The “popular festivals” of Santa Clara are more similar to a commercial place – with a bad smell – than a festive day.
Santa Clara, Cuba. – It is enough to approach the streets surrounding the Augusto César Sandino stadium, from any of the surrounding accesses, to receive the immediate impact of intense odors that characterize any human agglomeration in a holiday mode: dry beer through the sun, roasted corn and human fluids, nothing pleasant. This year that is the only city area arranged for the so -called “popular festivals” that all Santaclareño recognizes as carnivals.
Throughout the avenue there are dozens of fried stalls, whose overheated oil converts the heavy and hot air of this summer into a suffocating mixture of vapors. The sidewalks are also the improvised vendors square, which even spend the night in nearby portals, aware that this is the best time of the year to generate some income.
“I have made more than 10,000 pesos in jams this afternoon,” confirms Marianny, a young manicaragua merchant who sells cookies, Pellys Creoles and apples. Just at the forefront of that quincerally, a few -year -old girl implores disconsolate by one of the fruits – which is the price of 250 Cuban pesos – while the mother threatens to take her for the house. “You cannot bring boys to these things, because there is no way to explain that I cannot spend what I win in the day in an apple,” protests the woman.
In the Carnival, businesses of all kinds come together, beyond those that are related to gastronomy: sales of glasses and wallets, tattoos, horseback riding, a roulette with small boxes in which a rodent decides who takes the prize in a game of chance. The carnival are more similar to a commercial place than to a festive day: “This is gain for resellers because state offers are very few,” says Dayana Pulido, who came with her family from the cast José Martí. “I have not enjoyed anything, I came to spend money,” he complains.
Since the east of the country, several owners of inflatable castles and children’s carousels of Creole invoice have moved these days. Michel and Yoiné, the first of Guantanamo and the other of the Tunas, say they take six months out of their homes on an itinerant tour of every town where popular festivals are held. For the space in which they had their equipment, which do not work with electricity but with human strength, pay the amount of 8,000 pesos. They sleep and cook their food in a parked trailer near there. Each return in the carousel costs 50 pesos: “We are throwing pa’lante, to bring money to the family,” says Yoiné, the tuner.
Faced with another of the inflatable castles, its owner warns with a whistle that has consumed the fun time consisting in a few minutes to jump inside and so the parents of the best have also paid the amount of 50 pesos. In the middle of the esplanade, owners of small children’s cars charge the same for the round trip in a space of just six or seven meters.
“I brought almost 5,000 pesos and I have almost nothing left. This is to bleed your pocket,” says Diamela, a mother resident in the Camacho cast who says he has “fled” from a 10 -hour blackout. “I came to bring my children and my nephews who never go anywhere and with These blackouts nor television can see. ”At 6:00 p.m. on July 24 and 25, a good part of Santa Clara is without electricity. From the municipalities, reports of more than 15 continuous blackout arrives because the carnivals of the Sandino monopolize a considerable proportion of the megawatts reserved for the entire province.
At the foot of social media publications in The Municipal Government page The Santaclareños leave their comments: “That is called irrational use of energy, so many needs, so much misery, both fuel deficit, and is spent at popular festivals,” wrote a user identified as Minerva Martínez. “There is nothing to celebrate,” argue others.
In the tents of the state gastronomy to the center of the Carnival, where in addition to vodka and rum they sell portions of Caldosa prepared right there, the mob of people is crowded to fill their repositories of dispensed beer. The afternoon of July 25, the traditional beer pipes had not yet arrived in the area while the canned drink was sold to 220 pesos the unit in the private positions. “I was half an hour in the tail for the beer dispensed, to fill a knob that nothing else took my thirst, and again for the tail. Not even one can get one of you can,” says Mauricio, a 54 -year -old Santaclareño. “Look that I was a carnival and I assure you that these are the most bad I remember in my life,” he ends.
