Before the Revolution or During the Revolution?

Before the Revolution or During the Revolution? / Yoani Sanchez
Translator: Unstated, Yoani Sanchez

The sign is small, peeking out with a certain timidity over the balcony
wall several yards above ground. A simple "For Sale" that would go
unnoticed if it weren't that in the apartment next door you can read the
same phrase painted on a window. Two floors higher, the neighbors on the
6th floor have been more creative and have hung a piece of acrylic where
they include the square feet available, to motivate possible buyers. But
the sellers won't have it easy. The building is ugly, grey, one of those
built in the eighties under the "microbrigade" system. Many who read the
classified on websites — such as Revolico.com and Cubisima.com — on
arriving at the building don't even knock on the door, because they can
see it is one of those behemoths of concrete and bad architectural taste
that were constructed during the years of Soviet subsidies.

The variety and quantity of homes for sale seems to exceed the real
capabilities of Cuban wallets right now. Many homes have quickly come on
the housing market that was banned for decades and, despite the need for
housing, lacks the main prerequisite: money to buy them. It's amazing to
see properties for sale for a quarter or a half million convertible
pesos, in a country where the average salary doesn't exceed 20
convertible pesos a month. Hence, the greatest movement in
buying-and-selling is taking place in the cheapest homes, which are,
therefore, smaller, in worse locations, and in poor repair. Meanwhile,
in the luxury residence sector everything goes more slowly, down, at the
level of a room in a tenement or an apartment without windows the
movement is quite noticeable, especially for all those people in the
interior of the country who are taking advantage of the opportunity to
get themselves a home, even if it's just a few square feet, in Havana.

What is also interesting is the stark and pragmatic assessment that is
made of each home for sale. The ads have become sophisticated,
accompanied by photos and favorable descriptions of the house's "good
water supply," its magnificent location in a quiet neighborhood, or the
possibilities to enlarge it and build on the roof. But there is one
qualifier that no one neglects to add if their housing warrants it, and
that is "capitalist construction," if it was built before 1959. There is
a clear parting of the waters and implacable divide between that built
before the Revolution and that which has risen during it. If the
apartment building is from the decades of the 40s or 50s the price
soars, while those apartments built by the microbrigades*, who raised
their prefabricated towers during the years of Sovietization, are
relegated to an inferior level of offerings. The housing market brings
out — with all its toughness — a scale of values that is far from the
official discourse and that reassigns a new amount to everything, an
objective yardstick for measuring quality.

*Translator's note: Microbrigades: "Self-help housing" through assigning
groups of people from each workplace to build large apartment houses.
Yoani, her husband Reinaldo Escobar, and son Teo live in a microbrigade
building erected by Reinaldo and others from his workplace.

15 October 2012

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