High positions of the regime wasted funds offered by Canada to clean the Almendares river

Havana/Almendares is no longer the river that Habaneros went to cool off or the landscape that inspired songs and poems. It crosses 45 kilometers from Las Lomas de Tapas, in Mayabeque, to drain between the Vedado and Miramar. And in its final section it runs through the Metropolitan Park of Havana, an urban forest of more than 700 hectares opened in 1989. But the greenery of its margins contrasts with dark, smelly and poor oxygen water that makes it a symbol of degradation.

Following our recent publication On the subject, the writing of 14ymedio He received the testimony from Eduardo Fernández, former manager of the Metropolitan Park, who reported his experiences when he worked there as a legal advisor. “The level of oxygen dissolved in the water, in the best known river, is close to zero. The discharge of industrial waste from the old polar beer factory, the bin of large bridges and the Coppelia ice cream factory, contaminated its waters,” he tells this newspaper. Fernandez ironized about the “good news” that most of these factories are closed, paralyzed or working intermittently, “but the damage caused for tens of years is already done,” he said.

Fernández also details the negative impact of domestic dumping and garbage. “The only green that has the almendares are the remains of the forest of Havana and the non -urbanized area of ​​the spindle, severely deforested and part of it dedicated to agriculture and the breeding of pigs. The only animal to which life is possible in those waters is to some occasional chief.” Its testimony coincides with scientific studies that identify more than 240 sources of pollution along the low channel, organic waste discharges, nutrients that trigger eutrophication, bacterial contamination and heavy metals in sediments.

The deterioration of the river is not only environmental. On the margins of the almendares survive precarious settlements such as the Fink, where families directly discharge their masonal waters to the channel. In 2011, Silvio Rodríguez sang there as part of his “by the neighborhoods”, accompanied by Omara Portuondo. “Here I come without being summoned by anyone,” said that rainy afternoon. The gesture put visibility on a forgotten neighborhood, but, as Fernández admits, “I don’t think Silvio can do anything. That would require dozens of millions of dollars. Besides, it is not just an economic problem, it is a problem of political will. If they did not solve it when they swam in money, they will do it less now.”

The rescue attempts of the Metropolitan Park stumbled again and again with the bureaucracy. Fernández recalls an episode in the mid -1990s, when the Urban Institute of Canada offered between $ 300,000 and $ 400,000 to collaborate in environmental projects. “At first there was a stretch and shrinks on who would control the money, because the central government [de Cuba] I wanted to manage it. I convinced the park director that I had to fight for the control of money, because if not the Canadians would never accept. Luckily the goal was achieved, but that created suspicion in many instances. ”

The former official also recounts how the rebel army, one of Fidel Castro’s favorite projects, ended up affecting almendares. “They built it on a permeable karst terrain, which made the reservoir filter water to the subsoil and miss a good part of it. The officials said that fed the water table, but the commander could not be told that the dam was defective. In addition, he reduced the river flow.”

“Most of the money was used on trips abroad, propaganda materials, workshops with meals and drinks, attention to foreign officials”

International cooperations were not always used in the best way. “The organizations that cooperated were the Urban Institute of Canada, Oxfam and the foundation of man and the nature of Antonio Núñez Jiménez. Most of the money was used on trips abroad, propaganda materials, workshops with food and drinks, attention to foreign officials.” According to Fernández, “a way of life for certain officials was made. In the case of Núñez Jiménez, it was a classic opportunism to take glories, justify trips and fill its coffers,” he says.

In August 1995, during a workshop in Lenin Park, Fernández launched a proposal that cost him ostracism. “I explained that things would begin to solve themselves by eliminating bureaucratic obstacles, leaving people to do what they have to do, including foreigners who wish to invest. That fell as a bomb to Commander Jesús Montané, Esteban lazo already other leaders. Then I learned that they had given the order not to give me a job anywhere in Havana.”

Fernández’s testimony is not the only one who portrays the tragedy of almendares. Scientific research of the last twenty years confirm their words. Wastewater without treatment, phosphates and nitrates at alarming levels, fecal bacteria, metals such as lead and copper in sediments and aquatic plants suffocate the most important river in Havana. Scientists speak of an almendares with “chronic organic load” and oxygen deficit that turns its waters into a hostile medium for life.

The urban forest that accompanies the channel, still frequented by families and couples, hides a landscape of disease and marginality. The riverside communities live under a risk of flooding, invasion of mosquitoes and pollution. And the Metropolitan Park project, which once wanted to be lung of the city, faces the paradox today of being its sink.

Eduardo Fernández summarizes it with pessimism: “I think that the only way to resolve is how all the problems of Cuba would be solved: with a total regime change.”