Nicaro, the Shadow of Yesterday

Nicaro, the Shadow of Yesterday / Luis Felipe Rojas
Luis Felipe Rojas, Translator: Raul G.

More than two decades have passed since that TV series of pro-Castro
propaganda, produced by the studies of the (then) Channel 6. The plot
only showed the supposed exploitation into which North American
executives submerged Cuban workers of the Eastern nickel factory,
located in the exotic "Lengua de Pajaro" ('Bird Tongue'). Only then the
workers rebelled against the employers. Exclusively, in that era the
unions argued against their superiors. The soap opera had a "happy
ending" of nationalizing the factory and the creation of a truly
socialist company. But, what has happened since then?

Other than the information about the imminent shut down of the factory,
very little has been said of the inefficiency and failures in the system
of nickel ore extraction. The media, as a state secret, has tightly shut
their safe box and has said nothing about the existing mineral poverty.
The emission of gases and other toxic substances have turned Nicaro and
Moa into real walking hospitals. I don't have the exact statistic (only
the health authorities know that) but carcinogenic symptoms, and lung
and liver disease due to drinking water are very common in that place,
just to cite a few examples of what is being most commented on among the
locals.

One face of the brand new socialist company which is not published at
all, is the destitution forced upon the locals of Nicaro, due to the
necessity of resources and a nearly total decadence of the municipal
structures en Mayari. With richness in its entrails, it is, however, a
town which depends on the government of its capital municipality. A
couple of blocks of buildings that seem like just that: blocks and not
dignified homes, they are buildings of a 60′s Soviet style of the past
century, it is the housing richness which was inherited by those who,
for five decades, made up the socialist ranks.

The statistics are sometimes difficult to hide and recent data released
by the Assembly of Popular Power in Mayari warn of the high level of
juvenile delinquency in the area, due to (according to the specialists)
the lack of recreational options left for youths. For more than twenty
years, the corporation supposedly guaranteed offering homes for their
workers, but with the passing of time those who began their working life
during the 60′s and 70′s started to enter retirement, and now it is easy
to see the disconnection: a series of marginal neighborhoods which are
under harassment time and time again by inspectors of the Municipal
Housing Procurement Unit and other supervising organizations.

In the year 2009, Kevin Vega Rios, a worker of that factory sent me his
concerns. He is a citizen of a marginal neighborhood, with no supporting
documents, and was practically forced to abandon his home. He was fined
various times until, due to his ailments and the countless denunciations
to the independent press, they stopped the threats against his small
family. There are other cases like his. There is a more hidden face,
which even with the definitive close of the factory will not come to
light. They will not even be part of the best investigative journalism.
We expect that what is coming, when they start to tear down the
scaffolds and the rust of nearly one century of existence, the
frameworks of human capital will also be abolished, the essence of a
small town which once believed itself to be happy, prosperous and efficient.

Translated by Raul G.

15 September 2012

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