Days of waiting at Havana’s Villanueva bus terminal to get transportation
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 21 June 2024 — If there is a place in Cuba where the transportation crisis becomes apparent, it is the Villanueva station in Havana. Periodically, and coinciding, as now, with school holidays – in December or the months of June, July and August – the networks and independent media are filled with images of hundreds of people crowded together – adults, children and the elderly – sitting on their suitcases, sleeping on the floor, between the heat and the flies, waiting for days and days to board a vehicle that will take them to the province.
The state-owned Empresa Viajero has designated this terminal for its “waiting list.” Those who arrive here have to sign up on a list and wait for the buses from the National Bus Terminal that have a free seat to pass, either because a ticket has not been sold, or because the traveler has not shown up. Given the scarcity of fuel, the number of vehicles decreases and, therefore, the option of getting a seat. Thus, in Villanueva the crowd gathers, increasingly tired, increasingly sweaty, in a picture typical of Calcutta.
This is what happened this Wednesday, when the line for signing up did not move. Those who were tired of waiting had two alternatives: either leave or travel in uncomfortable trucks without air conditioning at an astronomical cost when compared to bus prices. By bus, the trip to Santiago de Cuba was 6,000 pesos, the trip to Holguín, 5,000 pesos.
A more than considerable difference if one thinks about the prices of official buses: 717 to the first destination and 615 to the second. “We’re on board,” one man lamented to another, who was also waiting and who refused to get on those old, dilapidated vehicles: “Chico, I don’t have any money. And, frankly, if I had it I wouldn’t pay it to leave under those conditions either.”
Between the dep
