A Building on Reina Street, Havana

By Juan Suarez

HAVANA TIMES — The tenants of building 59 on Reina Street, Centro Habana face a terrible nightmare: a mountain of garbage that has built up on the ground floor of the building over the years, replete with rats and every imaginable, disease-carrying vermin, a place that has seen outbreaks of dengue and other diseases and no prospects of a solution.

The tenants claim that they have approached the government, the neighborhood representative and several other officials with their complaints, but that no one can do anything because the key to the ground floor locale (which was once a pharmacy and is today a condemned section of the building) has gone missing and they can’t get inside. The residents had already decided they would clean it themselves, but they can’t. Without the key, it’s impossible.

What’s both curious and funny about this situation is that, to the left of the building’s main entrance is the Citizen Services Office of the Centro Habana Municipal People’s Power Assembly, or so says the sign over the entrance, next to a photo of Fidel Castro. To the right is the old pharmacy with two small locks that keep its doors shut.

My question is: is it so hard to bust the two doors open? Do we need to wait for someone to die before anything is done to clean up the place?

Below are my photos of the place.

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