At nine o’clock at night this Thursday, December 16, the eve of San Lazaro, at the home of Miguel Alejandro Alderete Recio and his mother, Rosalba, 81, the Nocturno radio program was being listened to. A roar broke the tranquility. A wall of the adjoining house, at the corner of Angeles and Monte streets, had collapsed. Neighbors took to the streets to search for possible victims under the rubble. Ambulances, police and firefighters arrived. They found the lifeless body of a passerby, Rolando Leon.
Alderete is uneasy, he talks about the shock he experienced at that moment and both his mind and his body still feel it, his voice too. This Friday, after four in the afternoon, she was brewing coffee for a visitor and, after saying goodbye, she spoke with 14ymedio about heartbreak and the disgust that has remained after the collapse.
“I saw it all,” he says, and his hands move up and down in an effort to point out every crack in the ceiling, every dampness, every wall about to collapse. The noise from the central avenue, increased by the work of a crane and dozens of onlookers who still come to see what happens, dies down when you cross the door of Monte 429.
Alderete says that he has been in that place for 16 years, adjacent to the building that collapsed, but he clarifies that before he lived in that same corner that collapsed on Thursday night and that, being “up there”, they always had “shelter order “, to move to one of those places of temporary accommodation. He remembers that the place was in “terrible conditions” and that one day one of his brothers “sank his foot on the floor in such a way that he fell completely down.” He assures that if it had not been for a beam that he tripped over, “it goes complete.”
As a result of this incident, the authorities took the whole family to a nearby but unventilated place and it was then that they offered to go to where they live to this day.
“At the moment they put us down here, it was like in 2005 or 2006, we had to do tremendous cleaning and enable the premises minimally to live. A year after being here they told us that they were going to demolish the upper part but they did not come until today, that what happened happened. They did not demolish at the time and look at the demolition now, after there has already been one death, “lamented Alderete.
He also remembers that once a bus collided with a column on the façade and knocked it over completely. “The head of the bus hit the door, luckily there was no one there at the time, but a man who stood guard there, who lives next door and his name is Claudio, they almost killed him,” he said.
He says that as a result of the column that fell “they put two sticks there and until the sun today” it was the same. “That was 10 years ago and they never took care of it again … ah! But now that this collapse occurs, they immediately came to remove the old clubs and put the new ones, do we have to wait for that?”, He wonders. “No, do not expect that they are deceased,” he answers to himself.
“Then later they say that one is a counterrevolutionary but no, you have to tell the truth. I am stubborn, after the collapse no one has come to hear from us yet, the ones who arrived were the demolition workers but Housing has not come here nobody, I’m very upset “, sentence angry.
For a moment his disgust turns into indignation, he would like to express his discontent on the street but he fears for his mother’s health: “Do you know why I didn’t go to the street? For my mother who is there and yesterday They had to take her to the Calixto García hospital because she had pressure on the floor, she got very nervous. We felt the noise and I opened the door and went out, so I see the movement and the collapse, after a few minutes they had to take by ambulance “.
Rosalba, who listens to the entire conversation from a chair, says: “Before I lived where he collapsed, now I feel better, but I got so scared that I had tachycardia.” His son is very concerned about his mother’s health and the consequences that living in such poor conditions may have for her. “Likewise my mother fucks me too, it’s too much, 81 years old is that lady and I’m praying that she, before closing her eyes, see her little house, the only thing I miss is that one day she can live like people “.
This man, who has worked for 28 years at the old Tencent on Monte Street, first as a cook and now as a confectioner, does not understand why “we have to wait for Havana to fall” to make the right decisions. “Those of the Government come here to Quisicuaba, yesterday they were there with Silvio Rodríguez, but no one has come here,” he commented by way of criticism.
He remembers that when the tornado, “the entire Havana was motorized and they immediately gave home to those affected” and he was outraged when he saw on the news that the Diez de Octubre nursing home, which had been closed for about nine years, was immediately enabled for 70 families. “Do you have to wait for the tornado to pass to do that? No, that’s totally disrespectful.”
This man does not stare at each crack without doing anything, but he considers that the jobs carried out by this property are so extensive that they are beyond his possibilities. “I have thrown a pile of melts (waterproofing mix) on that roof to contain the water but it is too much, cracks are always made and the melt lasts a month and then it is leaks and leaks. I cannot wait for them because it is always the same drool and never do anything, it’s too much. “
“I repeat, for my mother I did not fuck on November 15, for my mother, I did not fuck on July 11, and for my mother I did not fuck from yesterday to today. It is only because of that lady that I stop, because if I I throw myself out into the street, she gives her something. Until when? One here as a nobleman, waiting and they doing whatever they want, no, I’m very upset, “he insists.
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