Ethnographic atlas of Cuba

Before the discovery of Cuba, indigenous peoples travelled mostly on foot, transporting the large number of the things they needed according to the development of their society. The use of auxiliary means of land transportation among the Cuban Indians has not been yet verified. However, for river and sea transportation they used monoxile canoes to travel and transport some objects. These canoes were built by hollowing out tree trunks and paddles or najes were used.

Ways of communication on land were almost unexistent. Only very few narrow paths joined the settlements that were quite isolated in the dense woods covering the territory.

With the arrival of the Spanish settlers, natives were used to move loads, although there were animals to do this work. Since the beginning of colonization, there was a marked growth in horses, bovines, goats and swine started, mostly because of the abundant and excellent pastures. This growth in cattle breeding was aimed at feeding the population, as well as to meet the increasing demand for means of transportation and drive animals such as horses, mules and oxen.

Roads and transportation are ethnographic elements in the lives of all people. Covering distances for various purposes has been a constant focus of vital concern for human communities. For the purpose of travelling and transporting goods and objects, men have created many ways and means of transportation that form part of their economic, social and cultural heritage.

The simplest means of human transportation is the body, acting as a motor force and, at times, as a means to carry loads. Peasants carry their loads in various ways. The objects carried by their hands are uncountable, among them bags and sacks originally made of weaved yarey, today made with synthetic materials. Also, water is carried from wells and rivers in pails or tins, and coffee is gathered in sacks or baskets.

These objects are also carried on the shoulders, on the head or resting on the hips. To carry water, a wooden pole is used, resting on the shoulder of one person with two small pails at each side, or on the shoulders of two persons with a big pail in the middle. In our country, when loads are carried on the head, a textile item with the form of a roller is used to cushion the weight, but this method is no longer common. Women prefer to carry bundles, objects and children resting on their hips. In specific agricultural activities, such as citrus harvests, a bag called jabuco or jolongo, is tied to the waist.

The traditional, fundamental and widespread means of transportation for peasants are horses, used also to transport several types of loads, including water, firewood, coal and produce from the marketplace. Horses are also used to drive carts carrying light loads.

Although the number of horses has remained rather stable in the country, after 1959 they have not been as widely used because the road network was extended and improved, accomodating the use of modern motor vehicles. Mules as means of transportation and loading have developed in a way similar to that of horses, and have been used generally in a similar fashion. However, the fact that they are sturdier makes them preferred by peasants to carry loads, whether individually or in droves. Since they are very adequate for mountain regions, alone or with a rider, they were traditionally used to carry coffee from the plantations to the towns, returning with other goods. Mules are also used to drive light carts with various loads in several areas in the country.

Horses and mules were used in urban areas to drag carriages, chaises, coaches, buggies, buckboards, carts and, to a lesser extent, the large carts usually driven by oxen.

It seems that oxen, used in a similar fashion as horses and mules, came from Andalusian and Asturian bovine races. Cuban peasants believe that there is no better drive animal than oxen and, although they are slower, they are also used in some areas to carry vegetables on their backs and even for human transportation.

In rural areas, heavy loads were transported mostly in carts and drays driven by oxen. Other means of transportation were few and used only by plantation owners with considerable purchasing power.

Drive animals played a fundamental role in Cuban sugar development, since the early days of the small manual sugar mills to the larger factories in the second half of the 18th centuries.

The transportation of sugar cane from the fields to the mill required oxen, and occasionally mules, as well as carts with varying capacities. Thus various drive animals were used. These means of transportation were also used in other agricultural activities, such as the harvest and distribution of produce and the transportation of goods to rural stores. Tools, and even people, were also transported in them.

One means for the transportation of light cargo is traditionally called rastra (dray), and is driven by a yoke of oxen. This Cuban rural means of transportation had its origin in Spain and Portugal and entered into Cuba in the 16th century. Its use became widespread because it was very easy to build requiring few resources. It also easily adapted itself to the emerging ways of communication. It could be used for many different types of cargo, depending on the requirements of its owner, but mostly to transport water containers, firewood, manure, sacks containing fruit, tools.

According to their use, there are many types of rastras, but three of them are most common: the larger ones, used to carry tobacco leaves from the plantation to the place where they are seasoned, have two transversal pieces at their ends, called barrederas, where are set six or seven poles from which tobacco leaves hang. They are used only in tobacco areas. The second type is smaller and used for lighter cargo, such as water containers, tools, and sacks containing fruit. The third, whose use began only after 1959, is made with a discarded bus or truck tire. It is dragged by a chain that passes through a hole made on it. Unlike wooden ones, this new type of rastra does not harm paved roads.

General cargo rastras with two, three or more crosspieces may be found with or without stakes for some types of loads. Although this is a very simple means of transportation, Cuban peasants make them with hard woods because of their greater resistance and durability.

Even with other means of transportation existing today, rastras are still used in most of the rural areas.

Oxen carts were already widely used in the 19th century. These typical carts, almost totally made of wood, were widely used until the 1950s, when some parts were modified: rubber wheels replaced wooden ones and metal shafts replaced wooden shafts. In the 1940s, a cart with caterpillar wheels was introduced in large Cuban sugar cane plantations.

