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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.

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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
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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.

Some people are just happy not to be sweating all the time. Many look upon this time of year as “the season of love,” when couples can enjoy cuddling more. It also gives those who own imported coats or winter accessories the opportunity to show off a garment that would otherwise spend all year in the closet.

Many parents choose not to send their children to school when temperatures drop below 20 degrees. Absenteeism increases dramatically as getting out of a warm bed becomes a herculean effort for many schoolchildren and workers, especially for those with jobs that require them to be outdoors, in factories or guarding the exteriors of government buildings.

Perennially popular beaches and swimming pools empty out. Households use less water as many residents opt to forego showers, a relief to those families who in recent weeks have experienced serious disruptions in their water supply due to widespread repairs.

The line at the always busy Coppelia ice cream emporium gets shorter while shops that sell coffee or hot chocolate see increased demand. Owners of privately owned restaurants seize the opportunity to offer more stews, black beans and hot creams. At family dinner tables soup takes center stage, which helps to stretch servings of meat or chicken. Those who do not have access to either resort to using instant bouillon cubes or bones.

In light of the current low temperatures, animal welfare activists have asked for donations of clothing to help protect stray dogs and cats. Several private organizations have redoubled efforts to find and shelter animals abandoned in the streets.

The lowest figure recorded by the Cuban Meteorological Institute was 6.6 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) at the Ciego de Avila weather station.

Two stations also recorded their lowest temperatures ever. One of them was in Veguitas, in Granma province, where it reached 7 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit). The last time temperatures in the province were this low was in January 1977 at a weather station in Jacarito.

The other weather station that set a record was in Manzanillo, also in Granma province, at 10.1 degrees, significantly lower than its previous record of 12 degrees, also set on January 21, in 1977.

Another low was recorded at a weather station on Isla de la Juventud, equal only to the 7.7 degrees reached on January 20, 1977.

The newspaper ADN reported that a man died of hypothermia in Villa Clara, an unprecedented event in the province. Published reports indicate, however, that the deceased, a 54-year-old resident of Remate de Ariosa, had alcohol-related problems and fell asleep in the open air after allegedly ingesting large amounts of alcohol, a combination favorable to developing hypothermia.

The man’s body, partially shielded by the statue of a a crab, was found by workers at a gas station in Caibarien, a town that has seen temperatures fall to as low as 11 degrees.

Traditionally, those most vulnerable during these cold fronts have been elderly persons who live alone and homeless people who sleep in parks and doorways. But travelers who wait at bus stations before dawn, and patients at hospitals and mental institutions can also fall prey.

In January 2010 low temperatures and administrative neglect led to the death of twenty-six patients at a psychiatric hospital in Havana known as Mazorra. Images of their emaciated, abused bodies were quickly circulated by cell phones, which were already becoming common in Cuban life at the time.

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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.

“For the naive, for the uninformed, for those who still believe that the media war against Cuba is a digital story, for those who believe everything they read on Facebook, this is the list with the most reactionary sites,” said the post about Cuban radio. The comment was subsequently deleted but Silvio Rodríguez does not say if this decision was also the product of a “guidance” from the CCP.

The troubadour’s comment comes when the workers of the publications mentioned in that list have reported an attack on their pages.

Many of the media names by Radio Progreso have been blocked for years in the national servers of the Island such as the digital newspapers, Cubanet, 14ymedio, Diario de Cuba or others such as ADN Cuba and the magazines El Estornudo and Tremenda Nota.

This is not the case of Barrio Periodismo, La Joven Cuba, El Toque and OnCuba News which, in general, have been accessible. However, from this weekend until early Monday, these media now included on this “blacklist” could not be accessed.

Manuel Henríquez Lagarde, director of the official CubaSí website, was the first to make the list public, when, on January 16, he listed the 20 websites “that usually assume an open stance against the Revolution, or that, from pseudo-revolutionary positions usually coincide with the policies (…) of the United States Government against Cuba.”

