The collapse of a state cafeteria leaves an extensive reservoir of building materials for the scavengers
14ymedio, Havana, Natalia López Moya, October 14, 2025 — Matter is neither created nor destroyed, it only changes hands. What until recently was a state cafeteria, which was left in ruins after a tragic collapse, is now the main reservoir of steel bars, gravel and pieces of wood from a neighborhood with serious construction problems. At the corner of Galiano and San Rafael, in Centro Habana, scavengers carry everything they can pull from the rubble of Café Boulevard. Anything can be used to repair another house or sell on the black market.
“They have been carrying away everything like ants,” the employee of a nearby parking lot for motorcycles and tricycles tells 14ymedio. He has seen the remains of the property parading past in the hands of the most needy. The collapse of the ceiling of the state business, in mid-August, claimed the life of an employee working on the ground floor. On that day, the exterior of the Café Boulevard and the cracked upper part still exhibited doors, windows and even clothes laid out on the balconies.
However, in less than two months the pieces that can be used to prop up a barbacoa (loft) or as a hot plate for cooking have been disappearing from the structure. “Some things were taken by the owners before they left, but others have been cannibalized at night and in the early hours, the same people who live here,” explains the employee.” I have seen toilet seats, complete blinds, electric cables and many planks of wood.”
If in nature scavengers remove cadavers from the environment and recycle them, in the Cuban capital the scavengers sweep through any ruin, empty the wide rooms that once had walls, grab the bidet from the old bathroom of the stately house that fell with the last rains and skillfully remove the bricks from a facade. Like their peers in nature, they are guided by noise and smell: the shouting that comes after the collapse of some pillars and the stench of moisture that spreads through the debris of a collapsed building.
In a couple of months, it is very likely that, on the corner of Galiano and San Rafael, there will remain only some unadorned pillars and the memory of shared laughter, conversation and beer.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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