Why hitchhiking is huge in Cuba | Hacker News Reader

Why hitchhiking is huge in Cuba

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This is factual wrong on so many levels.

Hitchhiking in the sense of getting into a private car that just happens to go the same directions and has no commercial interest is NOT a thing in Cuba, are at least not the norm. Not many people own their own car in Cuba and if they do, they use them mostly commercially.

What they are probably referring too are cooperative taxis. Those are cars or smaller buses that are driving a certain route, like a bus. They don't have fixed stops. You just go to a street that is part of their route and wait for them to drive by and hail them. You get on, pay a small fee and tell the driver when you want to stop and go out. Think low tech Uber + ride sharing with strangers.

They are super great for getting around comfortably for cheap.

Saying the public transport in Cuba is bad makes no sense. Basically nobody owns a car in Cuba and people still get around just fine. Of course because of the economic blockade against Cuba they are forced to be creative on how to use the available resources.

As someone that has lived and studied in Cuba, feel free to ask additional questions. The amount of misinformation really grinds my gears.

>Of course because of the economic blockade against Cuba they are forced to be creative on how to use the available resources.

Yes of course, Cuba's economic woes and abysmal civil/tech infrastructure are entirely due to the economic blockade. several decades of a certain repressive, individuality and development crushing political system and its economic theories have nothing worth mentioning to do with it.

This itself is more than a little piece of misinformation, blaming Cuba's problems entirely on the US (though the US and its misguided blockade have their share of faults)

Yeah, I’m sure their political system’s success / failure wasn’t impacted at all by US intervention.

Oh, HackerNews. I love you.

Yes, because non-blockaded communist countries have been such glowing successes.

I mean, even the ones that were not just blockaded, but genocidally invaded, still turned from really bad feudal peasant states into modern industrial nations faster than any previous countries.

Which countries would that be?

For instance Russia, China

Well in my country between 1945 and 1990 many good things were done in regards to education, healthcare, science, housing - millions of people got their first urban home for free. Of course it had a fair share of problems but I think it is at least comparable with capitalist states.

Which country was that? Did you live there then or were you born after that date?

The Soviet Union was a pile of rust by 1990. I’m not sure how you can justify the immense suffering and indiscriminate persecution just for that...

Ehh, did you live there let's say in between 1960 - 1990? Just for the record - no, it wasn't a pile of rust by 1990. It had free universal healthcare, free higher education, no need for mortgage, abundance of jobs.

And in my family there was a history of persecution during Stalin time, surviving Holodomor, so I know these things first hand. I don't need lecturing on what went wrong from Westerners.

And what about immense suffering after 1991? - Ethic conflicts, absolutely atrocious poverty, would have been much worse if not for some remnants of socialist safety net (de-facto free healthcare). The new capitalist society was not exactly a much of improvement on many areas.

For example in 1993 Boris Eltsin (president of Russia) ordered shelling of Parliament by tanks. And that was fine with the West. Somehow.

That depends on how you define success. If your main measure of success is economy, I wouldn't tag China as an economic failure exactly.

I wouldn't tag China as a communist country for at least a couple decades now.

Then, all we have is a 'not true communist scotsman' spiral all the way down.

If a country directed by a party named the Communist party is not communist, who could claim that tag for themselves?

Not North Korea. A country frozen in time and obsessed by xenophobic purity, dictator worship, army and control of the citizens. This is the very own definition of dystopic fascism, bordering isolated religious cult. Definitely not communism, that always was a mixed bag of anarchists, misfits craving power and other undercurrents moving in similar directions before turning ameboid and splitting again or eating alive the other groups.

Russia? is very "capitalism of the mob" now. As US, is just too big to define it, but it definitely has components of Neofeudalism and tug dictatorship IMHO with several thin layers of shiny democracy put strategically over it to cover the ugly rust. Communism has influenced the society, but is a thing of the past now (probably, I could be wrong).

The "no true scotsman" argument is very valid in many political and economic topics, but it doesn't remotely apply to China or Russia, two countries that have long since abandoned even the semblance of socialism or communism in favor of systems that more closely approach economic fascism. One can criticise countries thatt have failed at communism validly by citing real examples such as Cuba, which genuinely spent decades trying to implement and maintain these ideologies with rigour that closely resembled hardline socialism in practice. Nothig about today's China or today's Russia invalidades that criticism or those that are similar.

I like the 'economic fascism' definition, seems useful to define a lot of the current events all around the planet.

