Safie M. Gonzalez

The street was empty, with the bulk of the crowd scattered along the avenue waiting for a collective taxi to take them to their destinations.

It’s not just a line. It’s an open-air popular assembly, a thermometer of scarcity, and a theater of survival.

The bell rings at a school in Havana, but it doesn’t just announce the start of class — it signals the beginning of another day of endurance.

What is at stake goes beyond scarcity: it’s the emotional memory of an entire society, the trust be-tween generations…

Repeated disasters, yet the promises remain the same: the drains will be cleaned, the networks rehabilitated, and new machinery purchased.

I remember my grandfather pausing in the doorway every time he heard the “Peanut Vendor” coming down the street.

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.