Identidades in English No 5, Abril, 2015 | Page 18

puto, in Mozambique, or a settlement in
Puerto Príncipe, Haiti. Yet, they are
surprised and even shocked when they
discover it is wild and revolutionary
Havana, a Havana excluded from the
benefits offered by the Master Plan of
the Office of the City Historian, perhaps
even from the map of the growing Network of Afro-Descendant Neighborhoods and from the pedagogy employed
in public education, and from Integral
Neighborhood Transformation workshops, all of which are lacking, as prevention policies.

fies itself with pride, as in the case of
Azul, and another, which is Habana Sur.
Havana Azul is a northern enclave
known for its nascent high-rise condos,
marinas, and VIP residences far from
any social problems; it has private security guards, golf courses, high-rise
buildings for foreigners, and emerging
neighborhoods to serve as free zones for
businesses. It is a city of borders and
exclusion; a world that does not know
the other.
Havana Sur is the city’s underbelly. It is
deep Havana, far from the presentable
Havana that attempts to imitate the
white North; it is a fragment of a city in
which people face life with often harrowing courage. In it there are volcanoes just waiting to erupt. This city not
only reproduces settlements, but is also
marked by unhealthy neighborhoods
and shantytowns in 15 municipalities.
They are characterized by crowding and
domestic violence, with children and the
elderly being the most vulnerable.
La Escalera, Indaya, Isla del Polvo, Las
Merceditas, El Mamey, Loma del Tanque, Casablanca, El Tropical, Cambute,
Ruta 12, La Rosita, Las Piedras, Altura
del Mirador La Coca, La Chomba, La
Yuca, Los Mangos, Platanito, La Guarapeta, El Moro, Cocosolo, Lugardita,
Sexto Congreso, etc. These are some of
the human siloes that inhabit the city,
and reveal to us the very worst of inequality’s human façade. This is where
people under suspicion by the police
live and where poverty has a very well
defined color.In settlements like El
Tropical, in the municipality of San
Miguel del Padrón, survival of the fittest is the rule. Bravado, swagger and
Machismo are a lifestyle, and it is de-

The official narrative believes that
many of the people who live in these
places lack virtues, that they are losers
and did not take advantage of the opportunities the Revolution offered. They
are bad by nature.
The tenement yard, shantytown, and
temporary housing where people have
spent part of their lives for more than 20
years, and the settlements, are still reflections of the bad life in Havana.
In revolutionary Cuba, most blacks and
mestizos continue trapped in these centers of concentrated poverty, skirting the
dangerous abyss of social fragmentation. Today, they are tired of belching
poverty. Today, more than ever, many
feel the fatigue of heroic crusades; they
feel that after all their innumerable sacrifices they have paid too high a price.
Their lives are still anchored to the bottom of the social pyramid, even after the
timid economic reforms.
Havana may be an open city, but it not
an integrating one. It is a dual city that
tends to split into a Havana that identi-

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