A resident of San Antonio del Sur confronts Díaz-Canel: “They left us alone”
14ymedio, Havana, 24 October 2024 — Four days after the passage of Hurricane Oscar through northeastern Cuba, there are communities that are still isolated, and it has not been possible to determine a total account of the number of victims. Everything points to the Government’s negligence as one of the causes of the tragedy. “The Defense Council of San Antonio del Sur was not activated in time, and they did not know what they were facing. They were surprised by the overflow of the dam in the middle of the night. The current number of missing people could have been avoided,” says filmmaker Daniel Ross Diéguez, from the city of Guantánamo, in a Facebook post.
At the local government headquarters of the Popular Power, he sent an audio to his friends to which 14ymedio has had access. There is a list of the inhabitants of the municipality of Imías, which remains isolated this Thursday. “The only communication comes from those who went on foot to see what happened,” explains the visual artist, who is also trying to locate several relatives.
“They took notes and put down the names of those who are alive and sent them with someone,” he says. “And so they censor the map of the disappeared.” According to the artist in the same audio, there are 76 missing but there could be more. “The figure is large,” because the coastal municipalities of San Antonio and Imías have a large population. “Many who were able to return say that they saw people climbing the mountains, and we have to start looking for them.”
According to the artist in the same audio, there are 76 missing but there could be more
In the same message, Ross Diéguez criticizes: “There are immediate things that could have been done and were not done, and others that were done too late.” According to his story, days before Oscar’s passage it was reported that its intensity was decreasing, and after the collapse of the electro-energy system on Friday, since there was no connection or news, the inhabitants of those communities were left with the idea that it would not be serious.
“Those people unfortunately didn’t know anything for three days and suddenly began to see a wall of rain.” They realized, at dawn, that water was flooding the houses. Those who could took refuge on the upper floors.
Ross Diéguez explains that the geography of Guantánamo, with thousand-meter high mountains that act as “cloud harvesters,” had a lot to do with the catastrophe. “When a hurricane passes, it retains water and weakens very slowly because it’s hot, and this generates three times the rain that it already brings,” he explains. And so it happened: from the afternoon to the night, between Sunday and Monday, the dams overflowed.
According to the official press itself, the Los Asientos reservoir, in San Antonio del Sur, “overflowed with 17.5 million cubic meters of water.”
“Uunfortunately, the Defense Council could not be activated because there was no electricity,” Ross Diéguez continues, and the Armed Forces (FAR) “were not intelligent.” They could have used a radio that “does not need internet or a connection,” to warn of the dam’s overflow, but they didn’t have one. Nor did they think of reserving fuel to send a vehicle and warn these towns. “People didn’t know what it was; they didn’t understand what was happening to them. Lives could have been saved.”
So far, the official calculation is seven fatalities, six in San Antonio del Sur – including a five-year-old child – and one in Imías.
“We used to complain before, but we had no idea how lost this Government is”
This Thursday, the FAR claims to be chartering helicopters to bring food to areas without access. The shortage of food and the poor organization are also denounced by Ross Diéguez. “There was rice and other food in warehouses that they did not distribute at the time, and it spoiled. “One wonders why they didn’t give that in advance also, if we were starving. Here they still owe* September’s rice,” he claimed.
“We used to complain before, but we had no idea how lost this Government is,” concluded the filmmaker, who recalled the number of crops lost in the Caujerí Valley, “where more fruit is grown in Cuba, where more food is contributed,” he noted, “and not just for export.”
This Thursday, the newspaper Venceremos gave a devastating account of the losses. About 75,000 cans of coffee were lost in Maisí. “All coffee plantations suffered the hurricane’s impact, with damage of different magnitudes,” says the official newspaper, which documents “significant damage” to yams, malanga, cassava, beans and, above all, bananas.
More than 70% of the banana plantations and 3,502 hectares of cocoa in Baracoa “suffered damage, from mild to strong,” as did the 481 hectares of coffee. Another crop that suffered great damage was coconut, in the Güirito-Mata-Guandao basin, “with the collapse of a considerable number of plantations and the loss of production.”
The situation is such that the Central Bank of Cuba has made public several account numbers – in the Banco de Crédito y Comercio (Bandec), in the Banco Popular de Ahorro (BPA) and in the Banco Metropolitano – to receive donations, in pesos, for the victims. “Transfers can be made through electronic payment channels: ATMs, Transfermóvil or by depositing cash at any bank branch,” it says in a statement.
For his part, Miguel Díaz-Canel could clearly hear the summary of what happened in these territories from the mouth of one of its inhabitants, during his official visit to San Antonio del Sur. “They didn’t take all the measures to evacuate us; they left us alone there,” a man reproached him, kind but desperate.
“Who left them alone?” the president asked with a frown, stuttering before the citizen who dared to confront him. “The Government,” replied the good neighbor. “There was no one to rescue us.” The man had to help remove, he said, up to 29 children who were refugees in a school, along with the rest of the population. Díaz-Canel tried to explain: “They took all of you to the school precisely because of the evacuation; what happened is that the phenomenon was worse than expected.” The man insisted that they were left without any equipment to evacuate people “in case the river got in.” The president settled the brief dialogue by promising, “We’ll investigate that.”
*Translator’s note: “Owe” refers to not having distributed the rice sold through the State rationing system, almost certainly because the bodegas (ration stores) had not received the rice.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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