The grass is encroaching on the train tracks and the children’s center is no longer open, but they are calling on us to “celebrate May 1st with joy.”
14ymedio, Havana, Yoani Sánchez, April 30, 2026 — The daycare center in my neighborhood is in ruins. Hardly any children are being born. Although no one has publicly decreed its closure, the gate has rusted since it was last opened, the building is starting to lose its blinds, and a neighbor tells me she hasn’t heard any crying or laughter coming from the center for months.
The place is called Los Pequeños Microbrigradistas (The Little Microbrigade Members) in homage to the thousands of workers who, needing a home, built their own houses in the high-rise buildings of this neighborhood. I can’t imagine a small child trying to pronounce such a phonetically complicated name. I remember how difficult the word “proletarian” was for me. There was no way. My tongue and my soul were all tangled up.
Hanging on the fence of the daycare center this Wednesday was a scribbled piece of cardboard that read, “We joyfully celebrate May 1st.” No one knows who wrote it. Has the old administration of the state-run center returned, among the ruins, to commemorate Labor Day? Is someone, driven by ideological fidelity, trying to divert attention from a space with a great potential to be occupied by homeless families?
Before reaching Los Pequeños Microbrigradistas, I had to cross the train tracks. Whenever I do, I stop for a few seconds, looking both ways, hopeful, to see if a fast, powerful locomotive is approaching, but nothing is heard. Grass has grown between the tracks due to the lack of activity. That vegetation would be the bane of my railway ancestors’ existence. “Don’t let it spread, Yoani, don’t let it spread,” they repeat in my dreams, but there’s little I can do.
Just a few meters away, the state-owned telecommunications monopoly Etecsa has dug a massive hole. In my building, almost no landline phone works. Something burned out, and the lines were cut. The problem is supposedly at the hole where employees in blue uniforms, with their disheartened faces, sometimes work. It couldn’t be more symbolic: a train line without trains and a telephone junction box without a connection. All of this framed by an amazing sky.
The problem with having such a blue sky is that many people can’t believe that beneath such beauty lurks such despair. Tourist postcards have done a great deal of damage. Many assume that living among palm trees and fine sandy beaches guarantees happiness. But beauty and horror, when combined, are worse than a kick in the teeth. Calm sea in Santa María, violence in Villa Marista. Not a cloud on the horizon, blackout behind closed doors.
In my house we haven’t had landline service for months. We barely have mobile phone service, and for a few moments each day, we get a signal that allows us to connect to the internet. Every day we wake up to a new cut, something missing, an amputation of our quality of life. Months ago, we gave up on regular garbage collection, we also said goodbye to the trains at Tulipán station, and tomorrow, we will probably have to say goodbye to something else.
We lose everything except the blue sky. An intense, vibrant hue over a city and a country that are dying.
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Previous Havana Chronicles:
Fatigue Barely Allows One to Enjoy the ‘Lights On’ in Havana
Dollars, the Classic Card, and a Havana Without Tourists
A Journey Through the Lost Names of Havana
The Shipwreck of a Ship Called “Cuba”
Havana Seen From ‘The Control Tower’
In Havana, the Only Ones Who Move Are the Mosquitoes
Reina, the Stately Street Where Garbage is Sold
Searching for Light Through the Deserted Streets of Havana
The Death Throes of ‘Granma’, the Mouthpiece of a Regime Cornered by Crisis
The Anxiety of the Disconnected Cuban
One Mella, Three Mellas, Life in Cuba Is Measured in Thousands of Pesos
It Is Forbidden To Leave Home in Cuba Today Because It Is a “Counter-Revolutionary Day”
Vedado, the Heart of Havana’s Nightlife, Is Now Converted Into a Desert
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