On Wednesday the newly elected Cuban National Assembly will have to chose the next President of the island.

Raul Castro Ruz, who succeeded his brother, Commander in Chief of the Revolution Fidel Castro, ten years ago, will step down, at the end of his second mandate. This he had said he would do, and this he is doing.

It is been expected that his deputy, Miguel Diaz Canel (from Santa Clara) will be elected President, while Raul Castro will remain as First Secretary of the Communist Party, the ruling party according to the Constitution.

Over 600 deputies will meet on Wednesday and Thursday in what certainly is a historic Parliament Session, which will mark the transition to the new generation.

Waiting for the assembly, we offer a peculiar tour on one of the island’s buses, a journey through the informal economy and the thousands ways of getting around problems due to the US embargo and shortages related to the bureaucracy in the island. The same bureaucracy Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had identified as the main obstacle to the full development of the Revolution.  

Location: Boyeros overpass.

One hot Friday morning like so many.

Next stop: Bejucal.

The P12 will do. The P16 as well.

The Ps, the mythical guaguas, the incredibly, and you-have-to-see-it-to believe-it, packed buses crossing Havana north-south and east-west.

Getting on a P is an adventure in itself: peso in hand, the crowd waiting on the curb first of all has to establish whether the bus driver would stop before, on (almost never), or after the official stop. It’s a quick guess, a gamble, a matter of seconds and you could be stranded, waiting on the curb for the next guagua. It’s a difficult guess as well as drivers don’t slow down ‘til they are really just a few meters from the spot they have chosen for their unloading and loading of  the bus.

Like a cattle truck the driver has a strategy. First: stopping where few people expect, this has the advantage of both allowing him to empty the bus somewhat (people get off, although complaining between their teeth because inevitably they did not stop where they actually wanted, but quite a few meters before or after) and to refill it with the lucky ones who guessed his intentions and run, head down, to the improvised stop. Getting actually on the guagua is another enterprise as literally everyone tries to get on first and no matter how full the bus is, they have to get on! Like an assault on the mail train, here are people crawling over those already in, or hanging from the door. The driver, impassible, keeps saying “come on, move on a bit, one more step, the bus is empty”!

Wow! You are on. No matter how but you are on. Off you go. Destination: Bejucal.

A short parenthesis: the fare for any journey within the city is actually 40 cents of a Cuban peso (CUP), but... nobody has change so you pay 1 peso – two and a half journey fares that is – and the driver keeps it. To avoid any complaint and prevent any unpleasant discussion a printed note stuck on the bus (where normally you find the rules for ticket and fares) informs you that “the journey’s fare is still 40 cents, but the driver has the right to keep the change”. Matter closed. It might seem a mean remark to make: one CUP is actually 1 cent of a euro. But do some calculations: there are on average 120 passengers on a guagua at every journey from stop to stop, multiply that by the length of the route: let’s say some 500 people every route. The driver keeps the change, so 60 cents CUP every passenger, 300 CUP every route, or some 13 CUC, the other currency, the currency for tourists as it was called, equivalent to 1 US dollar (exchange rate: 1 CUC for 25 CUP). If a driver makes 6 journeys a day, he gets 78 CUC a day on top of, of course,  his salary.

Food for thought. Closed parenthesis. 

We are on the guagua. No chance to sit, of course.  Indeed you don’t even need to hold on to the iron bar because you just float among the crowd. The movements of the people and their concentration makes it impossible to fall. Of course someone is complaining about the promiscuous environment. Some woman gave a dirty look at a man, clearly too close to her ass. Another one comments on the scents filling the bus... come on missus: we could hardly smell like roses in this heat!

We are heading north of the city, and the outskirts offer a landscape of factories, or rather a cemetery of factories. Many of the factories indeed are shut, skeletons, captivating silhouettes standing against the blue and clear sky. Murals inform us that the “Revolution is alive and kicking” and that the “CDR are standing beside Fidel and Raul”. And that “Che lives”.

Once you accommodate yourself between bodies, the journey is pleasant. The always present music  gently offered by the driver fills the guagua: depending on the taste of the driver, you could travel with a horrible and hammering reggaeton soundtrack, or classical ‘80s themes, most times it is a mix of the present latin sound. Relaxed after the stormy assault to get on the bus, people of all ages are singing along in loud voices. They know all the songs. Just to be clear: all of them know all the songs of this special playlist. Old women, old men, young students, children, even toddlers move along to the gripping rhythm of samba or reaggeton.

