The sun is biting, although the Lenten winds blow over Havana and ruffle passers-by’s hair. Inside a vehicle, in the long line to buy fuel at the corner of Infanta and San Rafael, this Friday the temperature is similar to what is experienced in purgatory in May, or even to what is reached in hell in August . “There is no other option, to fill the tank you have to cook over low heat,” laments a driver who had already been in line for two hours at the stroke of noon.
The cars almost touch. There’s a garish red Lada that a few years ago would have targeted a vice-minister or colonel owner; a tricycle to transport goods; several modern Citroëns that look older than any almendrón from the last century and even a taxi that demands 30 dollars to bring travelers who have recently arrived at the José Martí airport to the city. It doesn’t matter the year of manufacture, the state of the body or the pedigree of the driver. everyone is the same terrified under the sun.
“I no longer go around, I come directly to the gas stations on the main avenues, which are the ones with the best supplies,” he explains to 14ymedio the driver of a Moskvitch with nickel-plated wheels, interior air conditioning and other comforts, but manufactured, as he acknowledges, “in the times of Came [Consejo de Ayuda Mutua Económica] so it was not designed for savings,” he laments. The owner perceives the fuel supply in the city as an “up and down”: “One day they tell you that there is no problem and you can fill the tank and the other you can only pour a certain number of litres.
It’s common for people to come to blows when the queue slows down or when an employee yells that they’re out of diesel or hot dogs.
In addition, several queues converge at the gas station on the popular corner of Centro Habana. The place has a small store that sells frozen products, opposite is a property belonging to the Rapido chain, an attempt by the Cuban regime to emulate the reviled, by official discourse, McDonald’s and Subway, but which ended up capsizing due to the lack of raw materials and inflation, and joined the network of regulated trade. When the day begins, in this nodal point of Centro Habana it is difficult to know who is there for a package of frozen chicken, a bag of detergent or a liter of gasoline.
Named in honor of the Infanta María Luisa Fernanda, youngest daughter of King Ferdinand VII and sister of Isabel II of Spain, the avenue has little of the monarchy and a lot of misery. It’s common for people to come to blows when the queue slows down or when an employee yells that they’re out of diesel or hot dogs. That’s when in one of the most “real” Havana streets people take off their flip-flops, shout obscenity and seem to be ready for anything. Then the March winds blow and everyone goes home.
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