who leap out from the side of the road frantically, desperately, even violently trying to sell you one onion. Or a string of garlic. Or a pale, greasy-looking hunk of something. Lard? Flan? Pound of flesh? (It turned out to be homemade cheese.) At every major road junction there were scores of hitchhikers, not the prostitute kind but regular folks, whole families among them. Cuba’s national transportation system is in butt-lock. Says Fodor’s guide, “Be prepared to wait three days for the next available bus.” Standing among the people with their thumbs out were the traffic police. They stopped cars and trucks (though not those with tourista license plates) and made them take passengers. Cops helping you bum a ride—now here was the revolution the way I had it planned thirty years ago when I was smoking a lot of dope. Except, not exactly. The reason so many people were hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere was that they’d been sent there to work on the sugar harvest. I don’t recall that the workers’ paradise of my callow fantasies contained any actual work. That sugar harvest was going on all around me. Or, rather, not going on. I’m no agricultural expert, but I’m almost certain that leaning against fences, walking about with hands in the pockets, and sitting on stalled tractors smoking cigarettes are not the most efficient methods of cutting sugarcane. Much work had been done, however, painting propaganda slogans. SOCIALISM OR DEATH appeared on almost every overpass. What if the U.S. government had slogans all over the place? I tried to come up with a viable campaign. My suggestion, AMERICA—IT DOESN’T SUCK . As for “Socialism or Death,” after a couple of weeks in Cuba, I was leaning toward the latter option. To which the Castro government’s response is: Death? Yes. No problem. That can be arranged. But, first, socialism! I turned off the autopista onto a raggedy strip of pavement through the Escambray Mountains. The sun went down, and suddenly traffic materialized— gigantic Russian trucks driven without sense, headlights, or any idea of keeping to the right on the road. I emerged from the mountains at Cienfuegos. Says Fodor’s: “The people of Cienfuegos . . . constantly tout it as ‘ la Linda Ciudad del Mar ’ (the lovely city by the sea).” They’re lying. From here it was a thirty- mile drive through coastal mangrove swamps on a road covered with land crabs. Every time I went over one, it made a noise like when you were ten, and you spent two weeks making a plastic model of the battleship Missouri, and your dad stepped on it in the dark. I tried avoiding the crabs. They scuttled under the
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