Miguel Arias’s Diary

Cuba’s transport crisis today isn’t news. We’ve been dealing with this evil for years, and there are generations of Cubans that don’t know any better. In the past, it’s been a shortage of buses, spare parts, not enough drivers, etc.

Just a few days ago, I bore witness to a horrible scene. I was crossing the Cathedral Plaza in Havana when I saw how a woman speaking to a very small girl. She pointed to a group of Spanish tourists and egged her on to ask them for some candy or money.

Communication technology is of vital importance anywhere in the world right now. Mobile phones aren’t new though, they’ve been forming a part of our lives for years now.

Cuba is an underdeveloped or developing country, whatever one wants to call it. It is not a country that has large industries, it depends on revenue from tourism, tobacco, rum and sugar. And that it is not enough to cover our needs and resolve our problems.

Dawn broke in Havana’s Bahia neighborhood with some terrible news: the death of a 50-something-old-year-old man who a lot of people here knew. His name was Yoel Sarduy, and he was affectionately known as “El Friki”.

A long time before we learned that Trump would lift the waiver on Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, you could already sense that things were going to get worse; it was in the air, and people’s comments only confirmed this. There is even talk about another Special Period,…

Robberies here are becoming more and more frequent, and sometimes have fatal consequences. Luckily for us, the vast majority of Cubans are honest, hard-working and good-hearted people.

Even though we witness things every day that leave us speechless, some things stand out more than others and strike us a little more. If there is a place in Havana where things like this happen almost every day, then that’s at bus stops or even on buses.

Regla was hit by a tornado in January that showed them no mercy, destroying homes, factories and everything else it found in its path, leaving entire families without a roof over their heads or material belongings. Today the reconstructioin is well advanced.

It’s been almost two months since the last time I walked down San Rafael Boulevard, one of Havana’s busiest pedestrian streets, as hundreds of Cubans walk up and down it every day. bIt’s being totally made-over and even though they dug up the ground months ago, now they’ve dug it up again. We are also still waiting for the public bathrooms to be completed.