On Narváez de Matanzas Boulevard, nothing is how it was projected on the papers

Matanzas/On the banks of the San Juan River, in Matanzas, an ambitious project sponsored by the city’s conservative office promised to return the vitality to Narváez Street. The plan contemplated a boulevard that would extend several blocks. On their margins, commercial and gastronomic establishments would be installed, managed by both the state and private sector, which would offer cultural and recreational options for various audiences. With the added attraction of a boardwalk and sculptures integrated to the environment, the space seemed to become a meeting point for matancers and visitors.

As of 2016, coffee shops and bars began to open in the first block, with the idea of extending them gradually. But the initial impulse soon stopped. “My nephew made the request to lease a place and turn it into a restaurant, but from the beginning those locations were destined for people with influences within the government. He had to give up his idea and, in the end, he left abroad,” says Gerardo, who says that in the last five years “practically nothing has been advanced regarding the original purpose.”

The setback signs are visible. “The 3D room is out of service and in the cafeteria with Wifi the connection is lousy. These two stores are state, but the decay is also noted in the music school and the artisan workshop,” says Gerardo. What was going to be a great cultural and social intervention “has remained in a unfulfilled promise.” Instead of new openings, some spaces closed or were demolished, such as the ship shaped like a ship built on the river, which broke for lack of resources.

There was a time when walking at night in Narváez was to immerse himself in a constant bustle. “This here was filled with people, especially on weekends,” recalls Mabel, former dependent of the cafeteria for love of art. “It was the time when express coffee cost 25 pesos and a beer, 50”. But with the increase in prices, the influx fell into minced. Today, with a coffee at 200 pesos, a malted to 500 and pizzas that are around 900, customers are scarce. “A complete Creole meal does not fall from 1,500 or 2,000 pesos,” adds Mabel, who ended up looking for another job after reducing his income.

“It is not the fault of the owners of the bars,” he defends. “They have to pay the rent of the premises, the ONAT taxes, the salaries of their workers and buy the merchandise almost always in the black market, where everything is in the clouds. You cannot judge the light.”

Outside the bars, on the sidewalk, mobile points of sale with somewhat lower prices have proliferated, although still inaccessible to most. “The difference is not much,” says Damián, a young man who passes the afternoons with his friends under the Tirry road bridge. “Inside you have high music and air conditioning; here we have the breeze of the trees and the boardwalk, which is still free.”

Damián says that “Dos Narváez” in the street. In one are the bars and coffee shops “for those who have money”, almost always empty, with boring goalkeepers who don’t even look at passersby. “I come to the other Narváez, where people do not have 1,800 pesos for a bottle of rum. Here I see parents taking out the last of the portfolio to buy a chupachupa of 50 pesos to their children, and young people like me who paint graffiti on the walls while dreaming of leaving Cuba.”

What promised to be a cultural and social engine for the so -called “City of the Bridges” today, in 2025, looks like a stagnant project. In Narváez it is usual to see people of different ages asking for alms or rummaging in garbage baskets. “This is our Varadero,” says Damián. “Without tourists or dollars, but with music from the cell phone and the desire to have a good time between friends. I come back here every afternoon looking for what they said it was going to be and has not been … and knowing that it will probably never be.”