Living In or Among Trash Dumps

Living In or Among Trash Dumps / Rosa Maria Rodriguez
Posted on June 19, 2013

The stench has overwhelmed Cuba for years, and in Havana it is more
apparent in neighborhoods where the common people and workers live,
where inhabitants do not have high positions in the state bureaucracy.

We live among trash, and they treat us like trash. Countless malodorous
corners overflowing with waste are contagious witnesses, giving evidence
that in many areas of Havana, public unhealthiness is due to the
negligence of the state. What good are all the fumigations, and the
constant health warnings on national television about washing vegetables
and hands, and the proper cooking of food, if the enemy decides for us
even though it lives outside our homes? The trash cans are overflowing
because the garbage truck is a week to fifteen days behind schedule.
This situation has been repeated cyclically for years. Resigned citizens
declare that "the truck broke" while covering nose and mouth with a hand
to reduce the stench as they walk past the corners.

Children play soccer in the street and from time to time the ball goes
toward a mountain of refuse. Some have shoes and others run
without–perhaps to protect the only pair they have–and kick the ball
back out of the dumps.

What happened to the trucks that should regularly collect the garbage?
Is it true that in some localities there is only one? Surely in the
former neighborhoods of wealthy families, which since 1959 have housed
new-rich socialists, there is no shortage of vehicles and personnel to
keep every block and corner of their classist suburbs clean.

18 June 2013

Source: "Living In or Among Trash Dumps / Rosa Maria Rodriguez |
Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/living-in-or-among-trash-dumps-rosa-maria-rodriguez/