Nobody dreams of living in a shelter. However, the people who reside here have spent much of their lives in cramped spaces, without separate rooms or privacy, and it shows in their claustrophobic gazes. Many ended up here after their homes collapsed. In this place a prime is hardly placed on education, as when poverty and hunger rear their heads, the prevailing philosophy is just to survive.
These shelters, whose occupants have dubbed them La Aldea (The Village), like almost all such accommodations, are made up of a series of tiny cubicles. The State assumes that a family of up to six people can live in each one. Outside, the ground is dusty and the streets are cracked, with no traces of any asphalt. Inside, a semi-polished concrete mixture covers the floors.
No politicians or high-ranking officials visit any of these "houses", which are officially called "transitional communities," despite the fact that they house families whose struggle against uncertainty is perpetual.
The Cubans who were forced to take shelter here did so with the expectation that it would be for a reasonable period of time, until the State assigned them homes of their own. But, as they waited, their interiors began to fill with family photos, ornaments and other objects making them feel like permanent homes. There are some families that have been living in La Aldea for more than 20 years. Many have been born, married and had their children here.
In his living room, barely two meters wide and four meters long, Angela Herrera has a television that she turns on at noon to watch the Noticiero, the daily newscast. But the news barely talks about the situations of shelter residents like her. She is now going on five years, living in a unit approximately seven meters long by four meters wide, including a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. A kind of makeshift screen, made up of fabrics and wood scraps, marks off the living room. She has a sofa, a couple of chairs, and an air conditioner capable of cooling the entire property at night.
56 years old, Angela’s odyssey of a life continues. She was born in Morón, Ciego de Ávila. At the age of 8 she moved with her family to Cienfuegos, where she lived until she got married, had children, and separated. Then she met her current husband and they emigrated together to Centro Habana, in the capital.
The district bordered by Zanja, Belascoaín, Galiano and San Lázaro streets, sprayed by the salt and breezes of El Malecón, is known as San Leopoldo. The large houses of this fossilized neighborhood, once inhabited by the city's aristocracy, gave way to crumbling properties, many in danger of collapse, divided into small rooms. Angela lived illegally in that area for 20 years. In 2016 her building collapsed, like many others, due to a lack of maintenance. "First they took us to La Villena, a school in Santiago de Las Vegas, where we stayed for a month. Then they brought us to this shelter, and the rest is history. Here I am, to this day."
To the East of Havana, between the borders of the Bahía and Guanabacoa neighborhoods, are the shelters of Old Havana, where Angela and her family were transferred. These structures provide accommodations mainly for people who previously resided in Old Havana and Central Havana. There are 17 warehouses, divided into cubicles where 200 families live packed together like sardines. In La Aldea the kitchens and bathrooms get wet on rainy days, and the fiber cement tiles used to manufacture the ceilings, which are low to the ground, have a desert-like effect: "When the weather is hot, it gets hot, and when it's cold, it gets cold," Angela explains, foregoing any metaphors.
In the early 90s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, which bankrolled Cuba's tropical socialism, and the advent of the "Special Period,” sheltered communities began to gradually spread throughout the country. 104 of them are located in Havana. On January 26, 2020, before the coronavirus hit the island, the Cuban government announced a reconstruction plan through the Cuban News Agency (ACN).
A Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) report focused on "Temporary Shelters" in Cuba explained that "the operation of shelters must feature the organization of general services guaranteeing the conditions essential for their inhabitation." The reality of these structures, however, is very different. The sewers overflow most of the year, with areas that constitute virtual breeding grounds for mosquitoes, other insects, and rodents.
Potable water fittings suffer from leaks and, sometimes, breaks that lead to mixing with wastewater.
On the weekend of January 8, 2021, a score of residents at the Bahía-Plaza shelter —near La Aldea— commenced a protest to demand their transfer to a place featuring better conditions, and that they be given their own homes. "Next to the warehouses where we live they are erecting a building for Electricity Company workers. There are also new, empty buildings in Cojímar for the military. But we, after spending years amidst mice and mosquitoes, in houses that get all wet, and iand in which we can suffer electrical shocks they... don't give us anything. We’re tired of going to every possible place, and in the end it's all for nothing," said Lourdes Quintana, a mother of five.
