14ymedio.com

“I was afraid to bring the water to a boil, in case it set the house on fire given there was so much oil it could be seen floating in the pot,” said Matilde, a resident of José Martí neighborhood, in the Boyeros municipality. Here, as in other places it was necessary to empty the cisterns and clean them and then fill them with water trucks, which meant a waste of thousands of liters of water. Those who have raised tanks had to do the same in their homes.

“The ultimate solution is very complex,” Díaz said, since not only must the section be removed from the affected pipe, but “remove and replace the contaminated the pipe runs through must also be removed and replaced, in order to avoid further contamination, after the reestablishment of the pipeline.”

The most affected areas are Diez de Octubre and Guanabacoa, although some neighbors from other municipalities have said they have received contaminated water despite the fact that, according to the official, the pumping of water stopped when the incident was reported.

This decision, which had to be taken unexpectedly, surprised many. Usually when a planned repair is made, a notice is sent to the residents so that they can store some water to deal with at least the  first 24 hours, but in this case they took most of those affected by surprise and on Monday, as they say,they were  who were still on Monday, as they say, “asking for water by signs.”

The neighborhoods of Plaza, Centro Habana, La Habana Vieja and Cerro have been partially affected the supply problems, although the breakdown occurred in the courtyard of the Basic Provincial Electric Organization of the Cuban capital, in Boyeros.

Díaz said that approximately half of the cisterns that had been filled with contaminated water have been cleaned and have been replenished by tanker trucks. In addition, he said, the population receives water from pipes “of optimum quality and suitable for consumption, which is constantly supported by the analysis of the specialized laboratories” of the state company.

This Sunday cuts and alterations in the supply were announced in several municipalities and districts of Havana, some of which will last until Monday or even next Wednesday.

The problems that the capital has suffered for decades with the water supply have even changed its face. Storage tanks proliferate on rooftops, many residents have invested in building tanks on the ground floors and the sound of electric motors lifting water to the upper floors is part of the city’s inseparable noises.

In the most affected neighborhoods, residents must travel several times a week to other areas that still have water supplies, and from there they can carry home water in tanks, buckets and other containers. A special cart made of wood with bearing wheels (popularly known as “ball boxes”) is used to carry the containers.

The so-called “water thieves” have also proliferated in the last half century, with electric pumps that suck the liquid from the central pipes when the lack of pressure or poor supply does not allow it to reach the interior of the houses. In all cases, the costs of installing tanks, making tanks and buying these pumps fall to the resident’ account, something that is complicated in buildings with a greater number of apartments where collecting common money is sometimes not an easy task.

_______________________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

“Yesterday a lady came from the fines office to very kindly tell me that if I did not pay the fine on February 13, it would be doubled to 6,000 pesos because a month has already passed. But the point is that I am in criminal proceedings now, I showed him them the bail  and everything and they can’t condemn me twice for the same thing, I didn’t even know that about the fine because I didn’t sign anything at the station. The lady says she doesn’t understand it either but she tells me that the fine is there and I have to pay it,” the reporter explained.

On January 8, the police conducted a police search of Hernández’s house during which she was arrested and threatened. At the end of the search the officers confiscated several personal and other work items.

“They already took my phone and the computer under that law [370], they didn’t give me any receipt, which is totally illegal. I only know that my complaint is number 1305. And then they have taken my things it’s the same as if it were a case of receiving, ” she explained.

“I am going to denounce that, it is not going to be of any use because we live in a dictatorship, but for the record that there are no rights for anyone in this country. There is already too much abuse and one is totally helpless, they will not silence me ever, they have already done it to Nancy Alfaya, Boris González, they will not stop.”

On January 13, the reporter presented the authorities with several documents that give account of the unlawful seizure of her computer, cellphone and the other objects confiscated during the search, but in the police station the officers did not want to accept them.

“It is obvious that they do this because of my work with independent media, it is what they do with us, repress, always repress,” she denounced.

The Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) called on the Government to immediately withdraw the accusations against the reporter and to have her work equipment returned.

“The Cuban authorities must immediately withdraw their false charges against journalist Iliana Hernández and stop threatening to file a criminal proceeding,” said Natalie Southwick, the coordinator of the CPJ Central and South America Program.

“Working for independent media and possessing basic equipment to practice journalism is not a crime. The Cuban authorities must return Hernández’s computer and telephone, and allow her to work freely,” Southwick said.

Since December 2018, Iliana Hernández has been a contributor to CiberCuba, and also presents live broadcasts on the networks of that portal to comment on the news.

