to the incompetency of the bureaucracy – can travel the entire 1200-kilometre (750 miles) length of the island for little more than the price of a can of beer. It is one more example of how an economy in the absence of market forces totally loses track of its own purpose and effectively ceases to be an economy at all in any meaningful sense of the word. There is no way in which these ticket collectors can be earning the cost of their salary, which is any case paid by the government, which not only pays to run the railway but pays the salaries of everybody (except me!) travelling on it. The whole thing is one never-ending circle which serves only to achieve a semblance of full employment. It reminds me of the little old ladies who used to sit at the bottom of every escalator on the Moscow metro for no other purpose than, in the event of an escalator failing, to tell people they would have to walk.
The only obvious purpose the ticket collectors are serving is to delay our journey. In fact, they have delayed it so much that we now have to back into a siding in order to let a goods train pass. The heat is rising and so is the volume of chatter, a now incessant cacophony of gesticulating, improvised fan waving, chaos. For a country with one of the highest literacy rates not just in the Caribbean but the entire world (98 per cent), almost nobody has brought a book or newspaper to read. It’s shocking but not really surprising. Before the revolution in 1959 some 22 per cent of Cubans were illiterate, and 60 per cent (the rural population) only semi-literate. Cuba’s communist regime has seen to it that virtually every man, woman and child can read and write, but it has also seen to it that there are limitations on what people dare write and even stricter limitations on what there is available to read. The result that there is almost nothing published that anybody wants to read.
Eventually we start moving again, after a fashion: stopping, starting, stopping. Sometimes violently. It feels like being trapped in a wheelie case being dragged upstairs. At one stage nearly everyone facing forwards is shunted to the edge of their seats. Then we stop again, for good, it seems. A glance out the window reveals that this is one of the few sections of the line where the track is double. We are almost certainly waiting for another freight train to pass. People are hot, tired. Some of them have come non-stop, if you can use that word in Cuba, from Havana and been on this train for more than 18 hours already.
Suddenly a more than lively discussion breaks out between two young men in the centre aisle. An earnest-looking young man with short curly hair and glasses is arguing loudly with a guy in baseball cap and sleeveless vest across from him. Bizarrely it seems the argument grew out of a discussion about blood transfusions, but has developed into a wider debate about religion and even politics, about the poor state of services generally, about how people have a right to expect more. The earnest young man is running down the list of things that people in capitalist countries can do that are illegal in Cuba, from buying and selling houses8 to employing staff, things that would stimulate the economy, make things work properly. And the argument is spreading, taking in the whole carriage. This is genuine popular, political debate: if anyone in office was listening to them (in the sense of paying attention rather than identifying dissent) it would be democracy. Far from everyone is for change, but the remarkable thing is that this sort of debate happening at all, and nobody seems to be scared of the consequences. Not one person is looking around in terror for the Stasi or KGB man. Cuba may have its share of jailed political dissidents but it has no secret police in the same sense as the old East European communist states. The government relies on the local Committees for the Defence of the Revolution to report any persistent dissent in a neighbourhood, while it is the responsibility of the Interior Ministry to prevent political assemblies – which is precisely what this almost looks like turning into.
Almost. Then there is a loud rumble as indeed a freight train passes us and we start moving again and people quieten down. It occurs to me that this is why dictatorships so famously pay attention to getting the trains to run on time. There is no greater way to start a revolution than by massing a load of people together for hours on end and then deliberately frustrating them.
Slowly, excruciatingly, we inch our way along towards a stop labelled, improbably, Costa Rica. I notice a strange, sweet, almost putrid smell in the air and put it down to the presence outside of some rubbish tip until I notice with a shock that the woman two seats away is changing a baby’s nappy on her lap. She finishes and flings the dirty nappy out the window. Nice.
On an island where almost every modern convenience is scarce, everybody uses disposable nappies. It is one of those quirks of what passes for Cuba’s economy. A bit like the glut of eco-friendly light bulbs. But then even in the old Soviet empire the availability of everyday commodities under communism lurched between feast or famine. And you never knew which was coming next.
Costa Rica is the end of the line for the earnest young man in glasses, who is getting up and struggling with a mountain of luggage. I notice one large item is wrapped in the bright orange bubble wrap I spotted in the window of El Telégrafo, the Harrods of Las Tunas. I wonder which of the exotic items offered he might have bought: a shovel perhaps, or the crockery, maybe a machete or two to arm the intellectual shock troops of the new revolution. But no, and I can hardly suppress a giggle as, sweating and panting, he manoeuvres his purchase towards the door and I realize that it is, with the inevitability of divine intervention, the kitchen sink.
