A couple weeks ago, a news item appeared in the press that may have been of interest to a considerable number of Cubans. The headline in the October 9 edition of the Granma newspaper announced, “Chavez Receives New Advance Team of Cuban Doctors.”
If your fan happens to break down in this wondrous climate, everything becomes more embroiling; you’re forced to decide between not sleeping and paying the exorbitant price quoted by a self-employed electrician. My fan died a week ago, and since I couldn’t get to sleep for two nights in a row, I decided to get it fixed.
A few days ago, as I was walking by the Charles Chaplin Movie Theater, one of the cinemas with the best films in Havana, I noticed that they were showing “The Working Class Goes to Heaven” by Elio Petri (Italy, 1970), as part of a screening of the best 50 movies of the 20th century.
This September begins my last year as a student, which struck me with opposing feelings: the yearning to finish my degree and the dread of beginning my life as a worker. The immediate questions are: Where will I work? Where will I live? How will I support myself?
Every weekend this corner is thronging with lots of young people who spend the late evening hours playing guitars, telling stories, laughing and even dancing to the sounds of just about any type of music (since nobody cares to take charge of structuring that particular alternative).
I went to bed and immediately fell into a deep sleep, until a neighbor woke me with her yelling. A worker from the electric company had just cut off our electricity and was taking our meter. When asked why he said the bill hadn’t been paid for two months.
Previously the fares were affordable, but today they’re simply outlandish. It costs 75 pesos to travel to my province from Havana, and the fare shoots up to almost 200 pesos if you want to travel from Havana to eastern Santiago de Cuba.
Right now in Old Havana there is an entire street where there are elderly people, the mentally ill, people who are injured, and amputees who lack basic economic sustenance and therefore resort to begging.
I’m not too surprised, the reason for this situation is too evident: the workers in these stores often jack up the prices, almost arbitrarily, for one simple reason: their wages aren’t enough to support them and they have no other remedy.
Coppelia is Havana’s most famous ice-cream parlor. It’s huge, almost a whole square block. It’s even more famous because you can buy the ice cream in regular national currency, as opposed to hard currency – a rare occurrence in this country.