Cuba’s Central Highway at a Standstill Between Matanzas & Santa Clara
HAVANA TIMES – Traveling along Cuba’s Central Highway from Matanzas to Santa Clara, between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, means crossing a landscape that seems to sum up much of the crisis Cuba is experiencing.
The highway is practically empty. Only a few cars pass by. Most of what is moving are bicycles, electric motorcycles, horse-drawn carriages and carts, used to transport both people and goods. In the towns, dozens of people wait in the shade at bus stops, hoping for transportation that often never comes.
The small stands that appear along the highway selling fruit, root vegetables, and prepared foods—are mostly empty.
But it is perhaps the agricultural landscape that offers the most striking image. Vast stretches of land remain covered with grass, marabú, and aroma shrubs. The sugarcane fields that still survive contain short, thin stalks surrounded by weeds. There is little sign of farmworkers or agricultural machinery. Livestock are also scarce: for kilometers you see only a few cows, bulls, or oxen.
The state-run CUPET gas stations on the highway remain closed, with no fuel and no activity.
The Central Highway is still there, with its potholes and years of accumulated deterioration, but what stands out most is not just the condition of the road. It is the emptiness surrounding it: little transportation, little commercial activity, little agriculture, and very little movement across lands that were once an essential part of the Cuban economy.
Between Matanzas and Santa Clara, the rural landscape seems to tell, without the need for statistics, the story of a country that has nearly ground to a halt.