IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 7 ENGLISH | Page 46

Diverse Havana
Mestizo Havana
Juan Antonio Madrazo Luna
National Coordinator, Citizens’ Committee for Racial Integration (CIR)
Havana, Cuba

L

iving in Havana is tough, and the
city has undergone diverse transformations since the color of
maps changed. Today’s Havana is an
immense social chessboard that is not
found on the many postcards on which it
appears. Today’s Havana is marked by
new stories. It is a city in which one of
the new luxuries is dressing in pink.
New labels and social frontiers are imposing themselves, vertical political
graphics and plural marginal texts. Havana’s walls do not just listen; they also
watch and are witness to the southern
party of the city’s never-ending, anonymous neighborhoods. Habana Sur (south
Havana) is part of the city’s chessboard,
the backyard of various enclaves that are
always growing inward and are not official found on the maps or sketches belonging to Office of City Historian’s
Master Plan. This part of Havana now
seems hostile. Suffice it to enter its private, interior yards to be able to see the
poverty in multiple neighborhoods in

which black people live.These are places
where people face life with courage.
There is no pla ce in the city that does not
reveal pain or indifference, but she comfortably opens her legs wide for foreigners. Her walls bear mercy; her sidewalks
are humiliated by indifference; the city
expresses her self only through sighs and
slogans. In the feminine and humid Havana, people breathe inconformity, but
they request things in silence; old white
people and old black people are finding
it difficult to earn a buck at the end of
their lives, after so much sacrifice. Some
try to survive selling their memories or
most personal clothing. Revolutionary
gossip and vulgar culture are always
making inroads. Old neighborhoods like
El Vedado tremble amidst noise and
dust. Official indifference towards republican-era architecture allowed grand
buildings like the Hotel Trotcha and
Alaska disappear. Other emblematic
structures like Retiro Médico or López
Serrano could suffer the same fate. Cas-

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