We'll never know what Cuba could have become in normal circumstances. Is not fair to expect shiny results when everybody is boycotting your economy for decades or trying to murder the president all the time.

If we learn something about this strategy is that validates and reinforces the government after creating a situation of "keep the power at any cost or we will kill you". The same error has happened in Siria for example.

I'd include personal freedom and democracy in the definition of success.

Billions of people disagree with you, though.

Personal freedom and democracy are both weasel words, by the way. Liberal personal freedom is based on the idea that only negative rights are valid (except when they are necessary to enforce the violent relations of the existing system, of course), for no reason besides the fact that it legitimized a property-based system of politics and power.

That is, you don't have the personal freedom to walk where you want, but you do have the personal freedom to kill people that walk on the land you gained through theft and theft profiteering, for some reason.

As for democracy, you have the choice between two people - primaries aren't constitutionally required and can be done however the last guy to win the primary thinks they should be done - which both are funded by the same set of donors. Which is why there is no statistically significant correlation between the will of the demos and that of the kratos.

The two problems in this interesting conversation are that 1) there is not such thing as a communist country, only countries that "wear communism" for a while, in the same way as people wear mullets, and 2) Capitalist countries didn't performed better necessarily.

Not in some aspects that we correctly criticize in communist countries but accept as perfectly okay in friend countries. If freedom is the definition of success, we could take a look to the countries with highest ratio of their population jailed. Be prepared for a nasty surprise, they are not exactly communists. Not at all...

You're engaging in as much hyperbole as the post you respond to, and you are also a HNer.

You are making up a straw man.

The economic blockade by the US has the goal of destroying the political and economic order of Cuba. And just to be clear, this blockade is not just blocking Cuba from trading with the US but is effectively blocking Cuba from a good portion of the world market except for a few small allies. And even those trades with allies can become vastly more costly because of the blockade.

There are not many countries that would survive such a blockade not to mention thrive in it.

Are there internal problems in Cuba? Sure there are. Does it make my quoted sentence incorrect that said:

>Of course because of the economic blockade against Cuba they are forced to be creative on how to use the available resources.

No, it does not. It does not state that there might not be also other problems in Cuba.

There is lots of internal problems one can talk about and if someone has honest questions, please ask.

Just don't use these internal problems to minimize the injustice of the blockade against Cuba. (Not to imply whether this is what my former poster intended to do or not).

> the US but is effectively blocking Cuba from a good portion of the world market except for a few small allies.

It is not. Every country is free to decide if it wants to trade with Cuba or not.

> Just don't use these internal problems to minimize the injustice of the blockade against Cuba

There is no injustice. Cuban people can end it whenever they want. Their government too.

Countries are not free to decide if they trade with Cuba or not. If they decide to trade with Cuba, the US government threatens sanctions which can lead to economic ruin and death, by using violence or the threat of violence to prevent the trade of crucial materials.

Before this regime, the US simply deployed the Navy to fire on anyone who went to Cuba.

> If they decide to trade with Cuba, the US government threatens sanctions which can lead to economic ruin and death, by using violence or the threat of violence to prevent the trade of crucial materials.

Sounds like a choice to me. Is it better to keep trading with a free allied country or give it all up to be allowed to trade with a dictatorship?

Yes, it's as much of a choice as when I put a gun against your head and ask you to do me a favour.

The "choice" is based on literal state violence. Both in internationally enforcing intellectual property laws (with your military) to force you from buying medicine and other crucial supplies from the US, and from using violence to prevent those from being sold.

> Countries are not free to decide if they trade with Cuba or not. If they decide to trade with Cuba, the US government threatens sanctions which can lead to economic ruin and death

Nearly everyone except for the US trades with Cuba, including the US’s main allies like Canada and the European countries in NATO. The US is content to maintain its own ban on trade with Cuba because its politicians want to woo the Cuban exile vote, but it has been decades since it put pressure on other countries to maintain the same harsh policy.

And yet you'll constantly hear folks whining that Cuba would be so prosperous if it wasn't prohibited from trading with one country...

It's all America's fault, certainly the local Cuban warlords did nothing wrong.

Cuba already is quite prosperous, amongst the best in South America and more prosperous than the average.

It's not prohibited from one country alone. If you trade with Cuba, you are under threat of American sanctions. Go to Cuba for a bit, you will see the extent of the smuggling necessary even for non-American goods. I have.

