Slow Train to Guantanamo (8 page)

The town of Hershey is not called that any more of course. Since 1960 it has been called Camilo Cienfuegos, after one of Castro’s comrades, a romantic figure to rival Che who died in mysterious circumstances on the eve of the revolution. But the station is still called Hershey, and despite five decades of economic hardship, still shares certain similarities in design with old pictures I have seen of its sister municipality: Hershey Chocolate Town in Pennsylvania.

This is obviously not Pennsylvania, but the municipality of Santa Cruz del Norte in the province of La Habana (Havana). For a start, the Pennsylvania town does not have views of the Santa Cruz river and the Caribbean sparkling in the distance. On the other hand nor does the Pennsylvania town have a humongous derelict sugar mill dominating the
entire landscape with its decrepitude, and while Hershey Chocolate Town advertises itself as ‘the sweetest place on Earth’, with a theme park bolted on to the original model town, the Cuban equivalent is doing its best to stave off the twin threats of rust and dereliction. Decay happens fast in these latitudes.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the Castros have taken the country’s once dominant sugar industry on a roller coaster of development and neglect all of their own, centrally planned and ignoring the supply and demand situation on the world’s markets. Currently the state of the industry is at the unfortunate bottom of a dip. The Hershey mill closed in 2002. The fact that sugar is once again becoming a valuable cash crop is something Cuba’s economic planners may only get round to recognizing when it is again on the wane.

Hershey, the town, still has its lines of little bungalows, though few have more than flaking remnants of the original regulation green paint, but the overall impression is one of stagnant tropical decay. The train crawls slowly past the ruins of the sugar mill where the only sign of life is a man in his underpants and singlet prodding a cow with a wooden switch to stop it wandering onto the tracks.

This being the centre point of the line, though, the tracks are double and we pass for the first time – not least because this is the first time it has been possible – our sister train coming in the opposite direction. It looks, if possible, marginally more decrepit than ours.

The stop is about 15 minutes which means that there is also the possibility of taking on board some refreshment. Local entrepreneurs clamber on board to offer whatever they have managed to get hold of for sale. It is not exactly a cornucopia of delights but necessity means most of it is home made. The main offerings are cheese rolls and bottles of mango juice, hand-pressed I am assured. To me it is
almost embarrassing that they are sold so cheaply. A half-litre plastic bottle of fresh, thick mango juice, chilled in a bucket of ice, costs one peso. One national peso: about the equivalent of four US cents. And the smallest note I have is a 10, in itself worth barely 30 British pence. But it is gratefully accepted and I find myself waiting patiently for the smaller notes. I could say, ‘keep the change’, as any of my US relatives might have done, but I am British and that would be making a scene. Ordinary Cubans not involved with the tourist industry know that foreigners are a lot richer, but they have no real idea how much richer. And even those who do, prefer not to have their noses rubbed in it.

We also change conductors and drivers here, which makes a lot of sense, as with only a couple of trains a day that is the only way to make sure they can get home. There is also an invasion of schoolkids, by today’s sloppy British standards, remarkably neat and tidy in their white shirts and maroon skirts or shorts, but every bit as noisy as their contemporaries anywhere, pushing and shouting. The conductor makes a point of herding them to the back of the carriage, not least to get them away from the gaping open side doors.

The landscape meanwhile has lurched back to tropical semi-jungle with trees dripping mangos. I understand why the fruit juice is so cheap. Again and again we cross small dirt-track roads without level crossings. Coming in to the halt at Mena, a hamlet of only a few dozen shacks, the driver is forced to blow his horn repeatedly before a blue open-topped truck with a family of four in the back notices us and manages to screech to a halt. It would appear at least that the railway has priority, though I am not sure why, given that pulling out of Hershey we were overtaken by a boy eagerly whipping on his horse-pulled cart.

