CUBA-HABITAT: Havana Rises from the Ruins

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 20 1995 (IPS) - Piles of rubble, forgotten trash heaps, decorated shops, markets, fairs and small private businesses make up today the contradictory image of the capital of Cuba, a city seemingly determined to emerged from its crisis.

Serenaded by poets and troubadours, Havana has reached the end of this century still enchanting visitors with its colonial architecture, its colors and the sea, but above all because it is the principal stage of the transformations the island is undergoing.

Over several years of general scarcity and stagnation, the authorities have retaken the initiative in selected neighborhoods. The State competes timidly with several private business and Cubans look for a way to purge the crisis from their homes.

While in other Cuban cities one can still find symptoms of the old idealism, reality has come crashing down in the city where the so=called “special period” added to accumulated social problems left unresolved for many years.

“What I most want is that the building I live in doesn’t fall down,” said 59 year old Maria Martinez, who, as many Havana residents did, went on Nov. 16 to circle the ceiba tree that marks the spot where the first mass in Cuba was held.

Cubans don’t know the exact date of the founding of the village of San Cristobal de la Havana, some 476 years ago, and so they celebrate Nov. 16, day of San Cristobal in the Catholic book of saints, and around the ceiba, sacred tree of the Yoruba religion.

Accustomed to praying for the sick, Maria only thinks about preserving her home. “It’s old, falling to pieces, but it’s mine and much better than living in shelters where one doesn’t know when you will ever leave,” she said.

Maria’s family – two daughters and three grandchildren – are on a list of more than 22,000 residents of this capital to be placed in emergency housing because of dangerous living conditions.

In 1994, Havana witnessed 614 building collapses, 375 demolitions of unsafe buildings and thousands of emergency repairs in a province where, according to official sources, 49 per cent of the housing stock is in fair or poor condition.

According to Conrado Martinez, mayor of the capital city, “each year, more housing is destroyed than repaired or built. This is the problem we confront.”

Considered the worst social problem of the Cuban capital, the scarcity and deterioration of housing compounds the problems of water, transportation, sanitation, roads and environment.

According to the local government, of 160 neighborhoods that didn’t receive water due to water main breaks in 1994, 144 had service restored although some water continued to leak out through various cracks in the system.

Before the end of the year, authorities will try to complete the repairs on 25 central avenues, advance the construction of 15,000 homes nearing completion and repair more than 500 fortresses.

Government actions and the semi-paralyzation or total close of some factories as a result of the crisis have helped reduce the high level of pollution in the Havana bay and in the rivers that cross the city.

Since 1993, authorities have placed the problems of the capital among the most strategic of the country, conscious of the magnitude of the phenomena in a city with more than two million inhabitants and which continues receiving internal migration.

“Here one succeeds as best they can,” says a young person of 30 years of age who arrived a few months ago from the eastern part of the island in search of work and now engaged in speculation in the underground market.

More than a few like him spend the day at the entrance of a foreign exchange bureau trying to sell the same products that the State offers at higher prices in their government shops.

Others can be found selling coffee or popcorn in front of their houses, handmaking items of popular consumption, offering plumbing services, hairdressing, or repairing household electronics.

“Money can be made, it’s true, but one works from dawn to dusk,” said a former office worker who several months ago opened a small restaurant of traditional food in the living room of her house.

According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, in Havana city one third of the 203,000 Cubans living there work for themselves.

Applications for permits for these jobs are growing at a rate of 5,000 monthly and of more than a million requests to open small private restaurants, some 500 have been approved.

Seen one way, inhabitants of this city are integrating capitalist methods into their life style while enjoying the benefits of Cuban socialism which guarantees education and free medical care.

The State still guarantees distribution of basic foodstuffs to all and at subsidized prices.

Habaguanex, an enterprise created to capture foreign exchange in the historic old part of town, has set up kiosks for tourists, opened dollar stores and, at the same time, is allocating part of its income to the restoration of primary schools and the reconstruction of a convent as a senior citizen rest home.

With their usual sense of humor, Havana residents say that these days the British are wrong: who said that London is the city of contrasts? “That city can only be Havana,” said one local street jokester.

CUBA-HABITAT: Havana Rises from the Ruins

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 20 1995 (IPS) - Piles of rubble, forgotten trash heaps, decorated shops, markets, fairs and small private businesses make up today the contradictory image of the capital of Cuba, a city seemingly determined to emerged from its crisis.
(more…)