At the beginning of last year the digital magazine Tremenda Nota, which deals with minority issues and the LGBT agenda on the Island, joined the list of blocked sites the same week that the Government held the referendum on the constitution.

Although, in general, the media on the list have mostly reacted by criticizing the censorship of information and showing their solidarity with the others, the editors of La Joven Cuba regretted that some official voices “insist” on placing them in that position: “Where we do not want be, nor will we be.”

La Joven Cuba  joined in the past campaigns against the independent blogosphere that got started on the Island in 2007; in La Joven Cuba’s pages ample space was given to official campaigns that labeled critics as “CIA agents” and instruments of the “media war against Cuba.”

The strange thing is the casual and even mocking tone of the man who is presented as Panter when he talks about his use of marijuana and cocaine. The same sense of manipulation is suggested by his statements about the role of activist Ana Olema Hernández, who is pointed out as the head of the entire operation and who sent about $600 to Panter through Western Union, a not very discreet way of financing a clandestine operation.

To confirm their accusations, the report shows proof of bank transfer receipts, allegedly made by Hernández and her husband. Both allegedly sent more than $1,000 to Cuba to finance “enemy activities,” $600 of it for graffiti.

As an opponent, Cuban television labels Hernández a person who is “at the service of the United States Government and the anti-Cuban mafia based in Florida,” and accusers her of having links with “counterrevolutionary and terrorist” organizations and therefore being a “puppet of subversion” involved in causing “disorders.”

Ana Olema Hernández denied the accusations, which she described as false, through her social networks. “It is impossible to give credit to a report made by a press in the service of a dictatorship, with some interviewees, who are not being interviewed, but after days and days under interrogation, in the dungeons of State Security, are forced, God knows under what threat, to say anything.”

The opponent added that she would be proud “to support any civil and civic resistance movement in Cuba” but that, in her opinion, “that movement was born within Cuba spontaneously.”

Guillermo Mendoza, arrested for owning the phone with which Rodriguez and Prieto’s actions were filmed, and Jorge Ernesto Pérez, Panter’s cousin, also appear in the video. The latter is accused of maintaining communication with Hernández. In addition, both painted posters with the slogan “I vote no” against the constitutional reform last year; all this according to the official version.

“There were containers with pig blood in them. In the case of citizen Panter, a search was made in the garage where objects containing substances that were established to be drugs, specifically cocaine, were found,” said an officer interviewed for the report.

Cuban Television has not specified details about the judicial situation of the accused, but refers to the most serious penalties applied in the past to proclaim the virtues of the regime. “It would be possible to reflect that if in a past time eight medical students were unjustly murdered by an alleged outrage to the grave of a Spanish hero, what do these servants deserve? Luckily for them, the Cuban Revolution is fair,” they say.

The video also spares no effort in showing an alleged link between the actions of Clandestinos and the independent media that have reported their activities. El Nuevo Herald, ADN Cuba, Diario de Cuba, Cubita Now and 14ymedio are some of those that appear for having disseminated facts of “such magnitude.” That list coincides with the one of the designated pages that an official blogger recently published and was reproduced by other national information spaces.

The same diagram shows the faces of people, such as Alex Otaola, Aldo Roberto Rodríguez Baquero and actor Roberto San Martín, who had shown support for the actions of Clandestinos.

The group takes its name from a film by Fernando Pérez that addresses the clandestine struggle against Fulgencio Batista’s regime and, since the beginning of its activities, it has been cautious not to give details that allow identifying any of its components.

In the street and on the networks, meanwhile, the debate continues on whether the collctive is a group that genuinely struggles to make visible its protest against the Cuban government or a creation of State Security to link it to the opposition.

See also:

Clandestinos: Outcome and Teachings of a Hoax / Cubanet, Miriam Celaya

The Controversy Over The Identity Of The Clandestinos Is Growing

Clandestinos, Legitimate Protest or Provocation by State Security?

Clandestinos: Heroes or Collateral Damage? / Cubanet, Miriam Celaya

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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.