Living in a Dump

Living in a Dump
June 7, 2012
Veronica Vega

HAVANA TIMES — I remember that when I was a little girl, I liked to walk
around outside our apartment building and search through the grass for
treasures that chance would place in my path: a piece of gold-foil
paper, a button in a peculiar shape, a piece of a toy…

Between the stems and pebbles, I was fascinated by the possibility of
finding something different, something created by people, something that
had belonged to someone and that sheltered the mystery of a story.

I also thought about how we would go to the beach, where with my
inability in the water I would prefer to scour through the sand to
discover — along with the seashells and wonders washed in by the waves —
a buckle or a cheap piece of clothing.

What a mixture of astonishment and delight it was in finding something,
taking it home and rediscovering it years later in a drawer! It was a
pact with chance, an alliance stitched together from the origin of these
details. It was truly magical.

Today I can say exactly when that magic was lost, at least for me. This
(too) was in the late 90's. It was when I took my son (who was little
back then) to Bacuranao, the first of the string of beaches located to
the east of Havana.

I hadn't been there for years, so it was almost a physical shock to see
the invasion of empty paper peanut cones, the wrappers for greasy slices
of pizza or fried chicken, the cigarette butts, plastic cups and even
the remains of animals slaughtered in acts of hope (or fear).

Human traces covered yards and yards of sand with no mystery whatsoever.

There, on that same beach where I had also discovered that other enigma
that draws us into heaven and depths, the love of youth, a brutal
overturning of history was submerging every trace of beauty and innocence.

There, on that same stretch of sand where I had read "The Lake," a story
by Ray Bradbury, with which I conspired against my eternal anguish
regarding the sea, death and life, a human tide was ebbing and flowing
to leave more and more garbage in its wake.

I even I saw pieces of Styrofoam floating around in the water, together
with paper and a bloody sanitary pad that brushed up against me. No
wonder the generation of my son, now a teenager, sarcastically refers to
Bacuranao as "Basuranao" (a variation of the word "trash" in Spanish).

I haven't been able to completely rid myself of the nausea I felt that
day (I have to put it that way).

When I walk through the Alamar neighborhood, almost daily, it's often
along streets without sidewalks. There I find the grass that borders the
asphalt filled with plastic bags, worn-out shoes, wood and all kinds of
debris whose origins I'd rather not know. I'd prefer not to even look at
any of it, but the relentless sun leaves no alternative but to direct
one's gaze downwards.

Should we accept this?

I'm not trying to ridicule the heritage handed down to us, the
inhabitants of this neighborhood designed for the "new man," because
I've seen other Havana neighborhoods that are stigmatized by the same
neglect.

But I would like to highlight that in this urban project characterized
by such horrendous architecture, the only contrast left was nature.

It's that sense of insignificance that Kafka protested so much about,
where human existence is only a detail, though not because it's
overshadowed by technological progress, but by our own trash and waste.

Walking across enormous areas without shade towards a bus stop where
you'll wait anxiously for a bus to eventually take you out of here (to
rescue you), driving you to the other side of the tunnel, you can come
to feel yourself a part of that eschatological landscape – condemned to
oblivion, statism or the slow movement of its decomposition as the only
dialectic of hope.

However much the general perception of beauty has changed since the
times of the ancient Greeks, what is innate in people is the need to
find something that visually soothes, ennobles and redeems them.

This is known by artists, psychologists and even those companies that
pay tremendous sums to choose the best advertising agents.

Those who designed the area of the city named Miramar, for example, knew
this, just as much as those who are fortunate enough to live there.

It's no wonder that the "buzos" (literally "divers," people make a
living off what they find in the trash) know that the dumpsters in
Miramar are the most fruitful. The vast menu exhibited in the Alamar
neighborhood, with its "dense areas of pasture," as a poet once said,
doesn't even offer these trash collectors good alternatives.

But because of all my sensibilities to rebel against this barbaric
affront to hygiene, civility, aesthetics, I feel that something must be
done.

A friend, a colleague who works with Havana Times, had the idea of
??holding a mass trash collection, legitimizing the true (and forgotten)
sense of volunteer labor.

The first difficulty she encountered was the impossibility of obtaining
the right gloves for this project (it's an undeniable fact that not all
waste should come into direct contact with one's skin).

When the shattered foundations of Cuban civility are rebuilt, I'm sure
the physical cleansing of our cities will take place – and with this our
own self-esteem.

This is what not only cripples the wills of individuals, preventing them
from expressing themselves or condemning them to salaries that, as
someone wisely said, "neither let you die nor let you live."

I think that what's most urgent now is to react with our instincts, the
same ones that cause us to be moved by a setting sun or the flight of a
bird. Aspiring to this minimum right, where we will find an environment
where we ourselves do not feel like garbage: ignored, forgotten, abandoned.

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