The new conductor, a rather dapper sallow-skinned Hispanic type in smart brown slacks, a clean white shirt with
a fine blue stripe (I am impressed how well those Cubans who have decent clothes look after them) and a stylish pair of thin-rimmed spectacles comes over for a chat. He has already identified me as a gringo of some description and is delighted when I tell him I come from Britain. He has a cousin in London, he says. The drunk Miguel has a son in Norway. For a country which officially makes emigration difficult for its citizens, I am increasingly surprised to find how many Cubans have relatives abroad.

He is interested in my guidebook, a functional list of the main sites and history. ‘May I see?’ he asks politely. I hand it over only slightly reluctantly because I have just found that the section on the Hershey train says cows have been known to stray onto the track and get killed. I am afraid he may find this unacceptably patronizing.

Inevitably his eyes go straight to that line, and he looks up at me with a serious expression in which I fear I can see reproachfulness, and says without a trace of irony: ‘It is true. This train kills many cows. Sometimes people get out with their knives.’

I am just restraining the urge to burst out laughing at this ramshackle antique electric train being turned into a mobile butchery, when the driver up front issues a curse.

‘Come,’ says my new friend, inviting me up forward into the driver’s cabin, which turns out to be a pretty open invitation, seeing as there isn’t a door. We get there just in time to see the man at the wheel – or rather on the go-stop knob, usually euphemistically referred to as a dead man’s handle – clambering out of the cab with a cross expression on his face.

He is a dark black giant of a man in blue jeans and a tight red T-shirt with ‘Red Pride’ emblazoned on the back in white letters, which turns out to refer to an (US) American football team rather than being a declaration of faith in
communism. And the reason he was cursing is that we have come to a junction in the tracks where there is a set of points that once might have directed the train onto a spur line, in the days when it had spur lines. It seems the points are not pointing in the right direction and he has to get out and see to them.

But it is not that which has me gawping and the conductor next to me slapping me on the back and saying, ‘I told you so’. Up ahead, just next to the points, not actually on the tracks but right next to them as if waiting to see which way the train will go before they attempt to cross, are a couple of scrawny cows. I could hardly have conjured them up more opportunely.

To our big beast of a driver, however, they are just another nuisance to be deal with. He deals with them with a few loud shoos and waves of his arms. Personally, scrawny though they are, I wouldn’t have risked them charging me, but clearly he is a different matter. The cows amble off. He struggles with the points but eventually manages to deal with the matter to his satisfaction and comes back to the cab.

The conductor is still merrily faking disappointment, saying ‘no burger tonight’, when we jerk back into life. For the next half hour or so, at the driver’s invitation I share the cab, watching over his shoulder as we trundle, faster now it must be admitted, maybe 25 m.p.h., through the ever-changing, yet somehow already disappointingly monotonous landscape.

The most surprising thing, I eventually realize, is how little it appears to be productive. There are no obvious fields, or signs of agriculture, although I have little idea what might usefully grow here, nor is there much in the way of cattle, beyond the apparently free range pair we just passed.

But I am retaking my hard wooden seat in the passenger car when we suddenly pull round a corner and the dense
foliage gives way to a beautiful green scrub savannah plain in which a pair of white horses canter past a distant herd of small brown goats. In the ‘real’ world the rest of us inhabit it would be a scene from a television advertisement – for who knows? washing powder, an electricity provider or an instant access bank account – but then maybe I am wrong, and this is the real world.

Before I know it, lost in this exotic rural landscape, we are clattering over a bridge across a river lined with fishing boats and small cabins, then turn right and we are rattling along what I now realize has to be the estuary of the Yumurí river, which means we have arrived. This is Matanzas.

And more to my surprise, we are more or less on time. It has taken over four hours to cover what was by rail probably some 140 kilometres (90 miles), not exactly a TGV, but at least the little ramshackle eighty-year-old railway did what it said on the ticket. And that can’t be all bad.

CHAPTER FIVE

Athens of Cuba

The Hershey railway station is no more in the centre of Matanzas than its counterpart at the other hand is in central Havana. But at least there isn’t a ferry to catch. The station is relatively smart, in that it looks slightly more like a terminus than the dilapidated concrete hut in Casablanca. It sits discreetly in the outer suburbs of Matanzas.

