Safie M. Gonzalez

I live on the fifth floor of a “microbrigade” building, something very close to purgatory. The neighbor’s dog urinates in front of my door.

In the very heart of El Vedado, Havana, on the corner of 17th and E, rises a mansion that seems frozen in time.

Small, almost secret places where generations of Habaneros have learned to swim, to dream, and sometimes to forget.

Havana teeters between the engineering of the past and the hydric crisis of the present. Meanwhile, thirst persists among its people.

In Cuba, getting dressed is not just a daily act: it is a mirror of identity and, at the same time, of crisis.

In its early days, Miramar was nothing more than a wooded and swampy area on the other side of the Almendares River, with a few haciendas…

Alcides, 68, drags his jolongo (cloth sack) through the streets where garbage piles remain for weeks without being collected.

Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean, is surrounded by a deep blue ocean that used to be overflowing with life.

In Havana, getting into a shared taxi is not an everyday act. Surviving transportation is a feat. A relentless battle…

As Havana crumbles it is also falling apart in its memory. I walk through the city like someone rummaging through the ruins of a lost empire.