A Lot of Heat in Havana
HAVANA TIMES – According to Physics, the rise in temperature accelerates—or provokes and in some way creates—the right conditions for certain processes, interactions, combinations to occur; in short, things that can bring about new structures, substances, entities…
There is no doubt the planet is heating up. Look at Ukraine, Iran, Russia, Syria, Israel, Gaza, Venezuela… and there is also a lot of heat in Havana.
But the heat in Havana is something different, it’s like a pressurized heat, a vapor. It doesn’t burn, but it crushes, softens, knocks you down. The heat, without electricity, won’t let you sleep at night. Maybe that’s why you think more, and since it’s forced, you start thinking crazy things.
I’m not referring so much to the people in the street, the citizen usually called “de a pie”—meaning one without a private car or one assigned by a company, and who is labeled that way even if he occasionally manages to get on a bus, which, though not a living organism, is now in the final stage of its accelerated extinction process.
What I mean is that the heat is frying the brains of the ministerial intelligentsia, the public officials, the employees of those offices from which directives, regulations, and other legalistic tricks are issued to straighten out messes. Because how else to explain not only the blunders, but the steady frequency with which such things keep appearing on the procedural horizon?
In my neighborhood, many people believe it must be the heat that is abnormally affecting the neural endings of the long-lived and illustrious deans who hold the highest posts. Because how else to explain…? Exactly.
Now, they’re about to double the minimum pensions. The minimum monthly pension was 1,528 pesos—which wasn’t enough to cover even a week’s worth of meager food! Recently, the minimum went up to 3,056, and if anyone thought that solved anything, their Arithmetic is very poor. It’s still not enough to cover even two weeks of minimum expenses for one person. And not only that.
After a few more weeks, since wages have also gone up, prices in the market will rise again, and we’ll be back where we started, if not worse. Ending up “the same” is already a fairly optimistic outcome. But what a marvel! To whom do we award the Nobel Prize in Economics? Or to whom do we now demand a resignation? But, but… does anyone really believe the heat is going to leave Havana?
Ah… Havana! Not to mention all of Cuba—a land of contradictions!
I live in a not-so-large neighborhood on the metropolitan or capital outskirts, and here it’s rare to find a block without two or three sales points of all kinds of things—sometimes several per block—whether imported industrial food products, pastries or drinks, produce markets, clothing, hardware, or services. A pack of cigarettes that just a year ago cost ten pesos now costs nearly six hundred, which might give the impression that the abundance of high-priced sales outlets indicates strong purchasing power… honestly, I can’t explain it. And to top it off, what I see selling the most is beer!
Until just a few weeks ago, in the area where I live, the power would go out—as is reasonable anywhere in Cuba today—but at most, it would be restored in less than half an hour. It was annoying, especially since it could happen up to three times in one day, though not every day… and that was wonderful! Because I heard that in many parts of Havana, the outages lasted four or five hours—not due to breakdowns or maintenance, but as part of a systematic program instituted as something stable, part of the “new normal.”
But the new normal advances. For almost a week now, out of the 24 hours in a day, there has been electricity for barely five or six hours—and not continuously! Nothing like that! And the funniest part: many times, the power comes back at 4:30 in the morning and goes out again at nine a.m. So, if after a hot, sleepless night of mosquitoes, you finally managed to fall asleep at four in the morning and didn’t realize “the power came back” and you stayed “knocked out,” well… you “lost the game.”