Diseases don’t come out of nowhere

HAVANA, Cuba. – I had a friend who used to quote Baudelaire with unbridled enthusiasm. I remember the movement of his hands and fingers when he let some of the French poet’s verses flow. I remember his right hand held high and very open, which he then closed, finger by finger, with a slow movement that reminded me of the path a cyclone describes.

I remember him, with his light and rhythmic voice, reciting some verses by Baudelaire: “The shape of a city changes faster than a mortal heart.” This is how he recited that very true thing that is the change of cities: sometimes to renew themselves, other times to become ill, to fall resoundingly to the ground.

My friend liked to wander around Havana and as he did so he would touch the walls of what were once beautiful mansions with his fingers, perhaps believing that such contact could revive the souls of those who lived there, and even the thick walls that he looked at and loved in his childhood years.

My friend died and with him went many memories that would contribute to the resurrection of this once beautiful city that today is not even a shadow of what it once was. Havana is a city that makes us think more and more about death. Havana is falling apart in its collapses, in illnesses.

Cuban cities, and Havana more than others, are falling apart before the indolent eyes of those in power. Havana, the city that was beautiful and proud, is decomposing, is going into disarray, and not only in its buildings. Havana is sick and is writhing in pain thanks to the apathy and indolence of the communism that rules it. Havana could today be among the dirtiest and sickest cities in history, and those in power are doing nothing to save it.

It would be enough to look at a street in the Cerro where I live, in that neighborhood that was once lavish in its construction, and that today is falling apart and could be swallowed up, along with its inhabitants, by that filth that sickens and kills, thanks to the indolence of the communist powers. Today the Cerro, and other places in the city, are being invaded by deadly diseases that kill in a flash, and dengue fever, Oropouche fever, are announced…

Meanwhile, local health authorities, run by the Communist Party, repeatedly call for houses to be cleaned, without paying attention to the neighborhood that “misplaced” the garbage containers. They remember the washing of hands in a city that has been dismantled. They demand a healing cleanliness that might protect the body, but not the city.

And I would like to know what sanitation is for the communists who met at the recent Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party. What part of sanitation is the responsibility of the authorities? In which sewers do we leave the rubbish that we accumulate during the day? Who is responsible for ensuring the presence of the collection tanks? I am not the one responsible.

The city is sick, but I have not seen the highest officials warning of the real dangers of contagion of diseases that could be fatal; much less in these days when they are seen in convention centers, in neat guayaberas that sweat cannot reach.

OPINION ARTICLE
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