As every January, detours and road closures caused chaos in Havana’s traffic
14ymedio, Jorge Lassa, Havana, 28 January 2025 — A wave of olive-green caps flooded the steps of the University of Havana on Monday night. At the foot of the famous statue of the Alma Mater – once a symbol of education and civility on the island – Army officers and cadets shouted their way through the crowd, which was preparing to begin the Torch March.
In Miguel Díaz-Canel’s Havana, very little remains of the Martí symbolism that inspired the first march in January 1953. At that time, a group of university students, including Fidel Castro – who claimed the idea of the candles came from the future cultural commissioner Alfredo Guevara – and his brother Raúl, invented a ceremony with religious overtones to remember José Martí on his centenary.
Now, Havana residents are clear that the focus of the March is on the North. “They didn’t talk much about Martí, they talked about Trump and the list of countries sponsoring terrorism,” a disappointed young woman from the Federation of University Students (FEU) told 14ymedio, as she joined the rapid exodus at the end of the ceremony. The slogan for this occasion says it all: “always anti-imperialist.”
Instead of the torch with sharp nails that Raúl Castro supposedly held that night – they were expecting Fulgencio Batista’s repression, which never came – what was waved this Monday was a puny Cuban flag. It is enough to look at photos of past marches to see the decline of the nonagenarian general, as consumed by decades in power as Ramiro Valdés or José Ramón Machado Ventura, who escorted it yesterday. This is the 72nd march that he has attended.
The March turned Havana into total chaos for several hours. “There was too much traffic detour. I think they went too far,” another of the young people who had a hard time getting to the university esplanade told this newspaper. “From Boyeros and Carlos III there were already caballitos (police cars) directing traffic. When you went down G you couldn’t turn right at either 25th or 23rd. It was almost when I got to Línea that I was able to turn right. They had ‘reserved’ several blocks.”
In a country that has been mired in a worrying fuel crisis for over a year, there was no shortage of means to transport the students who were going to participate in the event. The caravan of vehicles stretched along 23rd Street in El Vedado.
Since this was, in theory – and despite the strong military presence – a university event, the main attendees were students from the University of Havana, the Sports Institute (Inder), the Technological University (Cujae) and the University of Computer Sciences (UCI). A student from the Rosalía Abreu pre-university in Cerro told this newspaper that he attended because he was one of the “five who ‘got hooked’ for each classroom.”
“A friend of mine came too,” he added. “At least we went out, bought a bottle and walked around after the march.”
The students were greeted on the esplanade by a heated atmosphere in which the usual voices predominated – through loudspeakers: Buena Fe, Silvio Rodríguez, Sara González, Pablo Milanés. The voice of Annie Garcés – the singer who, despite the sponsorship of the regime, does not connect with Cubans – frightened many of those who were waiting for the start of the march.
Cadets from the Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior – some of them completely disregarding their uniforms, to emphasize the “informality” of the call – cordoned off the area, whose buildings had been recently painted, even those that are in danger of collapse.
Until the speeches, the scene was that of a party, with dancing and drinking. The media speak of “thousands of young people” in the march, but the escapes in every street or corner quickly decimated the procession. “There were people who left on L Street,” near the university itself, one of the “escaped” confessed to 14ymedio.
“In the past, at 7:00 pm there was not room for a single person more in the square,” he added. “Now, nobody cares that Raúl and Díaz-Canel were there.” As usual, there are burnt shoes and shirts from the march, which accidentally fell on the pavement. There are also piles of cans strung on sticks, stinking of gasoline, thrown into the streets of El Vedado. These are the remains of the “Martí torches.”
Between blackouts and shortages, the general mood is not one for ceremonies. So much so that the headline on the front page of Granma this Tuesday – which shows Havana illuminated with powerful LED lights, through whose streets the top brass of the regime marches – sounds like a joke or a protest: “The light that Cuba always needs.”