Decree 370 establishes broad control by the Government over the internet. It does this through regulating the use of new technologies, greater supervision over wireless networks and strict limits for online content publishing. The sanctions include not only the fine, but also the confiscation of the equipment and means used, the removal of the license authorizing the provision of network administration services temporarily or permanently, and the closing of the facilities.

When Decree 370 went into effect it set off a broad condemnation by international organizations linked to freedom of expression and also numerous criticisms from activists and independent journalists. Especially, among those media that have taken advantage of the emergence of new technologies to create a news space parallel to the official press.

_________________________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Olivia is lucky because her house is located just three blocks from that Western Union office, one that “almost never has a line,” she says. The issue of the line is vital, because in other more central offices, such as the one located in the Carlos III Plaza, people can wait hours to collect a remittance. “Between the time my sister calls me to tell me that she sent the dollars and and the time I collect the convertible pesos they give me, not an hour goes by,” says Olivia.

By a family agreement, the second floor of the house under construction will be for Olivia’s sister, so she sends an average of 200 dollars a month that guarantees her a place to stay if she visits Havana or returns to live on the Island. It has the clearest “Western Union” style: a bathroom with black tiles and a golden border, a large bathtub, a tiny balcony with a balustrade in the shape of small woman’s torsos and a cement lion at the entrance.

Unlike the architectural glamor of the areas built to the west of the city in the first half of the twentieth century, neighborhoods rebuilt through remittances often combine marginality and coquetry; streets deteriorated for decades and without paving, lined with facades of bright colors and floors that grow on narrow foundations like towers that stretch towards the sky. Some remain half-done for years, if the flow of dollars needed to finish them is cut off.

Although the US authorities recently imposed a limit of $ 1,000 per person per quarter for remittances to Cuba, most of those who live on that money on the Island do not need to exceed that amount. “When I started construction, they had to send me more money to buy the materials, but it’s very easy, one part was sent to me by my sister, another by my brother-in-law and the rest by the mother of my brother-in-law,” explains Olivia.

In the neighborhood where this young woman lives — who “neither studies nor works,” she says almost proudly — you can guess which are the homes that receive remittances. “This one across the street has two children in Miami and in the one on the corner with the newly painted balcony, only the grandparents remain in Cuba,” Olivia offers.

In this neighborhood there is no sound  more precious than that of a telephone announcing the consignment. “Sometimes I’m like a crazy person waiting to be able to pay the electricity or to buy some food and then my mother calls me and my soul returns to my body,” says Samuel, 34, an engineer who became a bicycle repairman, who also resides in the vicinity of the remittance office.

“Since my children were born, their grandmother sends them the money it takes to maintain the supply of milk and food. They are the children of Western Union because without that I don’t know how we could raise them and ever since they were little they have gone with us to collect the money, so they recognize the office even with the light off,” he jokes. “Here, those yellow and black colors are the colors of economic relief.”

Walking along Calle Primelles, also en el Cerro, is like traveling a route along which the remittances flow from the nearby Western Union office. “This house used to be wonderful but the owners do not receive money and it’s falling over,” explains Damian, 41, as, like an ancient guide, he points out the details of the buildings on the busy road where he lives. “This room is barely a closet because only one person can live there but they’ve made it like a dollhouse with the money the owner sends,” he adds.

Faded facade: no remittances; a freshly varnished wooden door: a recipient of dollars. A fence full of rust: no family abroad; a bright blue plastic water tank on a rooftop: relatives in Miami. One could travel the whole street and identify, with a large percentage of success, who does and who does not frequently go to the office to collect a money transfer.

The giant Western Union is not only the global leader of money transfers and a very popular path in Latin America to receive remittances from migrants based in the United States, but, in the Cuban case, it is through these offices the the largest amount of the 3.5 billion dollars that annually cross the Florida Straits arrives, according to data offered by The Havana Consulting Group, based in Miami. However, it is impossible to assess the total money that arrives in Cuba in the form of remittances, because a large part comes in informally with travelers and ‘mules’ who frequently make the journey between Cuba and the United States.

The campaign known as the January break , arising from the exile, promoted a temporary cut in remittances, trips to the Island and telephone recharges during the first month of the year — as a way to put pressure on the regime to change. But the initiative does not seem to have yielded the expected results. “We have continued to have a good flow of remittances and this place has customers the entire time it is open to the public,” says the employee of a Western Union office in Old Havana.

The neighborhood where Olivia, Damián and Samuel live also clearly manifests that the flow of the lifeblood of remittances has not stopped, a nourishing liquid that flows from the nearby Western Union office: “Saint Western Union” as some call it with a mixture of humor and resignation.