As the train pulls out of Costa Rica there is a collective sigh of relief mingled with despair: we’re on our way again, but for how long? In the sweltering sauna of this train carriage designed for the Chinese steppes, necessity has become the mother of invention with bits of cardboard to the rescue, mostly to be used as makeshift fans. Those lucky enough to be seated near the small vents have wedged strips of cardboard into them to deflect as much air as possible into the train. Which might work better if we were moving at any speed.
On the other hand too much speed might not be advisable as the train is now canting at perilous angles as we round bends. Guantánamo really is the end of the line. At San Luis, I firmly decide not to get off the train and change for Santiago. It looks like little more than a truck stop with an industrial plant in the background and an endless train of rusting oil tankers parked in a siding. Given that waiting for the next train could be a matter of days if not hours, I stick with the one I’m on. At least this way I can be sure of getting to Guantánamo. I’m still not sure about getting back (though that’s more than some residents of Guantánamo can say – the ones that live in the camp on the bay, beyond Cuban jurisdiction).
By now it is 4.30 in the afternoon and I have been on this hot, sticky Chinese train with its red plastic seats for more than seven hours, in which time we have covered a distance of just over 250 kilometres (150 miles). The Flying Scotsman it is not. Then suddenly there is a screech of brakes and we crunch to a halt, half-way over a mainly wooden bridge. It sounds as if we have run over an animal, a goat maybe or a dog, though I can hardly imagine an animal stupid enough or indeed slow enough not to have got out of the way.
Nobody on board looks very happy, least of all those whose part of the carriage is still on the rickety-looking bridge. Rather than try to get the whole of the train across, we stay stopped. In fact, a number of people including what looks like the driver have climbed down to the tracks. A man in combat trousers and a navy vest is staring disconsolately under the train from where there are sporadic gushes of steam. I join most of the other passengers – very noticeably all of those whose part of the carriage is still on the bridge – by clambering down onto the grass and wandering around aimlessly looking for some sign of a squashed animal. But there is nothing to be seen. No blood on the tracks nor maimed carcass on the wooden struts of the bridge or in the fast flowing white water gushing by below.
It is quite clear from the expression on the face of the man in the navy vest and from the piece of perished rubber he his holding in his hand that some form of piping has either failed or been broken. There’s a lot of head-scratching going on. A bloke in overalls appears to be the engineer, but he doesn’t exactly have much in the way of tools: just a spanner and some rope. What exactly it is that has broken and how important it is to our chances of continuing to Guantánamo, which can scarcely be more than a few dozen kilometres away, I have no idea. Eventually, however, people are urged to get back on board. After a lot of spanner clanging and some general bodging it would appear the mechanic has done something – possibly used the bit of rope to tie things back together – to let us limp on far enough to get the rear of the train clear of the bridge.
Ahead on the left is what appears to be a dilapidated barracks with a dirty white colonnade, pale green walls and a rusted tin roof. Closer inspection reveals it to be Empresa Comercial Mixta El Salvador 117 Carretera Larga, in other words the local excuse for a supermarket situated at the village of El Salvador at kilometre 117 mark on the main road. We stop for a while, presumably while the engineer nips in to see if they have any stocks of rubber ducting which, based on the window display of El Telégrafo back in in Las Tunas, has to be at best an outside possibility.
One way or another 15 minutes later we are off again at a – relatively – cracking pace, hitting at least 50 k.p.h. (30 m.p.h.) to gain momentum to crawl up the sides of the lush green hills and down the other side into a countryside far more benevolent than the harsh dry savannah. We pass a village with a team of teenage lads kicking a football around between two sets of rusty goal posts (at least here it is the global rather than US version of the game), with a pair of oxen freely grazing in what ought to be the pitch and a man in full gaucho-style equestrian rig galloping to keep pace with the train, waving a lasso in the air. He’s applauded by a farmer sat atop an ancient tractor with a big straw hat to shade his eyes, a few kids about seven or eight years old in crimson school uniforms wandering home and a young woman in cut-off jeans and a black satin bikini top, not exactly the typical country girl, the guajira Guantanamera.