Yeah, no, this is not correct.

Trade from other countries to Cuba is still incredibly limited because of secondary sanctions to entities that deal with Cuba. Go spend some time in Cuba and you'll see what that means in practice - equipment is bought above market price and smuggled routinely.

Cuba has a GDP PPP per capita of around 25 000$, which is above the worldwide average.

This is despite being prevented from trading with all but a handful of countries.

It's by very far the wealthiest country under US embargo, and better to live in than most of the world.

Given their current, fairly high standard of living, they would probably economically be a first world country without a US embargo - as it is they're already quite close.

Those of you making defenses of Cuba here are flatly deluded if you make these claims seriously. Cuba was only able to sustain itself with enormous Soviet backing and this regardless of the economic embargo by the U.S. Once the USSR collapsed, the Cuban government made hurried attempts at introducing partial capital-friendly reforms in certain sectors (especially tourism) which still never really brought major benefit to its people because the rest of the stagnant, suffocating socialist bureaucracy remained in place for most of daily life.

I am absolutely no fan of the U.S embargo and think it was a an idiotic disaster in terms of both PR and practical terms, a useful blame point for decades of corrupt, criminally repressive Cuban government propaganda, that allowed that state to conveniently deviate attention away from its own very real failures in trying to stick to ideology in the country. None of this is to even mention the very real dictatorship of one single political party running that country for so long under conditions that simply cannot be compared to those of most democratized countries. To say otherwise of this is a blatant game of whataboutism which normally gets derided on this site but apparently, by what I see in replies to my original comment above, is supported when it comes to Cuba.

It's absurd to see so many HNrs, living under largely privileged market friendly conditions and fully enjoying the benefits of the market in their own personal and professional lives, defending the grotesque little experiment in social and economic repression that is Cuba simply because theyre either ideologically fixated on throwing (partially deserved) shit at the US or emotionally sentimental about a country that few of them would want to actually live in as the locals do, for decades on end.

"at country for so long under conditions that simply cannot be compared to those of most democratized countries"

Well let's compare Cuba to most democratized countries in the Caribbean. Or in South America. Or to any place that is not US or EU+Switzerland and Norway.

This model sounds a lot like songthaews in Thailand.

Also brings to mind UberPool.

> What they are probably referring too are cooperative taxis. Those are cars or smaller buses that are driving a certain route, like a bus.

It's also funny that the ride share concept has been huge throughout the west, with a couple of unicorns profiting from it, but once the same concept is applied to Cuba... Well, suddenly "deteriorating public transport" becomes a key point.

At least in the US, deteriorating public transit is a major reason for the success of things like Uber. Obviously right now a lot of people are working from home making the issue moot, but over the past decade the NYC subway, Boston T, and Washington Metro have had many, many problems of reliability as decades of minimal maintenance have finally caused major problems in their infrastructure, and many people in big US cities have switched to ride sharing for trips that they used to use public transit for.

The article doesn't claim they're private vehicles. The "amarillo" organized hitchhiking system is absolutely a thing, and it relies on government vehicles:

https://hitchwiki.org/en/Cuba

> Saying the public transport in Cuba is bad makes no sense. Basically nobody owns a car in Cuba and people still get around just fine

what does not make sense is saying that "the public transport in Cuba is bad makes no sense". Both public or private transport is bad in any angle. You can not say people still get around just fine when for instances sometimes you need 4 hours or more to reach a place 80 kilometers far from you. Sometimes you just have to give up and returns home after some hours exposed to the sun on the road. * As someone who is born in Cuba and lived and studied in Cuba, feel free to ask additional questions ;)

> You can not say people still get around just fine when for instances sometimes you need 4 hours or more to reach a place 80 kilometers far from you.

If you are a bit unlucky that might be a realistic time for traveling by train here in Germany so I don't really see the horror.

They don't have the public transport level of Japan sure but even most of the developed world is much worse. In most parts of the US not owning a car is not even a realistic options.

If we are fair and compare Cuba to other underdeveloped countries in South America then they compare very favorable.

common on! don't troll my comment, in Germany you have to be unlucky enough if you travel by train and it is delayed at all.

Sorry, but you are mistaken, there is a mandate in Cuba that government vehicles must stop to pick up passengers if an "Amarillo" stops them, failing to do so will have them reported and "perhaps" face some consequence. The Amarillo, named like this because of their uniform, always have a little board where they write down the plates of all the government's cars who didn't stop when they had capacity.

