HAVANA, Cuba. – After a busy December between Sandro Castro’s birthday and the Bebeshito concertso hotly debated on social media that the explosion of the Sancti Spíritus asphalt plant went unnoticed, January 2025 opens with the news of another accidentthis time in the town of Melones, Holguín, which has captured everyone’s attention due to its disastrous similarity with what happened at the Matanzas Supertanker Basemore than two years ago. The tragedy in Sancti Spíritus ended the life of Alexis Díaz Salasa 48-year-old worker who arrived at the hospital with burns on 60% of his body, and until now The number of “disappeared” rises to 13 after the accident at the Holguín military warehouse.
The same anxiety of the days immediately preceding August 5, 2022 is felt again, when nothing was known about the boys who, fulfilling their (mandatory) Military Service, had been sent as part of the fire brigade command to quell the hell unleashed in the Matanzas Bay. Seventeen were the victims in that large fire that occurred, according to official sources, because lightning struck one of the crude oil storage tanks at the Supertanker Base. Public opinion questioned the lack of security in such an important and high-risk facility, as well as the designation of young recruits to face a danger that required the highest level of preparation.
Two years ago it was an unfortunate bolt of lightning. Today it is an old arsenal that burst into a military unit. Almost 20 hours after the event, condolences arrivedthe concern, the support and the inevitable note that there is an investigation underway, although it is likely that the result will not be made public, or will not convince anyone, as happened with the explosion at the Saratoga hotel, the fire at the Base Matanzas supertankers and even the crash of the Globar Air plane in the vicinity of the “José Martí” International Airport, in May 2018.
There is no end for Cuba and those who claim that the “continuity” government is filled with aura are increasingly right, although deep down we know that the matter is much more serious than a simple superstition. Since 2018, misfortunes have not stopped happening, and the first month of the year has been particularly bitter. On January 27, 2019, a tornado hit the Cuban capital, causing the greatest damage in the municipality of Regla, where three of the four reported deaths occurred and at least 50 people were injured. The Government’s response was so miserable that the delegation that came to assess the damage had to run away to the booing of the residents.
Exactly one year later, three girls were crushed to death by a balcony that collapsed in the Havana neighborhood of Jesús María, an accident for which they blamed a family, despite the fact that several experts assured that the structure detached after the rubble work carried out. by state agencies.
Little can be done against nature beyond prevention, and tornadoes are not common meteorological phenomena on the Island, even less so in urban areas. But a downed plane, a detached balcony, a gas truck that explodes and destroys a hotel and several surrounding buildings, the impact of lightning on a fuel tank or the explosion of stored weapons do have direct culprits and the Cuban people blame them. knows.
The causes of these accidents have not been fully clarified, nor have the victims been compensated, nor have the culprits been exposed. These are misfortunes for which no one is responsible and now, being a warehouse of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, it is unlikely that things will turn out differently.
Just as in the past workers died when several of the shelters that Fidel Castro ordered to be built to protect the people from a hypothetical “Yankee invasion” collapsed, that aging weaponry that was stored in the Melones military installation for an imaginary war against an enemy imaginary, today claims the lives of 13 people, among them nine young people who were doing their Military Service.
The authorities They have already ruled out the probability of finding them aliveand at this hour their mothers feel crushed under the weight of a very real pain that does not understand condolences or accompaniment, because the officials who keep their own children safe can know nothing about one thing or another, while the children of Liborio are forced to waste one or two years at the disposal of a regime that puts their lives at risk in any military unit, just as 40 years ago it threw them into the wars in Africa in the name of an ideal that ended up being diluted in wine sparkling wine and bottles of Tequila Rose handed out by Sandro Castro at his recent birthday party.