But all of a sudden the train whistles, as if to express the relief and exuberance of its passengers. As far as I am concerned Santiago will have to wait. For the moment I’ve got here, to the end of the line. Guantánamo. And a pretty grim place it looks, too.
8. Cubans were finally given the right to by and sell property for the first time since the revolution early in 2012.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The City (not quite) by the Bay
My first sight of a town that became famous around the world for a song about a pretty girl before it became synonymous with a prison camp is of something rare in Cuba: a traffic jam.
There are road works outside the station and a vast array of taxis, private cars acting as taxis, hustlers offering rooms, people come to meet people and bicitaxis circling in their hundreds getting in everybody’s way and shouting at passengers, looking for fares. The arrival of the train from Havana, it would seem, is something of a big event: hardly surprising, as there is only one every third day. More or less. Usually less, I suspect.
I wouldn’t mind so much if the bicitaxi men actually knew their way around their own city. The one I light on has no idea how to find the casa particular I’ve booked even though I have the address and know it’s little more than a kilometre from the station. Forty minutes after clambering into his rear seat – at least there is one – he’s still pedalling round in circles. At first I think it must be my pronunciation of the address, but even when I show it to him written down, we spend so long circling that eventually I work out where it has to be and direct him there. I suspect he’s done it just to push the fare up, but there isn’t a meter on a bicitaxi and when he charges me 2 CUC I can hardly blow a fuse, even though I know that its probably four times what he’d have got from a local paying in pesos. I’m just glad to get out of the heat, noise and dirt.
The casa itself is more like a full-time boarding house than any of the others I’ve stayed at. There are a varied and random selection of thickset black guys who look like they might be retired or aspiring boxers lounging around on chairs by the usual wrought iron gate. One of them lets me in, takes me upstairs to a sitting-room with more boxing types on the sofa watching television and shows me my room – improbably lacy and oddly reminiscent of a bedroom from a 1960s American television programme (remember I Love Lucy?). He tells me Lissett, the landlady, will be back later and suggests I check out the roof garden, which turns out to be a few plastic chairs with the landlady’s washing hanging on a line above them.
I could do with falling flat out on the bed but there’s a problem: I’m starving. I wish I’d had some of the guava jam stuff on the train. Luckily – I think – I’m fairly close to the town centre. Not that it’s particularly impressive. Guantánamo itself is a rather dull provincial town, not even as pretty as the supposedly unloved Las Tunas.
Despite being – for all the wrong reasons, and none of them to do with the current Cuban regime – one of the most notorious names in the world, Guantánamo’s history is relatively brief, even in New World terms. Christopher Columbus himself sailed into the now infamous bay in on one of his follow-up voyages to the New World in 1494 but decided not to hang about. The British stuck their noses in during the mid-eighteenth century Anglo–Spanish War of Jenkins’s Ear – so charmingly named because a Spanish customs vessel intercepted a British merchant ship and cut off the ear of its captain Robert Jenkins to teach the British a lesson. The British changed the original Taino Indian name of Guantánamo to Cumberland Bay. But by the 1790s, a second garrison had succumbed to yellow fever, and they decided it just wasn’t worth the human cost and abandoned it.
Stuck at the far end of the island – the only settlement beyond is beautiful, exotic Baracoa and that wasn’t accessible at all by land until Castro blasted a motorway through the mountains in 1964 – Guantánamo wasn’t founded until 1819. Even then it wasn’t Cubans who settled here. The original founding fathers were French plantation owners evicted from neighbouring Haïti, which is one of the explanations for the local accent which even more than in the rest of Cuba ignores the letter ‘s’ at the end of words, and rises with a French lilt towards the end of sentences. The original name was Santa Catalina del Saltadero del Guaso. It soon began to expand – the present population sprawled along the three rivers, the Guaso, Jaibo and Bano is a quarter of a million – and in 1843 changed its name to the one known worldwide today. But we will get to that shortly.
My first priority is to find a bank and change some more of the euros I have secreted in a money belt. By the time I find one it is, of course, closed, but as usual there’s a character loitering by the corner who’s more than willing to change a couple of €10 notes into pesos. Pesos, not CUCs. At least he is changing them at the going rate of 25 to 1 and not trying the scam of foisting nacional pesos on me at the CUC rate. Guantánamo town is not exactly on the main tourist trail. Down here, at the end of the line, CUCs, so familiar on the streets of Havana, are a relative rarity, and I reckon I can live on the same currency most natives have to make do with.
