Cuban Internet users question the attempt to house people in “metal boxes” under the harsh sun of the Island.
MIAMI, United States. – The official newspaper Granma reported this Friday that the Electromechanical Company of Villa Clarasubordinate to the Ministry of Construction, is carrying out a project to “manufacture 20 homes from the reuse of metal containers”, an initiative whose distribution – according to the note itself – “will be coordinated by the provincial government.”
The official publication presented the project as an alternative to “strengthen the housing fund” of the territory and assured that the entity “already has 90 percent of the necessary resources.” However, the text does not specify costs, delivery times, verifiable technical characteristics (thermal insulation, ventilation, air conditioning), or public allocation criteria for beneficiary families, despite being homes designed from metal modules.
The director of the center, Justo Rodríguez Gattorno, said to the Cuban News Agency (ACN) that it is “a country order” and admitted that the “rate of progress has been conditioned by the availability of materials.” For her part, Aracelys Machado Hurtado, presented as a specialist in the company’s comprehensive services, stated that the reconversion “involves precision engineering and welding work to guarantee habitability, safety and comfort,” transforming industrial containers into “fully equipped residential spaces.”
While state media insist on the idea of “innovation” and “creative capacity,” the critical reaction on social networks focused on one basic point: the heat. On Facebook, journalist José Raúl Gallego he questioned that they try to house people in “metal boxes” and warned that, “in a country where temperatures constantly exceed 30 degrees, these containers without air conditioning are practically ovens where no one will be able to live.”
Gallego also described the project as “an example of the low capacity of those who run Cuba” and predicted that the measure “will only serve” to show results and divert resources: “to falsely increase the numbers of housing construction” and so that “shortly all those containers will be abandoned while the housing problem continues to increase,” he wrote.
The report of Granma It also included a favorable reaction from a resident identified as María de los Ángeles Pérez, from the Escambray neighborhood (Santa Clara), who stated that “any new and well-made solution is welcome, especially if it accelerates the response to families who have been waiting for some time for a decent roof.”
However, neither Granma nor the ACN provided information that allows us to contrast what exactly this “well done” will consist of (interior materials, thermal treatment, expected electricity consumption, sanitary conditions), in a country where construction precariousness and shortage of supplies usually turn advertisements into promises that are difficult to audit.
