Cuba was the first country in Latin America and the sixth in the world to have a railroad system. The National Railway Company of Cuba, Ferrocarriles de Cuba, opened its first 17-mile-long route in 1837. The Spanish built the railway in the Island to transport sugarcane to the ports even before tracks were laid down in Spain. It’s the only railway operating in the Caribbean, and it provides passenger and freight services for Cuba. One of the few lines still active in the Island covers more than 2,600 miles, stretching from Havana in the west to Santiago de Cuba on the eastern coast.
For Cubans, the railroad is the cheapest way to travel across the country, it is also the slowest, the trip from Havana to Santiago de Cuba can take 20 hours, while driving would take about half the time. Tourists are discouraged from making the trip and many Cubans choose not to take the train because of its unreliability: It often breaks down or is delayed, sometimes for days on end.
The cost savings of rail transport permitted non-subsidized Cuban cane sugar to compete successfully on the world market with subsidized European beet sugar. Direct foreign domination of the railroads came later, towards the final third of the nineteenth century, when the pressure of domestic political conflict and global economic crisis provoked severe financial strain in the early Cuban-controlled railroad companies. Eastern Cuba was still relatively undeveloped when the United States occupied Cuba in 1898, and the most important eastern railroads were built following the U.S. takeover. Almost all the new roads were financed by U.S. capital: several of them, including the path-breaking Ferrocarril Central, were directly built by U.S. firms.
By the start of the 1950s, Cuban railroads had entered crisis, stagnation in the sugar industry combined with stiff competition from trucks and buses provoked a sharp decline in revenue. About a year after the revolutionary takeover in late 1959, the railways were fully nationalized. Railcars became a potpourri of relics coming from various countries such as the former Soviet Union, China, Canada, Spain, Yugoslavia, France and Germany. After the fall of the Soviet Union, makeshift measures were adopted to maintain the fleet and now the raggedy and refurbished cars are all falling to pieces.
© Daniel Botelho