DEVELOPMENT-CUBA: Town Reborn from Wreckage of Hurricane Michelle

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

JAGEY GRANDE, Cuba, Apr 2 2002 (IPS) - Before Hurricane Michelle swept through last November, the residents of the small Cuban town of La Pista lived in wooden shacks with dirt floors, no running water and no bathrooms. But the storm changed their lives forever.

In the place where just a handful of shacks were left standing – 233 homes were destroyed in the town – local residents are busy helping each other build a shiny new housing complex of neat cement block homes with metal shutters, modern plumbing facilities, and electricity.

According to Carmen Fernández, a representative of the government-affiliated Federation of Cuban Women, La Pista – a town located in the municipality of Jagüey Grande, in the province of Matanzas, around 200 kms east of Havana – was “virtually a slum,” where “nearly all of the homes were in very poor condition.”

“We had to evacuate just about everyone when the storm alert was issued” before the hurricane hit this Caribbean island nation on Nov 4, Fernández told IPS.

La Pista, home to just over 1,000 people, grew up as a precarious extension of the housing project for employees of the Australia sugar factory, the main source of jobs for the area’s men.

“It is becoming more difficult for women to work outside the home,” said Fernández, because the only options are working on the sugar cane plantations, or picking citrus fruit in areas that are farther away.

The local residents are building their new homes with material provided by the state. Once the housing complex is finished, the value of the new homes will be appraised, and the owners will pay them off in small installments over 20 years.

“Sixty percent of the investment will be subsidised by the state. For every square metre of their homes, the families will pay 60 pesos,” explained the governor of Matanzas, Nilo Díaz. (The peso trades at 26 to the dollar in the government exchange bureaux).

“Building new settlements from scratch takes a major investment in plumbing and electric installations,” said the governor.

The socialist government of Fidel Castro has set a Nov 4 deadline for the completion of the 166,000 homes that were partially or totally damaged by the hurricane in this country of 11 million.

Workers who are repairing their homes or building new ones continue receiving their paychecks. Women who are on their own and the elderly are supported by social security, which pays builders to do the work.

“What I don’t see anywhere is a school. This town doesn’t have any school or shops or cafes,” said construction worker René González, who came to La Pista to work from the town where he lives, over 500 kms away.

But any investment of that kind will have to wait.

“The priority at this time is the housing, which is our worst problem,” said Díaz, who pointed out that 28 percent of the homes in the province of Matanzas were damaged by the storm, and around 63,000 homes are in “poor or bad condition.”

Hurricane Michelle, considered the worst storm to hit Cuba in half a century, in terms of material losses, tore through the island from south to north with winds of more than 200 kms an hour. Of the 10 affected provinces, Matanzas suffered the worst damages.

The economic losses throughout the country totalled 1.8 billion dollars, including 145 million in Matanzas. But it will take more than 300 million dollars to recover what was lost in the province, said Díaz.

Matanzas was left without power, telephones or radio and TV communications – services that have not yet been completely restored. Meanwhile, hundreds of health clinics, schools, sports facilities and cultural centres are still awaiting repairs.

In addition, Cuba’s biggest citrus fruit plantation, located in Jagüey Grande, was severely damaged. Only 60,000 tonnes of a total of 369,000 tonnes of citrus fruit – most of which is exported – were salvaged.

The storm led to the United States’ first offer of humanitarian aid to Cuba since Castro’s 1959 revolution. A report by United Nations agencies predicted that Cuba would suffer a food crisis this year.

But the most keenly felt problem for now is the lack of housing.

Around 55,000 of the 166,000 homes that were partially or totally damaged by the storm are located in Matanzas, including 7,456 homes that were totally destroyed by wind or waves, said Víctor Ramírez, director of the National Institute of Housing.

María Victoria Abreu, who works at a radio station, returned home in the wake of Hurricane Michelle to find that the sea had knocked down the kitchen and the bathroom in the home she shared with 10 other people, including her two grandchildren.

Abreu and other families from the city of Matanzas who lost their homes to the storm are now working on a 133-unit housing complex located far from the coastal areas at risk of damage from the sea.