Out in front of what was a Youth Commuter Club in Holguin, Cuba

By Lien Estrada

HAVANA TIMES – Walking home along Capitan Urbino Avenue, I had to pause at the corner of Victoria St. At the site that used to be a Youth Club – a place you could go to take computer classes, or for those of us who didn’t have them, do some work on those machines (which are no longer functioning because those responsible for them have left the country), now, there’s an enormous garbage dump. It gives you the impression it could continue growing until it swallows everything up – including our city and all of us included.

The surroundings include other important places, which makes the sight still more dramatic to me. On the opposite side of the street, a few scarce meters from the garbage dump, is one of our Círculos Infantiles [daycare centers] which has been there for years. On the right is a café and nearly a dozen small stalls selling food, vegetables, fruits, drinks.

Contemplating these installations in the vicinity of such a large garbage dump leaves an impression that goes beyond just bad – more like you find yourself face to face with “Destruction” personified, with no way to defend yourself, because it lets you know clearly that it’s a thousand times more powerful than you.

Years back, this was a plaza where people came to dance, with a raised platform for musicians and singers that’s still there. This wasn’t only during the annual carnival – activities of all kinds took place there. On weekends, there were recreational programs for the children of the community. Finding something so unpleasant there today, something you can’t even imagine how to eliminate, or even limit, inevitably gives rise to feelings of frustration. Where are the people in charge of garbage collection? Did they, too, leave the country like those who worked at the Youth Club?

Almost in the middle of this disaster, your eyes fix on two dumpsters. The large kind, your eyes tell you. But they’re not enough. The quantity of waste is so disproportionate that you can’t pass by without stopping and worrying.

You recall a fact you saw on social media – that in Switzerland there was no garbage. Everything is so orderly, with containers for every kind of waste: plastic, recyclables etc. So, nothing is lost!

Where’s that excessive control the Cuban Communist Party exercises? Or is that only for people who think, believe and want to live differently from what they dictate? Is the latter the only focus of their concern?

When you’re in this position, you realize that just because you’ve achieved something once doesn’t mean it’s yours forever. And it can disappear if you don’t have the ability to hold on to it. You can’t save a country with signatures, parades, and slogans.

The fact that we didn’t have any real awareness of struggle and as children only learned political rhetoric for years to make us instruments of socialist policy, doesn’t help us much to confront the serious consequences of responsibilities that were never assumed as they should have been – for example in the economic and social spheres.

Merely standing by and watching such a catastrophe, one so obvious, is beyond pitiful. It takes much more than signatures, parades and slogans. Serving as creators of a new conscience in the country is more than a necessity – it’s become an obligation. If we want to continue being a country at all.

Read more from the diary of Lien Estrada here on Havana Times.