What’s Left of Regla, Havana
By Miguel Sanchez
HAVANA TIMES — I was born across Havana Bay in Regla, where I lived until I got married. Baptized “The Little Mountain” by the then president Fidel Castro, it was a beautiful, well-maintained and happy town.
What happened then? You only have to take a quick look at the town center to get a rough idea. The building that the government now occupies had scaffolding up for nine months so they could plaster and paint it, according to official sources. However, the wooden scaffolding rotted, due to rain, dew and sun.
To give you just one more example, the Guaicanamar park in Regla doesn’t have park custodians anymore; it’s marble benches no longer exist; its streetlights are broken and some of them are dark. Dirt can be seen absolutely everywhere, however, the most painful thing to see is Miguel Coyula’s statue, the great architect from Regla, which is practically broken.
The town’s other statues, like that of our apostle Marti and the smaller monument dedicated to all those who lost their lives in Giron, are so dirty that the stone, which was once gleaming, now shines just as black as the gravestone where their names appear. It’s pure neglect and a complete lack of respect.
Not to mention the Cespedes Theater, only its structure remains and the memory of what it once meant to the people of Regla. The State has assigned a budget to Cuban municipalities for protecting and conserving their monuments and institutions. Where does this budget go in the town of Regla? What results have been made? What is the pitiful amount that they give us that we’re not even able to have park custodians and filth breeds everywhere?
It’s with great sadness that I must confess that Fidel’s “Little Mountain” is today a vague and sad memory of what was once our beloved town of Regla.
For fifty five long years, all the faults, errors, omissions and incompetence of the Castro regime have been attributed by that regime to the US embargo incorrectly described by them and communist supporters as a “blockade”.
So now gogrri you are attributing the collapsing buildings, failing electricity supplies, leaking water supplies, inability to grant planning permissions, racism practiced on the streets of Havana by the State Police (MININT), food shortages, inability to brew sufficient beer, old age pensions of 200 pesos per month all upon the embargo. Fidel and Raul would welcome you into their Fagin’s den! You might even be invited as a guest for a cruise upon Aquamara II and a stay on Cayo Piedra respectively Fidel’s yacht and two island retreat. While sitting there in luxury you can assess the “prioritis(z)ing spending” as you call it, of the regime.
There is no problem in not only maintaining but enhancing parks and statues funded by the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of Cuba. Go and take a look at Santa Clara! The embargo cannot be credited for that can it?
There is no problem in constructing new housing for the State Police (MININT).
Put simply gogrri your opinion doesn’t bear scrutiny!
It is called prioritising spending – health and education for the living come before statues of the dead. When the US ends it illegal blockade perhaps the economy will recover sufficiently to restore the parks and statues to their former glory.
Cuba has been allowed to crumble for fifty seven years.