The shabbily dressed old man leaned the container over the sidewalk and used a long wrench as lever.
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 30 December 2024 – What possible domestic use can a wheel from a garbage bin have? The enigma is difficult to solve in a country overwhelmed by multiple needs, but the answer, judging by the wave of robberies that has crippled more than a few garbage containers in Havana, must exist. Local authorities have denounced the situation. To no avail. The dismantler – or the gang, as some speculate – is still at large.
The operation, however, is not carried out clandestinely or at dawn. Anyone who walks through the streets of Havana can, in broad daylight, witness how a bin is stripped of its four wheels. A reporter from 14ymedio witnessed how an older man, shabbily dressed, laid the blue plastic container on the sidewalk and inserted a long key between the metal support and the base, as a lever.
It only takes a little muscle – although, to be honest, the old man is pure skin and bones – for the wheel to come loose and fall into a bucket. Passersby hear the dull thud of it falling, but no one bats an eye. When someone else “makes the decision,” the law of the street dictates that they keep quiet and keep walking. No one knows how much that wheel is worth when the old man sells it to a customer to build a wheelbarrow that will be used to carry water or other products, but everyone understands that his “beans” depend on it.
It should not be forgotten that when a wheeled container overflows onto the street, it reveals that it is not only humans who are interested in waste.
The Cuban crisis has generated a whole catalogue of “garbage people”: divers who fish for recyclable junk and often food; scavengers who go hunting for historic plaques, park benches and any piece of metal within reach; businesspeople who know what use to give to the most unusual pieces – like the wheels of the container – and to whom it is best to sell them; and beggars whose world is garbage, because they depend on it daily to eat, dress and breathe.
For them, Havana’s garbage has layers, geography, chronological order, flora and fauna. It should not be forgotten that when a container without wheels overflows onto the street, it reveals that it is not only humans who are interested in waste. Dogs, cats, rats and even birds stop by to look for what they need.
In daily contact with this world, the workers of the Communal Services also suffer from the “hobbling” of the trash bins. This Saturday, three employees were trying to move an empty container. The maneuver could not have been more laborious. As if glued to the asphalt, the hulk filled with waste remained motionless.
No one in Havana remembers the old cha-cha-chá that best describes it, sung in Cuba long ago – ironically – by the Mexican duo Hermanos Castro: “Hide, because here comes the garbage! Hide, gentleman, because they’re taking what’s good for nothing.”
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