Havana/“Water!”, It was heard with unusual frequency this Wednesday in the Cuevita, between a multitude of accounting, clandestine vendors and desperate customers. It was not a proclamation announcing drink or a storm warning, but the keyword that in every Cuba warns that the police are close. The authorities, who usually look the other way before the irregularities of these spaces, decided this time to close the place for a month. The official motive: “Perform repairs,” some neighbors told this newspaper.
The Cuevita It is the mecca of popular trade In San Miguel del Padrón, in Havana. There is everything from food, hygiene products, clothing and appliances, to toys, medications and cash currency change. The goods arrive on ways as diverse as mulesintermediaries or deviations from state channels, and generate income for both self -employed workers and those who operate without a license.
Therefore, despite the closing order, few resigned themselves to leave. Sellers rearranged in surrounding streets and in the portals of neighboring houses
Therefore, despite the closing order, few resigned themselves to leave. The vendors rearranged in surrounding streets and in the portals of the neighboring houses. “You have to eat,” said a seller without papers while in a hurry she picked up her merchandise to the passage of the uniformed and, minutes later, reassemble the position in the same place.
The history of the Cuevita dates back to the special period and was strengthened with the economic reforms of recent years. It arose in response to chronic shortages and the need to get goods in foreign exchange, becoming a crucial supply point for habaneros and buyers from other provinces.
This Wednesday, however, the site looked more chaotic than ever. The stalls piled up in front of the houses, the sale of food coincided right next to pestilent garbage dumps, open rice bags mixed with the mud and a choir of screams of anxious vendors.
/ 14ymedio
The closure coincides with the IV National Exercise of Prevention and Confrontation of the Crime, which includes patrol, “prophylactic” meetings with the so -called “criminal potential” and social control actions. In addition to the police, students, workers and militants of the party participate. Previous exercises have not returned the order to the streets, but they have swelled the state coffers with the money of fines and seizures.
“There is no police to get so many people,” said a stocking seller and underpants who ran to hide when he heard the alert signal. Minutes later, seeing the uniformed move on his motorcycle, he returned to his post and added: “The people live, they can’t close it.”
Some call “Candonga” these informal markets that exist throughout the island, a term that came from Angola with the Cubans who went to war in the 70s and 80s. But today’s battle is another: putting a plate on the table, shoes on the feet of the children and getting money to survive a month, something that no state salary guarantees.
