Between Shouts and Commissions: Cuba’s “Buquenques”
HAVANA TIMES – Before the sun heats the asphalt, they are already there. They wear no uniforms or badges. Their tools are their voices and a plastic stool to endure the long hours of waiting. In Havana’s Fraternity Park, at the Santa Clara bus terminal, outside the Clínico Hospital on 26th Avenue, and in every corner of the island where people’s desperation to travel meets the availability of a car, they have carved out their kingdom. They are called buquenques. Or, more formally, passenger brokers. But on the street, they are the masters of the taxi stands.
The term has a long history. The Dictionary of Americanisms defines a buquenque as someone who “flatters others for personal gain” or “is good for nothing.” Cuban writer Argelio Santiesteban translated it as “toady” or “sycophant.” But in the day-to-day world of Cuban transportation, a buquenque is much more than that: he is the man who organizes, calls out destinations, and practically pressures passersby into filling the vintage US American cars and taxis that make intermunicipal and interprovincial trips. He is the middleman between those who need to travel and those who need to fill their vehicles.
Oscar “El Fino” is twenty-seven years old and has worked as a buquenque for the past two years. I met him one morning in Fraternity Park, opening the door of a 1950s Plymouth, counting seats, and shouting destinations into the air. Between cars, he counts the bills handed to him by drivers and smokes an unfiltered cigarette beneath the shade of the trees.
“We save the driver time,” he told me with the confidence of someone who knows that his trade, though not recognized on paper, is indispensable. “Our job is to fill the car, tell people the fare, and make sure nobody gets upset.”
But things are not that simple. Behind the shouted announcements lies a network that many describe as a mafia. At the Fraternity Park taxi stand, a gang decides which cars are allowed to load passengers bound for Alamar and which are not. Its leader is an “excluible”—someone with the power to exclude drivers.
Every driver who departs pays him a fee. But it is not always the same arrangement. Oscar “El Fino” admits that the chavia (the head of the taxi stand, the person licensed to operate it) recently demanded extra money because “times are very hard.” Normally they pay a fixed amount. The rules are made by whoever controls the territory, and they are enforced through the implicit—or sometimes explicit—threat of violence.
As it has done with electric tricycles, the government has tried to impose some order. Years ago, Cuba’s Self-Employment legislation created a legal category for them. The occupation appears as number 53 on a list of 201 authorized activities under the title “Passenger Broker at an Authorized Taxi Stand.” The law states that they recruit passengers to fill the capacity of vehicles operating from authorized stands. If they register, they pay a monthly tax. In practice, however, most operate without any paperwork.
For passengers, the buquenque is a necessary evil. Sometimes, a major headache.
At a taxi stand in Havana’s Diez de Octubre district, I witnessed one of these “inspectors” arguing with a woman who was about to board a taxi. He and two companions insulted both the driver and the passengers who intervened, reminding them that he was the one who decided which car could leave and which could not. The passengers were visibly annoyed. One blamed the government:
“They demand licenses from private citizens for every kind of work, yet they allow criminals to run these taxi stands and force passengers into whichever cars they choose.”
Drivers, for their part, live with a mixture of dependence and resentment. Without the buquenque, it might take them hours to fill their cars. With them, they lose part of their earnings. Some, like Agustín Perez, prefer to avoid them altogether.
“When I reach the end of the route, I don’t go back to the main stand. I just pick up passengers along the way. That way I save myself the commission.”
But not everyone has that option. At the Santa Clara terminal, private taxi drivers complained about the daily presence of these middlemen, who not only collect commissions but have also organized a phantom taxi agency to work directly with local guesthouses (casas particulares).
Ultimately, buquenques are a reflection of what happens when public transportation cannot meet demand, gasoline is scarce, and people need to get from one place to another but have no reliable way to do so. They are the product of a crisis that turns anyone with a loud voice and plenty of time into a key figure in urban transportation.
Some are former prisoners; others are simply unemployed people who found a livelihood in shouting destinations. Like my neighbor Amaury, who has worked as a bricklayer, plumber, dockworker, welder, and baker—and is now a buquenque.
“He earns in one day what I earn in a month,” his neighbor told me, with a mixture of admiration and envy.
It is not an easy job. They spend hours under the blazing sun, shouting the same destinations over and over again. Sometimes they are fined; sometimes they are chased away.
But they always come back.
Read more from the diary of Safie M. Gonzales here on Havana Times.