Controlling and policing public transport in Cuba: Workers’, passengers’ and State’s practices and the roles of fares

This paper unpacks the multiple layers of controlling and policing passenger trucks that operate within the city of Santiago de Cuba. In Cuban cities, passenger trucks (camiones) have played an important role in the public transport (PT) system since the “Special Period” of the early 1990s. In the face of the social and economic crisis, national authorities opened urban PT markets to private operators, thus introducing new services such as trucks, increasing fares, and creating new professions. This complexity has required different approaches to controlling and policing the transport system.

Using ethnographic observations and interviews, I examine how different stakeholders contribute to the everyday policing of trucks. Fares appear to have a double and paramount role in these processes. On the one hand, truck staff (drivers, conductors or helpers, and street criers) are controlled by each other and by State institutions, making sure they respect legislation on pricing. Fares are sometimes illegally increased, when truck staff are caught in logics of managing the uncertainty and of profit-making. On the other hand, fares are used as micro-scale borders, enforced by the truck staff, to allow passengers on board. Inside the trucks, the staff manage passengers and their micro-political interactions. Nevertheless, logics of maximising both profits and mobility flows mean that policing passengers seems secondary for the staff. Hence, passengers are also involved, through horizontal surveillance: potential conflicts are managed collectively.