The Carral cinema-theater is one of the buildings that illustrates the town’s decline.
14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo / José Lassa, Havana, 30 March 2024 — Guanabacoa, the Havana town that gave the strongest battle to the English invaders in 1762, has not survived the neglect inflicted by the Revolution or the ravages of time. Home to Santería, famous for its history and its ancient nightlife, and the setting for vibrant, tropical novels, walking its streets today is despairing: the heat and poverty erode every wall.
The Carral cinema/theater is one of the buildings that illustrates the town’s decline. Its striking arches, somewhere between Baroque and Moorish, innocently mimic the grand buildings of the neighboring capital. Now, painted green and blue against a lime background, the building’s doors are closed.
The wide-open balconies on the second floor offer a certain sign of life. Like other buildings, the Carral is prime territory for another invasion, not of the English, but of what the prose of the state newspaper Granma calls “homeless” or “destitute.” Until very recently, however, films were shown inside.
In front of the facade, Jenny recalls that it had been almost 15 years since she last entered El Carral. It was 2011, and Habanastation was premiering, a film that illustrated the differences between rich and poor Cuban children. The widespread poverty that has engulfed the country has quickly rendered the film outdated. “The theater was packed, and there were even people continue reading
Carral and cinema are synonymous in her head. Jenny saw almost every Cuban film of the last 30 or 40 years there. Entre ciclones [Between Cyclones], Zafiros: locura azul [Zafiros: Blue Madness], El Benny, and Amor Vertical, she lists. And others she can’t even remember, plus clown shows, children’s matinees, and all kinds of screenings. “There were no DVDs back then,” she jokes.
There is a painful memory: the day in 1993 when the usher blocked her and a friend’s entrance. A huge line formed in front of the Carral Theater to see the movie. When it was finally their turn to enter, the man pointed to a sign: “Suitable for those over 16 only.” It was the premiere of Fresa y chocolate [Strawberry and Chocolate].
When it was finally their turn to enter, the man pointed to a sign: “Suitable for those over 16 only.” It was the premiere of Fresa y chocolate [Strawberry and Chocolate].
As a young woman in her twenties, Jenny says, she saw the Carral theater gradually lose its “capacity.” The projector, worn out by the years, began to fail. One day, the air conditioning also broke down. “They gave you a piece of cardboard at the entrance, and people would watch the movie, cooling off with the makeshift fan.”
El Carral is one of many buildings crushed by time. In similar conditions are the Casa de las Cadenas—a miniature of Havana’s mansions; the Fausto Theater, of which only the façade remains; and the Santo Domingo Convent, famous for an 18th-century anecdote: a drunken Englishman, during the invasion, tried to despoil the image of Saint Francis Xavier and steal a gold ring from his hand. He tried to climb onto the altar, but the saint stumbled and fell on the thief. The people of Guanabacoa celebrated his death as divine revenge for the desecration.
The only things that survive in the town are the government headquarters—the old Municipal Palace—the Casa Grande currency exchange store, and a new dollar store belonging to the Caribe chain. Gone are also the days when Guanabacoa was a sort of Vatican for Cuban santeros, like Palmira (Cienfuegos) or Cárdenas (Matanzas). The great Yoruba priests resided there, to whose authority all practitioners on the island submitted.
In 1958, when Fulgencio Batista called upon all human and divine powers to get rid of Fidel Castro, he called for a grand ceremony at the Guanabacoa stadium. His intention: for all the country’s santeros to unite in a common ritual. It was “a great egbó,” Guillermo Cabrera Infante, the best chronicler of this desperate ceremony, would later say. He was there accompanied by filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.
“The three dictators that republican Cuba has endured were or are witches,” the novelist commented, referring to Gerardo Machado, Batista, and Castro. It has been the same, with frequent consultations with their “godfathers” in Guanabacoa, for countless Cuban leaders, including the current ones.
But neither the orishas, nor Saint Francis Xavier, nor the mythical Pepe Antonio—an authoritarian leader who resisted the British—have saved Guanabacoa. The most devastating aspect of the site is not the decline of its main buildings, but of the other, no less historic, buildings where the architecture of the 18th and 19th centuries is still visible to Cubans today.
These mansions, whose walls are now completely gray, covered in mold, scraped by scavengers, covered in graffiti and vines, are the true tragedy of the town. A young José Martí slept in one of them when he worked—unpaid—for the lawyer Miguel Francisco Viondi, who had been mayor of the town in 1879. “Danger,” reads a whitewashed sign next to the doorway which the patriot, exiled shortly after, crossed many times.
Other signs, on dozens of walls, send a message to passersby that could serve the entire city: “Collapse. Do not stand here.”
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