A New Cultural Center for Cojimar, Havana

By Nike

HAVANA TIMES – Cojimar hasn’t had a cultural center for more than thirty years. The old one was based in an old colonial house on Real Street, one of the neighborhood’s main streets. All of the buses that used to connect Cojimar with the rest of the city used to drive down that road: the 94 to Regla, the 77 to Guanabacoa, the 71 to Casa Blanca, the 26 which covered the route to Alamar and the 58 to Havana city center.

After the 1990s, only the 58 and 26 carried on running and are still running today. I’m telling you this because my town used to be a lot better connected with the rest of the city with all of these old bus routes, and teachers and experts would come from all over Havana to our cultural center.

However, with the Special Period and the disappearance of these bus routes, getting to Cojimar became a lot more difficult. This led to our cultural center being forgotten and the abandoned building gradually fell to pieces until it was nothing but ruins.

Walking around Cojimar a few days ago, I discovered two signs written with red paint on the facade of one of the oldest and best preserved houses in the neighborhood (which used to be a primary school for many years, although it has been neglected for 10 years or so), saying that it would be the new Cultural Center.

The house that was chosen seems like a perfect fit for me, which is why I would like to share some of its history with you. The house belonged to a family from the 1930s up until the 1950s. They were the More family. The principal owner owned different plots of land in Cojimar. They were the first ones to have a TV set in Cojimar, and they would invite neighbors to their home in the evening so they could enjoy the first TV broadcasts in Cuba.

However, the thing that encourages me the most with this old house being transformed into a new “Cultural Center” are the social repercussions it will have. There hasn’t been a place in Cojimar for many years where people, especially children and young people, can go and spend their free time. You can appreciate this when you see young people spending most of their time sitting on street corners without doing anything.

I was so happy when I saw that this house was going to become the new cultural center that I wanted to share the news with Havana Times readers.