Between dirty water and garbage they build a new market in Holguín

Holguin/“A filth,” is how the neighbors describe the new market for the sale of food and other products that is being built, a few meters from a polluted stream and surrounded by a huge garbage dump, on Cuba Street, between Carbó and Mendieta, in Holguín. In recent days, the walls of the kiosks have been rising to the same extent that popular unrest grows due to the short distance between beans and sewer water, bread and waste of all kinds.

“The city is filling up with this type of candongas,” laments Heriberto, a resident near the point of sale that will primarily house self-employed workers who were taken from the nearby Chinese Fair. “There they had some tents and when the official press complained about the hygienic conditions of those stands, they told them that they had to dismantle them and they have ended up here, where the dirt is even worse.”

The Jigüe River, with its black water from industrial and residential discharges, spreads its stench throughout the area, close to the “Vladímir Ilich Lenin” General University Hospital. When the kiosks are finished they will offer imported and national foods. The bags of rice, bulk sugar and boxes of frozen chicken quarters will be sold a short distance from the bags of waste, the piles of construction waste and the miasmas carried by the timid stream.

“The worst thing is that this is authorized by the local authorities,” warns another neighbor. The woman considers that economic precariousness has given rise to this type of venduta improvised and with poor infrastructure. “In the end, all of this ends up in the customer taking home merchandise that has been in contact with flies and germs in that environment,” he summarizes. To his surprise, some acquaintances he has spoken to do not see the contradiction in offering food in such a dirty place. “We’ve gotten used to living surrounded by filth, that’s what happens.”

In a few weeks, outlets will be ready to sell pork loin, wheat flour and taro. Customers will have to wade through the mud and grime to bring that food home.