Every year, the residents of the Cuban capital comment, “Havana is falling to pieces,” as they travel the city looking at places where the doorways are held up with bracing, the roofs are crumbling, buildings that don’t have tourist hotels for neighbors, or something to do with the economic growth of the country, that gives them the advantage of being repaired every now and then, to avoid an unfavorable view in the tourist center and to beautify the area.
The architects who work in the area have a set response for the inhabitants of any building in moderate condition — this place is in danger of collapse — and no advice for people other than to go to a shelter and wait for the government to “make them a house.” Total bullshit because those who have unfortunately lost their homes to natural disasters have experienced the shelters first hand; a place to resign yourself to despair, or to make the fatal decision to return to the home that was once, apart from its irreplaceable usefulness, a place you might be lucky enough to live if the building didn’t fall in, praying every day to your favorite object of worship.
So then, who’s to blame? Perhaps the inhabitants for continuing to live in the building having been alerted to the danger of being there. Or the government, for not having more options to offer besides the public shelters for the citizens who have had the bad experience of passing through the governments careless hands like sheep.
Lying and deception are very deep wounds that psychologically affect human beings, robbing them of their reason to see the danger, the value of life, or the risks and the luck factor.
23 January 2011
