Opinion

I still remember that morning of the first day of the school year, in September 1986. I felt good, waiting for the bus that would take me to the junior high boarding school (7th-9th grade) in the Sandino municipality, over 80 kms from my home, in Pinar del Rio province as well.

I write this as a loser in the Great Cruise Ship Wars in my hometown Key West, Florida— Havana’s sister city to the north. I have witnessed first-hand the virtual destruction of this once-peaceful (if somewhat quirky) island paradise in the turbulent wake of cruise ships.

As I was scrolling through Facebook the other day, I came across the above image, and it instantly struck a chord within me. Created and shared by the Cuban American National Foundation, the picture depicts one of Havana’s five-star hotels with a view of the capitol, which stands in stark contrast to the impoverished surroundings endured by the average Havana resident just a few blocks away.

There is a very high recurrence of cancer in Mayari, which doesn’t seem normal at all. And, there aren’t any leads for people to investigate. On the Internet, I only found out that it figures among the 72 municipalities classified with a Risk I level, of higher incidences, and that Holguin province is above the national average (and surely the global average) and is on the rise.

Racism doesn’t have to be overt or radically expressed as the persecution, slavery and extermination of a race, as these extreme situations are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s what we can’t see that is the most worrying because it isn’t aggressive, it forms a part of our everyday lives.

Cuban author and journalist Hugo Luis Sanchez just made a request to Cuba’s health authorities, calling on them to back the approval of a law which would ban all publicity that encourages the consumption of cigarettes and alcoholic drinks, a growing trend among the country’s youth.