A llegaypon by the shelters
A recent report from the Ministry of Construction indicates that at the end of April 2021, 5,791 homes were completed throughout the country, earmarked for various groups, including subsidized and sheltered people. According to the report, this number of buildings represents 13% of what was slated in the construction plan for this year. Those numbers were announced in May 2021 on Cuban TV's Noticiero Nacional, but it was not specified how many homes were planned for each sector.
Despite the deterioration, the inhabitants of La Aldea have never taken to the streets: "We behave like civilized people, because, in the end, I tell you, that I was born under, Fidel and I owe what I have to Fidel. We’re not counterrevolutionaries, and we support this Revolution. I, particularly, love President Díaz-Canel. Actually, what I would like is for him to come out and see how people live in the shelters," Angela said, hopeful.
Joel Muwanga was born in Kampala, Uganda, a landlocked country located in East Africa. He was the second child of a couple formed by a young Ugandan man, an Agricultural Engineering student in Cuba, and a Cuban girl who was studying Commerce. His parents separated when he was 12 years old. His mother took the first flight to Cuba and brought him with her. He never saw his father again.
They settled on the Calle Aponte, in Old Havana before spending time in the Guanabacoa district and ending up next to the shelters, in a llegaypon, a makeshift shelter built on vacant land; literally, an “arrive and put.”
"This was empty land where people who didn't have houses came and settled. That is why it is called a llegaypon. We built a wooden house and, with that, struggling, we laid the foundation, put down blocks… and that's what you see right now," says Joel. That is the llegaypon: a whole neighborhood built without the approval of any architects, based entirely on the tastes and resources of each family.
Muwanga is a rapper and music producer. In his songs he evokes the times when his house was still made of boards, with a dirt floor, and he recorded his songs with Ediel and El Fila, the two deceased members of his old group, Kick Krack. Through years of effort, along with his family, he expanded the spacious living room, kitchen, bathroom, garage, and an entranceway with a small altar to Saint Lazarus. Now he intends to build a second floor.
"This is not going to change any time soon"
There is not much difference between the people in the shelters and those at the llegaypon. They are affected by the same deficiencies and the same abandonment. This is so much the case, in fact, that, from the outside, the whole territory is seen as one place. Only its residents recognize the boundaries between the two. "I'm used to seeing the shelters, for me it's normal. But I've come with friends of mine and, we get here, and people tell them 'come in here, this is my pad' and friends have told me 'No way, Joel', and sometimes they're speechless."
Most of the shelters' occupants were born in slums or tenements, or emigrated from the countryside seeking a better future in the capital. Muwanga still feels the leery gazes of residents of the Bahía neighborhood settle on them.
"When you arrive in the most residential area of Bahia and say, 'I'm from the shelters', people look at you differently," says Muwanga, who also offers a theory as to why most of the people are black in those areas. "The blacks in the shelters are ones segregated from Havana, who they sent away a little. In those places the State put its hotels, cafes and their own things. I know that is the country's economy, but they're looking to make a lot of money, when there are people who have been here for 20 years."
In La Aldea most people work. Many make a living on the black market , reselling products they buy in stores accepting Freely Convertible Currency (MLC). They spend their time standing in long lines in the sun to get them. La Aldea, thus, has become a place where one can find products that are in short supply at shops and markets, such as shampoo and conditioner.
Despite the explosion of the pandemic in Havana, La Aldea has not been the most affected place. Before the curfew was instituted due to Covid-19, many young people from different areas of the Bahía district, in the absence of discos and bars, would go to one of the warehouses there to buy the low-quality, cheap alcohol known as chispa de tren, or "train spark". The shelters comprised a kind of haven where the authorities hardly intervened, rum flowed, and one could talk.
This is still true today. It's almost 9:00 at night, curfew time, and people come and go from Joel's house as if the law did not exist. They are people from the neighborhood, friends and acquaintances. In the living room they have a PlayStation, and in the bedroom Joel has a little alcohol in a plastic bottle that he will share, straight from it, with anyone who visits, as he has done all his life.
Recently the Official Gazette announced new terms for citizens to access a housing plan and subsidies for people without a home, or those who need to remodel theirs. Applicants must have at least three children under 17 years of age. Materials have already arrived, and work has begun on buildings to replace the shelters, but progress is slow. In the time it takes to erect a building for people in crisis, several hotels for tourists can be built in Old Havana —from which most of those living in the shelters were driven.
"This is not going to change any time soon," Angela declares.
Again, no metaphors.
This article is part of "El último techo" ("The Last Roof") a special transnational series by the Laboratorio de Periodismo Situado.