People don't get around just fine, your experience was probably heavily skewed as a foreigner. There is no reliable train in Cuba, a 200 miles trip might take 18hrs. Inter provinces traveling is a nightmare, you can go to a bus terminal and wait days to get a ticket to the other side of the country, by wait days I mean on the terminal, sleeping on the floor.

I left Cuba around 7 years ago, right after college. My weekly routine was leaving college on Fridays at 5pm and go hitchhike in Alamar for a few hours, some days it was quick, others I could arrive at Alamar at 6pm and still be there at 11pm and finally getting home at 1AM. The travel back was the same until through a friend of mine I was able to get a weekly "leftover" seat in those tourist's bus.

> People don't get around just fine, your experience was probably heavily skewed as a foreigner.

I did not use any form of public transport for tourists. That would have been way too expensive in the long run. I was traveling as any Cuban was traveling.

And yes that included waiting for hours on bus terminals and the like. Big deal.

> There is no reliable train in Cuba, a 200 miles trip might take 18hrs.

I could tell you horror stories about the advanced train system in Germany as well but that would be besides the point. Most people don't need to travel 200 miles that often.

For the daily necessities of getting to work, shopping and the likes the public transport system works. Sure the buses are crowded to a maximum, there are not reliable schedules but at least people can afford basic mobility which is not true for many parts of the less developed world.

> I left Cuba around 7 years ago, right after college.

Now you live in the USA. Oh and new account and only posting about Cuba. Funny how it is always the same story with that kind of accounts.

Let me guess, you lived in Havana, the city in Cuba with the highest population density, the only city where public services are somehow functional.

What constitute basic mobility for you? I once had to travel from Matanzas to Havana in an overcrowded bus, standing, and with no ventilation because it was one of those buses that were supposed to have AC. Is that what constitutes basic mobility for you? I'm sure a great way to live your life is to always compare oneself against the poorest countries, that way you are always on top.

Did you wait days in a bus terminal? A lot of people must travel to Havana at some point because that's the only place in the country where they can get some kind of paperwork or surgery done.

I have multiple accounts, do you know why? I bet you have never had to thought about it? Cuba recently created a law that allows them to give you prison time if you post "anything" on social media that they might interpret as "damaging the image of the Cuban revolution".

Is funny how is usually the foreigners preaching the greatness of Cuba.

Full title "Why Hitchhiking Is Huge in Cuba: 'The Transportation System Is Screwed'", which pretty much encapsulates the story.

The detail about the Cuban Ministry of Transport mandating US-made engines even for their Chinese-imported buses was rather mind-boggling though. I can only imagine that somebody at the Ministry is getting a nice kickback from the smugglers/dealers somehow.

> Cuban Ministry of Transport mandates that buses manufactured in China must be outfitted with American-made engines, a move many see as government mismanagement. Due to the 55-year US trade embargo of Cuba, which the socialist government estimates has cost their economy $116.8 billion, third-party businesses must purchase the motors in America, and then ship them to a third country to import them to Cuba. This results in many buses being sidelined, with repair parts coming late or not at all.

WTF? How could this even happen?

Well, to be entirely fair, Chinese engines up until very recently were severely lacking.

Beyond that, there isn't really any country besides Spain, China and Russia that will trade openly with Cuba for fear of indirect American sanctions, so maybe in the lack of any open market option they decided to go with what they knew best, which are American engines.

> Chinese engines up until very recently were severely lacking.

Interesting. What makes a bad (or good) engine for a bus?

Quality.

Reliability, repairability, and fuel efficiency.

Yutong buses are now ubiquitous across Asia, and the engines seem just fine to me, even on pretty rough roads.

Yes, engines from China are now reliable enough.

That said, the article is already six years old and the ordinance probably several years older.

The main invest from Spain in Cuba it's Tourism related.

How could what happen, the trade embargo?

Well, also there is basically only one "highway" outside Havana. It is called the autopista and is comparable to an unmaintained back country road that is riddled with potholes.

I somehow managed to get a rental when I was there and drove across - it was great. Broke down once in some village, out of nowhere almost immediately people came with a jack and fixed it for free.

Interesting way to meet people.

Autopista it's just the translation of "highway" in Spanish.

Source: I'm a Spaniard.

Slightly off topic, but a great movie featuring the abysmal public transport in Cuba is "Lista de Espera".

Really recommend it if you come across it.

[2015]

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