An Ordinary Day in Today’s Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – I want to show you, through this photo feature, the daily life of ordinary Cubans and the habits they adopt to survive in this country—what I see when I walk the streets of my town, Cojímar, on the outskirts of Havana. Some of the photos are marked by misery, which, to me, reflects what my country has become.
There are various ways people earn a living doing different jobs—if they can even be called jobs. There are the so-called buzos (divers), who search through garbage bins to collect anything they think they can sell. In this case, it was two men picking up plastic bottles. They take them home, wash them, and sell them to be refilled with yogurt, vinegar, dry wine, dish detergent, cleaning products—anything can be repackaged in those bottles retrieved from the trash, without any hygiene. None of these buzos have sterilization equipment at home—it’s a complete third-world disaster.
Another common practice is to go to the sea to wash out trash bins after emptying them. Many people do it without paying attention to where and they don’t care. There are small tide pools where children bathe, and I’ve told people several times not to wash trash bins there, but they just say it’s harmless.
And when people drink a bottle of rum, they smash it against the rocks—total chaos. We end up going to the beach to pick up broken glass, beer cans. Yesterday, there were compact discs at the bottom of the sea, we dove down and tossed them into the trash. Why is there a need to do these things? Cubans have become insensitive and careless, as if nothing matters… but we don’t have to give in to the disaster—that’s the easy way out.
There used to be a bookstore in my town. It was closed for about three years. The young woman who worked there told me they were going to move it to the Pan American Village to another building because the roof needed repairs and there were no materials to fix it. This made me sad, because I had bought very good books and records there, as had my parents and grandparents.
A few days ago, I walked by and found the bookstore open again, still unrepaired, with a strong smell of mildew. There was a man sitting and reading a book, and he greeted me kindly. He explained that he himself was going to repair and paint it. His job is maintenance at the location. He had some books on display and said he would open every weekday from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. I was very happy to see the Félix Varela bookstore reopen. In the midst of all this chaos, that surreal moment greatly surprised and delighted me—I even bought a few books.
This was always a fishing village, and its people reaffirm that identity with great pride. With the mass exodus, there are hardly any boats or skiffs left in the fishing cooperative—and those that remain are very expensive. So people who need to fish to survive build small boats out of polystyrene sheets. They collect pieces, glue them together with tar, and I’ve always been struck by their square shape. They go out fishing at night and return in the morning—with or without a catch. They spend the whole night at sea. It’s another way to make a living and get food, and if they catch enough they sell the fish.
In the park, every morning there’s an elderly man who sits on a bench and sells things like a Polish Fiat starter motor and some tools.
Today, for the town’s anniversary, some veterinarians came to sterilize dogs and cats for free. Many people showed up with their pets to take advantage of the opportunity. On a table at a café on the same street, two women were selling various items—medicines, toys, and pet food—at very high prices. The only thing I saw someone buy was a flea and tick liquid that is applied to a dog’s back and is very effective.
This is an ordinary day in a Cuban town, with its people doing their best to survive.