Identidades in English No 5, Abril, 2015 | Page 26

There is eloquence in something he
says about the way in which most
young people see their future lives. He
says: “I, myself, am 20 years old and I
don’t think, haven’t yet thought about
having children because what kind of
conditions am I going to raise them in?”

Before her, there was another woman
who immediately seemed to want to
unload her feelings and comment.

The last woman with whom I spoke (her
gaze and mind seem to drift out to the
distant horizon once in a while) speaks
critically; her face reveals despondence
and a limited perspective. At all cost,
she is trying to hide the real reasons and
those responsible for her problem by
using the generic term ‘the State’ when
talking about the primary culprits for
the disdain that subjects them to and
entraps them in scandalous living conditions. Furthermore, all this is happening
in a country that stated ever since the
Revolution’s earliest days that one of its
main objectives was the elimination of
marginality, at least as far as housing
was concerned. So, the first answer is
“You already know,” which is like saying “Aren’t you seeing it for yourself?”
The next comment is: “The State does
nothing; it says it will fix it, but it
doesn’t. Everything is going from bad
to worse.”

From the time we began speaking with
her, this women, with all her apparent
impotence, clearly wanted to tell someone who was legitimately interested in
how she lived how she felt. All the
crowding, shortages, terrible living conditions in the midst of all that poverty,
and the struggle for survival, have become a breeding ground for personal
and social attitudes and behaviors that
lead to violence, even domestic violence, and danger for the dark and dank
alleys of El Moro. One can immediately
understand what all the predictable consequences of this are and their impact
on Cuba. Thus, what this documentary
shows is just one horrible example of
what is going on all around the country,
especially in areas inhabited by Afrodescendants.

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