Guaguas, motoconchos, chaos and beauty...

Whilst i was going to work from my home with a GUAGUA (mini-bus) this morning, a huge green truck crashed into a white SUV (see the photo above). Hearing the sound of the accident all the people in the guagua turned towards the accident and started discussing about it.. At the same moment, in our guagua, which was initially produced to carry more or less 20 people, there were about 40 people, all packed and extremely vulnerable to any traffic accident. People were shocked about the experience, which was really difficult to understand for me when considering the overall condition of transportation in Santo Domingo (SD).

Transportation of SD is controlled by total chaos. For sure, living a year and half in London has soften and "civilised" my attitudes towards traffic, even though i come from a country that is proud with the level of chaos on its roads. However, something is really special here, in Santo Domingo. Chaos has another meaning, taste and beauty. It is much more raw, in your face, wild.. And much more accepted as part of the "normal" life. Here, when traffic stacks, when cars crash into each other, or even when people almost die, it is not so much important.. There is no regulation, or an authority to shape, to better the transportation. Therefore, the invisible hand arranges itself.

In such a context, the extremes obviously become really really extreme. I mean, the other day i was in a guagua going back home. Another guagua in front of us broke down. And for about 10 minutes, our guagua pushed the other one by hitting to its rear and causing an acceleration. Of course passengers were coming and going at this time, and couple of times, the pushing activity got really out of control.. These 2 guaguas had passed couple of cops on the way and it was completely OK. And finally, we the people realize there is something wrong with the situation and raised our voice.

Guaguas are part of the informal system of transportation in Dominican Republic, so as motoconchos and publicos. Apart from about a 10% of public contribution of municipalities to transportation, the rest of the workload is carried by these small private transporters. Guagua signifies a vehicle (bus, minibus, van) run by a driver and a cobrador (money man), which carries as many people as the space allows from one direction to another with a very loud Bachata music at the background. Publicos or carros are cars, usually rundown Japanese cars, that run along a route and carries about 6 people at any time. And finally, motoconchos are motorbike taxis that would carry you to your final destination. The common denominator of all of these vehicles are that they are usually extremely run-down and they all love Bachata. The beautiful part of this informal system is that it serves for poors at a very low cost and reaches almost all parts of the country. People are talkative, thus can be a space to socialise. For instance, the other night, in one of these guaguas, Mari (a lady at her 40s living around my neighbourhood) gave me her telephone number to drink some beers after talking 1 minute with me. The down sides are that they are highly uncomfortable, dangerous and causing so many traffic problems.

Majority of these transporters are part of a transportation union called Fenatra, the same organisation that is sponsoring me here to work on forced eviction. Father of William, my flatmate, is the president of Fenatra and William also works part-time with his father when has time from his petite-mafia activities, which i will write another time.