This small but ancient little town is most – if not all – of what the majority of beach package holiday tourists see of real Cuba. That is because it is the mainland gateway to Varadero, a thin peninsula 10 miles long but barely half a mile across with perfect sandy beaches along its northern coast, almost completely taken up with all-inclusive hotels for foreigners only.

For that reason alone Matanzas is one of the most sought-after places, after Havana, for ordinary Cubans to live. Get a flat or just a shack in Matanzas and, if you are very, very lucky – and have the right connections – you just might get a job as a waiter or a chambermaid in Varadero. Which means tips in CUCs and that puts you, in Cuban terms, in the league of the super-rich.

The other way for Cubans to legitimately get their hands on the all-important convertible version of their currency, is to run a
casa particular
. Which is why I am slightly surprised that my host for the night has not, as promised, sent
somebody to pick me up from the station. I have the address, but it is a long enough walk – a mile or two – into the town centre. Especially if I have to do it in the company of Miguel, the drunk from the station in Casablanca who, much to my surprise – and possibly to his – has just managed to stagger off the train in Matanzas. I had imagined him sleeping on it all the way back to Havana.

He looks equally surprised to see me and wants to know where I am staying the night. This appears to be genuine concern. Nonetheless I am not keen to spend the evening in the company of someone barely able to string two sentences together without bursting into a cover version of Phil Collins or Dionne Warwick.

Thankfully a battered Lada turns up and the driver confirms he is from the
casa
I telephoned from Havana, much bemused to find the Hershey train here on time. We leave Miguel the singing drunk and the suburbs behind and are soon swerving to avoid the potholes down the main street of Matanzas. All of a sudden the driver signals right and appears to be about to pull onto the kerb, when a big iron gate opens in front of us and we drive straight off the road into what appears to be somebody’s living-room.

There is a television in one corner and a desk with a computer – complete with ancient cathode ray tube screen, but a computer nonetheless – a bicycle leaning against the facing wall, a fridge, and a large rocking chair in the middle of what’s left of the room after being invaded by the Lada. With Cuba’s warm tropical climate – temperatures never vary by more than a few degrees throughout the year – and the general state of decay of most domestic buildings, the difference between indoors and outdoors isn’t quite as fixed as we imagine it.

For example, this living-room-cum-garage doesn’t have four walls. Beyond the Lada and the rocking chair it opens
out into a courtyard that clearly serves as a dining area with a wrought iron table and chairs, a few heavy-leafed potted plants and a well-used washing line.

The owner, a jolly, portly middle-aged lady with a beaming smile and doing her best to speak impeccable
castellano
greets me and shows me to my room, just on the other side of the courtyard. It has high ceilings, a double bed and a little bathroom with a concertina plastic door. Not exactly the Ritz, but more than adequate. It even has toilet paper.

Once settled, my first task quixotically is to find out how to leave. My experience at Havana’s main station has led me to believe this train travel business may not be as simple as I had imagined. My host is more than happy to ring the station for me, only to return with the news that the next train east leaves at 12.20. In a few hours’ time. Given that I’ve only just got here, that seems a bit soon. What about the next? He passes on the inquiry. Same time. 24 hours later. And in between? Nothing. Not all trains stop at Matanzas, it would appear, even though it is the capital of the province and has a population of nearly 150,000.

There is no alternative therefore to spending only a few hours in Matanzas or the better part of a day and a half. So I’d better make the most of it. Matanzas is home to legendary African
bata
drummers. Unfortunately they don’t seem to be playing anywhere tonight. Or any time soon.

That rather depressing information comes from the waiter in the town’s main bar, a cavernous wood-panelled place called Vigía, with Corinthian columns and rotating ceiling fans. A giant sepia picture behind the bar depicts highlights of the town’s old colonial architecture and asserts the somewhat over-aspirational claim that Matanzas is ‘the Athens of Cuba’.