CUBAN TRANSITIONS

I have lived in the city of Chicago my entire life and so I have used public transportation as my means to get around the city. After riding trains and buses for a good portion of my life I have realized that public transportation is a space where different peoples from the community are forced to get together and interact. This is why I firmly believe that one of the most important ways someone can understand a city and its residents is by using public transportation.

One of the things that impresses me from cities is how they organize their public transportation. Cities are chaotic and it is interesting to see how and what bus routes are formulated in order to transport people through the chaos. Immediately, when I saw a bus on Havana’s streets I became excited. Buses in Havana are definitely spaces of community because of the amount of people that use them. As we traveled throughout the city, I noticed that at certain times and places there was an immense amount of people waiting to take the bus. This made buses become incredibly packed and full of people to the point where everyone was squeezed against each other. This is a great place to get to know people and the community since it is a tight environment (literally).

Unfortunately, I was not able to get a ride on one of the public buses. Instead, as tourists we had the privilege of being on a coach bus which was airconditioned the entire time and gave us ample amount of space to sit on cushioned seats. These buses are the common method of transportation for tourists who go to Cuba and so if they are trying to understand the country and its people, these buses are not the way to go. These buses do not force tourists to interact with Cubans and instead become a barrier between the real Cuba and a comfortable safe zone for tourists to enjoy their sight seeing far from the locals.

At some points during my trip, our luxury bus would drive next to a public bus and as we sat comfortably in our seats we looked at Cubans squeezed together in the hot bus. This made me feel very uncomfortable because as I sat there in a clear status of privilege I realized that I could not effectively connect and understand a country from this position.

Although, it was harder for me to understand the Cuban community from the luxury of a coach tourist bus, these buses are still places of community. In my bus, our class got to know each other more and enjoy get times together as we drove in the streets of Havana and throughout the rest of country. So the tourist bus created a sense of community between us in the same way that public buses creates community for the Cuban people.