New Reasons for Cubans to Leave: Safety and Health Crises
They are not driven by the desire for economic improvement, because they have lived for years in the bubble of receiving remittances in foreign currency
HAVANA TIMES – She decided to pack her bags in less than 24 hours. It was a Tuesday. Gladys had gone out with a friend and left her house “as always, tightly locked.” When she returned, the door of the apartment on Ayestarán Street in the municipality of Cerro had been forced and the television, a cordless phone, some food in the refrigerator and other personal belongings had disappeared. “That same day I called my son in Miami and told him to get me the [humanitarian] parole,” she recalls.
After several weeks of police investigation, the pensioner has lost hope that the thieves will be caught and has had to ask a niece to stay overnight with her. “I’m afraid to be at home, that had never happened to me before, but now when I’m alone I even get palpitations. You can’t live like this.” The insecurity that is spreading throughout the island has become, in recent years, a new reason for emigrating.
Gladys was one of those who swore up and down that she did not want to start a new life in another country, far from the house where she was born 67 years ago. “I lived comfortably, because if I asked my son to fly away, he would send me away, but it is no longer a question of money, I am leaving because the next time they come into my house, if I am inside, they will kill me.” This week she auctioned off some appliances and, with the parole already approved, she is only waiting for the travel permit to get on the plane.
Low crime was portrayed for decades as one of the social achievements of the political model imposed in Cuba 65 years ago. Like all authoritarianism, with an extensive network of controls, vigilantes, informers, political police and repressive bodies, the Havana regime was very effective in detecting and neutralizing criminal groups, gangs and even lone wolves planning a robbery or some other misdeed. Security was, according to an independent journalist, a collateral benefit of the dictatorship.
However, that sensation that one could walk through any Cuban neighborhood in the early morning without fear of being assaulted or murdered has long since disappeared. Doors and windows have been covered with bars, people keep a machete, a crowbar or a metal pipe somewhere in their house to defend themselves from any invasion by thieves and scoundrels. People avoid going out at night, look over their shoulders when they hear footsteps behind them and hide their cell phone in their underwear to avoid it being snatched away.
We Cubans live on tenterhooks, and not just because of insecurity.
Edwin woke up with pain all over his body and a fever. He had been suffering from constant mosquito bites for several days due to a huge pool of stagnant water in the corner of his building that has served as a breeding ground for the Culex insect and the gnats that fly freely through the Havana neighborhood of Lawton where he lives. “I spent almost a month without being able to even get out of bed,” he explains.
“When I felt worse, I decided to go to the Polyclinic, but that day there was no doctor on duty, only a nurse trying to care for almost ten patients with similar symptoms.” Edwin had tried, by every possible means, not to get infected: “I live locked up, I have air conditioning, mesh on the windows, I never go out at dawn or dusk, which they say is when mosquitoes bite the most, because at 71 years old and with diabetes, any illness can become quite complicated for me.”
But the game of hide and seek didn’t work. “I caught the Oropouche and I had a tough time.” Lying down, with shivers running through his body, one thought kept coming back to him: “I can’t stay in this country, where there aren’t even any aspirin.” When the virus allowed him to get up, he started selling some electrical appliances and auctioned off his Lada car. “I already have the money for the ticket to Spain. Years ago I got my passport through my father and my daughter lives in Madrid, so I’m leaving.”
Epidemiological problems and the deterioration of the Public Health system have been, in his case, the main reasons for leaving the Island. “The puddle on the corner will still be there and I can’t lock myself in a glass box so the mosquitoes don’t bite me and the next time I go to the Polyclinic, there won’t even be a nurse because she left on a raft.”
A year ago, neither Gladys nor Edwin had any plans to live anywhere else, but this summer they had reached their “breaking point.” They were not driven by the desire for better economic conditions, because both have lived for years in the bubble of receiving remittances in foreign currency and enjoying their own home. They packed their bags to escape the violence and unsanitary conditions. It is the knives and filth that are the reason they are shortly boarding a plane.