______________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Launched on Twitter by Norges Rodríguez, coordinator and co-founder of the YucaByte project, the hashtag has a certain air of a desperate scream. For Havanans who must travel the streets with extreme care to avoid the gaps in the sidewalks and keep track of the dangers that may come from the heights, new technologies are another route that adds to the traditional verbal or bureaucratic demands.

At the end of 2018, Vivian Rodríguez Salazar (General Director of Housing) reported that 39% of the buildings were in substandard conditions. “There is a deficit of 929,695 homes; about 527,000 of them have to be built and 402,000 rehabilitated.”

With the arrival of the web browsing service to mobile phones, in December 2018, there have been several citizen initiatives that have taken over hashtags and signature collections, but #PeligroDerrumbeCuba is perhaps the one that can involve a the greatest number of people throughout the Island and especially in the most populated cities.

Ernesto, a resident of Industria Street in Havana is one of them. “Here at the corner there is a building that could collapse any of these days. Those from the Government say that there aren’t any cranes but it hurts to see how for the hotel they are building there behind Obispo Street if there is a crane available there 24-hours a day,” regrets the young man, who has chosen to load his complaint to Facebook.

In a nearby tenement, the neighbors climb the battered staircase built at the beginning of the last century and propped up in several areas.

“When I was a child, it was already like this and I thought that my daughters were not going to have to live with the terror that the building would collapse while they were sleeping, but I already have grandchildren and everything is the same and worse,” laments Clarisa, a resident of a damaged tenement on Zanja street near Infanta. The woman has taken photos of the interior of the building so that her teenage grandson can help her upload them to the internet.

“Here we have done everything, we have made demands of the delegate of the Popular Power, written letters to the State Council and even hired a brigade with our own money to help us with the most serious things, but this building is a ruin and it needs to be demolished and something else built,” the woman tells 14ymedio.

But neither relocation nor demolition arrive. At the entrance of the building two small children play outside under the fragility of the upper floor with dangerous cracks that run through the entire facade. “A few days ago part of the plaster fell from above and luckily at that time no one was passing but this is a time bomb,” laments another neighbor.

Along Zanja Street, many of the passers-by prefer to walk in the street despite the traffic. “No, I don’t walk along the sidewalk even if they force me, because at least I can see the cars coming, but if a piece of the wall falls from there, I have no way to react in time,” says a woman with two children who is working near Lealtad Street. “I have taught my children that they can’t stop looking up.”

While talking, she passes two tourists who are taking photos of building with art nouveau architecture with floral ornaments and some of its steel exposed by the deterioration. Visitors approach, look for their best angles and raise their cameras to take one of the many thousands, millions of images, of a city in ruins.

“They should warn tourists to be careful about collapses because they walk very calmly through these streets, but those of us who live here take precautions,” says a pedicab driver who expects new clients in the vicinity of Chinatown. “It seems like fun to them, but it’s one thing to pass by and another to live in one of those houses when you don’t know when it’s going to fall.”

The young man, from Ciego de Ávila, knows about the #PeligroDerrumbeCuba initiative through social networks. “As soon as I manage to buy a data package I will upload some photos that I have, because I spend the day traveling around the city and I know where the worst places are, although I also know where there is not even one collapse,” he says wryly.

The deterioration does not affect all neighborhoods equally. To the west, the areas with villas, mansions and gardens contrast with the overcrowding and deterioration of Centro Habana, Cerro, Luyanó, San Miguel del Padrón or Guanabacoa. When you live between the wide roads of Miramar or in the exclusivity of Atabey, the cracks in the walls and the busted septic tanks seem somewhat distant.

“That is the line of the Almendares [River]. It is not the same to live on this side here, where a balcony falls on your head or you fall into a hole and break a leg, as it is to reside on the other side,” details the pedicab driver. Beyond the river, where the wealthy classes live, the mapping of the deterioration mapping shows almost no red dots.

In the place where three days ago three girls died, buried under the huge stones of a collapsed balcony, the residents keep talking about that tragedy. All those who lifted those small bodies from among the stones could not sleep that first night, nor the second.

“I had to give my husband a pill that night, he couldn’t sleep,” said a young woman this Friday at the base of the wall where there are still gifts that many neighbors have left where that tragedy happened. “This has been very hard, it is necessary that nobody forgets what happened this January 27th in the neighborhood of Jesus Maria.”

Havana is Collapsing – A Photo Essay: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
__________________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.