We arrived in Santiago de Las Vegas, a lively and coloured town, with a crowded food market selling meat, fruits, vegetables. Yuca, malanga, boniato y pepino... sings trovador Ray Fernandez in one of his profoundly cuban songs. They are the inevitable ingredients of the Cuban diet: yuca, malanga and boniato are tubers. The pepino is the cucumber, which together with tomatoes – when you can find them – constitute the basis of a good fresh salad. Add to this rice, in industrial quantities and of course the beans (black mostly, but brown and occasionally white as well) and you have the basic diet of every cuban family. As far as “protein” (as people say here) goes, well you have guaranteed eggs (guaranteed by the libreta, that is, the book of goods offered monthly at a very very low price by the revolutionary government and which is the right of all citizens) and occasionally chicken. More difficult to obtain is beef. Almost impossible to get, lamb. In the bodega (the state shops delivering the libreta’s goods) you get “pollo por pescado”, chicken for fish, as the fish is contemplated by the libreta but it is not always – not to say, almost never – available.

Cubans have invented their own vocabulary: they are unique not just because they actually won a revolution and continue to live under a revolutionary government (with all its pros and cons) but also because they live under a bloqueo, an economic embargo, for almost 60 years and this has meant people had to invent how to go about every aspect of their daily lives. So in this unique vocabulary, a verb like “resolver” is crucial to try to understand what is going on. Perhaps the best translation in english would be to “sort out”, meaning that you have to sort out your life on a daily basis through stratagems and a considerable degree of imagination and creativity. But to make all this clear, let’s get off in Bejucal, which was our original destination.

In reality, the guagua leaves you in Santiago and from there you have to take a carro, one of those old American cars operating as collective taxies, (Caribbean dolmus,) taking you almost everywhere for 10 or 20 CUP.  The bloqueo is clearly visible and almost tangible in those almendrones (another name for these old American cars): indeed apart from their ‘skeletons’ (which allow you to clearly recognize a Cadillac, a Limousine etc) the rest of the car is such a patchwork of iron that you ask yourself how is it actually moving.

But it is moving. “Please, pull the door gently, you don’t want to destroy my car, do you?”. Except when you just learn to do that, the next driver says to you: “What? Scared the door will bite you ? Pull hard, please!” And getting off, should you pull the handle up? No, clearly down! Wrong, you open the door from the outside, or you open it with the window handle!

Bejucal is sunny and crowded. A little town of some 20 thousand inhabitants, founded in 1874, but well known as the terminus for the first railroad built in Cuba and Latin America in 1831.

Developed around two squares, the town is known because in a mausoleum just outside, the remains of General Antonio Maceo (hero of the struggle for Cuban independence) are buried.

The city is also famous for its winter charangas, the traditional carnivals which take place every December.

People are busy... queuing. “Who is last?” is the ever-present question. Outside the food shop, outside the electrical shop, outside the bakery, outside the telephone office... A friend inform us she has resuelto (sort out) the lunch for today: a neighbour sold her a bit of corn and the friend coming from Quivican has brought malanga and yuca. Lunch sorted, we could go on to see the middle aged lady guaranteeing that the neighbourhood is connected to the world through the internet. She has an internet connection in the house, and set up a small technology corner in her hall. A small desk houses a PC, a modem and an external hard disk. The PC, she explains, is almost always on, every 10-15 minutes she connects to the Net to download the incoming emails on to outlook express. Hundreds of people communicate using the lady’s email address. For one CUP (same as the guagua) you can receive an email and send your answer. There is always a small crowd chatting at any one time during the day. Neighbours come to send and read their mail, but also for a little healthy gossip about this and that...

Of course nothing in this island is straightforward, so for those who pay the one CUP for the service provided by the failed hacker (her definition) there are those who made a different deal and have resuelto in a different way: the failed hacker can use their phone and they can send and receive emails for free. Creativity, imagination... that is Cuba.

As meeting ends is a hard job, the lady also sells clothes from time to time. A relative of hers, living in Miami, brings her stuff – t-shirts, shorts, jeans – and she sells them to neighbours. One of the many businesses making up the variegated and informal economy of the island, although after the economic reform impulsed by President Raul Castro, the private sector has its own space.

The young lady next door to the failed hacker makes and sells croquettes. Likewise another woman in her forties paints nails in her house. And another one offers hairdressing services. Her husband repairs electrical appliances. And so on, use your imagination. Yes, you can find this and that, to the infinite and beyond!

What is not in the shops, with patience and a bit of luck you can find through the informal economy.  Indeed most times what is not in the shops has been bought (the correct verb is desviar, deflect, deviate) by a class of wholesalers who then resell the goods (a little dearer than in the shop, they have to make a profit) in the streets, on the black market. Informal economy, Caribbean style. 

A special mention goes to the old man on the P16 bus stop (well, next to it) around Avenida de los Presidentes: he has a small box hanging from his neck. Inside, hundreds in small change. Indeed: all 20 cents coins. He “changes” one CUP for you: you give him the note and he gives you 80 cents, or two bus fares. In other words, you pay 20 cents and you can get 2 bus journey instead of the one (remember ? The driver doesn’t give you change when you paid with one CUP)!