Carts with rubber wheels and iron beds, made in Cuba, were very much in use in the first years after 1959.

Carts vary according to their height, bed size, wheels and the wood used to make them by specialized carpenters in cart workshops. The main elements in a cart are: wheels, stakes, shafts, a bed and a pole. Among the woods more frequently used in Cuba are the guayacan (Guaiacum officinalis L.), the sabicu (Lysiloma latisigua L, Benth), cagueiran (Copaifera himenaefolia Moric), mije (Eugenia floribunda West), yaba (Andira inermis Sw. H.B.K) magagua (Hibiscus tiliaceus L.), cedar (Cedrela mexicana, M. J. Roem), jucaro (Bucida buceras, L.), and dagame (Callycophyllum candidissimun). Apart from sugar cane, they are used in the transportation of produce and people.

Wagons are also traditional means of transportation in most rural areas of Cuba. They do not follow strict construction standards, demand a specific quality of wood, nor accurate measurements for each of their parts. A specialized carpenter is not needed. Wagons are very useful and are produced economically and with inexpensive materials. They can be driven by oxen, mules and horses.

Before 1959, their wheels were made of wood. Later, rubber wheels with iron shafts became widely used. There were two types of wagons: load wagons and the type called araña (spider) for the transportation of light objects and up to three or four persons.

There are other means of transportation in rural areas for special cases or the circumstances of daily life. These have to do with the ill and the deceased.

Before 1959, the transportation of ill persons in rural areas was exceedingly difficult, since long distances had to be covered to find a medical aid. Transportation was easier in regions with plains, but in the mountains the situation was more serious. Food for the sick person and for those who carried him or her (usually eight persons so they could take rests) had to be carried too. After 1959, with the large advance in public health, the building of road networks and the use of motor vehicles, these problems have unquestionably decreased in rural areas.

Traditionally, ill persons were transported in stretchers or litters, made up by a piece of canvas tied to one or two poles, depending on the weight of the person.

Stretchers used in tobacco areas in western Cuba to carry tobacco leaves were also used for ill persons. These stretchers were made with a piece of wood with holders in the ends to facilitate the handling. Carts and wagons were also used, together with the so-called bastidores (frames), which were very similar to beds and generally used for ill persons that needed to be kept immobile. Taburetes (chairs with hide backs and seats), on which the ill person sat while relatives and neighbors carried him, were also used. If their condition allowed it, they also rode horses.

Things were rather the same when peasants died. There was the so-called quitandra or escalera (ladder), made of two poles with some pieces of wood between them, on top of which the coffin was set. Carts and wagons were also used for this purpose.

In the last thirty years these practices have greatly changed because of the extended use of funeral vehicles. Understandably, in certain areas, especially in the most isolated spots, these vehicles are unable to reach the houses of the deceased, who are transported in the quitandras to reach the funeral vehicles.

A great variety of accessories serve to supplement means of rural transport. Several harnesses, among them saddles, yokes and horse collars are used for riding animals. The types of saddles used throughout the country, before and after 1959, are saddles for women, English saddles, helmet saddles, Willman saddles, manclera saddles, packsaddles, Texan saddles, Mexican saddles, and horsebreaker saddles.

Saddles for women are flat on the seat where women sit with their right leg slightly up. On the place where other saddles have their peak, these have a wooden cross, allowing the rider a better hold as well as a place in which to rest the leg. English saddles are light and used mostly by race horses. Estate owners with considerable means used them and, when discarded, were given to the peasants and employees of the farm or estate. Helmet saddles were simple, without a peak or ornaments. They were the most economic of all because of their simplicity. Willman saddles, initially using American wood, were later copied by Cuban saddlers. Their wide seat and lower sag are made from fine calibrated hides. Manclera saddles, its wood covered with hide and no flaps, are more economic because they are simpler. They are also called manclera-esqueleto. Texan saddles, with a strong peak in bronze or covered with hide with a sag like middle Humboldt, have bags and a high back that makes them more comfortable. They are considered ideal for work in cattle breeding activities. Packsaddles are somewhat heavy. They are made with first class materials making them more expensive; their sag is middle to high Humboldt and has bags. They are used by rural traders. Mexican saddles, structurally similar to Texan saddles, have a difference in the seat. Horsebreaker saddles are similar to Texan saddles, but their sag is bigger and stronger, admitting an outstanding and solid hide covered firelock.

Yokes, whether fixed or movable, are used to tie the oxen to the carts or drays, They require other elements such as yoke pads to prevent bruises on the oxen′s foreheads, and nose rings and pitchforks to join the dray chains with the strap on the yoke are used.

Yokes have changed little from colonial times to the present; the tradition of making them has been maintained through the generations.

Finally, horses and mules are joined to wagons with collars.

After examining the ways and means of rural traditional transportation though their historical dynamics, a correlation between old and new elements is found. Juxtaposing the two chronological periods studied allows us to see the radical changes brought about by the ample social and economic transformations that have taken place in the country in the last 35 years.

Lic. Manuel A. Diaz Rodriguez
Inv. Hernan Tirado Toirac