Three Survivors on the Streets of Matanzas, Cuba
Jose Luis, Urbano, and Yoel
“I’m not good at just asking for money”: one draws, another sings, and the third seeks out foreigners to “practice languages.”
By Pablo Padilla Cruz (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – “When I was young, I lived well. Maybe that’s why I ended up with nowhere to live.” Jose Luis, a former worker for Gaviota Marina in Varadero and now homeless in the city of Matanzas, opens up to 14ymedio. Alcohol pushed him into bad decisions and, without realizing it, one day he found himself dirty, broke, and with no one to turn to. “At that moment I felt desperate, but little by little ideas came to me and I got to work.”
He speaks as he spreads some scraps of recycled paper across a table. With half-used colored pens, he recreates a scene of young people sitting in a bar. Drawing—an interest he had scarcely cultivated before—is now his way of life. “I’m not good at just asking for money. If someone helps me, I think this way I can give something back. No one is to blame for the decisions that brought me to this point.”
Jose Luis’s routine is uncertain. Sometimes he sleeps at a friend’s house, other times in the Cathedral park or wherever nightfall finds him. “The important thing is to eat something without having to beg, and well, also to have a drink once in a while. You have to enjoy what you like in life, otherwise it’s not a life,” he says, finishing the drawing. With the paper still fresh, he approaches the young people he sketched and hands it to them. If he’s lucky, they’ll leave him 50 or 100 pesos in return.
Also living on the street is Urbano, known as El Tanque. Born in Camagüey and a Matanzas resident by choice, he sells songs to anyone who wants them. “Two for twenty pesos, for the delight of those who know good music,” he advertises on a sign hanging from his shoulder.
“I live with my aunt here, for years now. My family is from Camagüey and they want me to go back there, but not even dead will I return,” he says with the conviction of someone who made his choice long ago. “Here people love me. Today, for example, I sang at the Faustino Perez hospital; the people applauded a lot and I liked that. They gave me money and food,” he says, stroking a plastic bag with his few belongings.
He insists he’s never had problems with the police or anyone else for singing. “I’ve even gone to the Marina and the tough guys there don’t want me to leave. They always give me money and tell me to look for them if I ever have a problem, that they’ll take care of it.” Urbano knows times are “hard,” but he insists on neither stealing nor begging. “I do something I like, I help my aunt, and I don’t get involved in bad things,” he concludes, his eyes wide, as if defending his own small piece of dignity.
Both José Luis and El Tanque are part of that ever-growing group of Cubans surviving on the fringe, while the State proves incapable of solving the severe crisis the country is going through. But if there are Cubans who especially suffer from institutional neglect, they are those with psychiatric disorders. One of them is Yoel, diagnosed with schizophrenia and living in a small room in the Marina. Despite everything, each day he goes out with his notebooks full of English and German notes, ready to “hunt” for tourists.
“A while back I worked for a private library, delivering books all over the city, but I had a breakdown and couldn’t continue,” he explains. Now his brother helps him when he can, and Yoel devotes himself to finding foreigners to talk with. “Mostly in German. They almost always give me money,” he says shyly.
When asked if he begs them for money, his expression changes: “I only want to practice the language. What I do ask for is a book. If they buy me a coffee or give me money, I accept, but I’m not a hustler. The problem is that I have no one to talk to, and here everyone is too busy. Only foreigners have time.”
A few days ago, a Canadian couple invited him to lunch, and they spoke in English for a long time. “It’s a shame no Germans come to Matanzas anymore. I haven’t had books in that language to read in a long time. I guess I’ll have to learn Russian or Chinese,” he jokes as he walks away with his notebooks under his arm.
Perhaps Jose Luis’s drawings will never reach galleries, nor Urbano win a singing contest, nor Yoel again converse in Goethe’s language with a German visitor. But they have found their own ways to survive, amid a country sinking ever deeper into crisis, with no solutions in sight.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.