Havana/Matter is neither created nor destroyed, it only changes hands. Where until recently there was a state cafeteria, which was left in ruins after a tragic collapse, now is the main reservoir of rebar, recebo and pieces of wood from a neighborhood with serious construction problems. On the corner of Galiano and San Rafael, in Centro Habana, scavengers carry everything they can get from the rubble of Café Boulevard. Anything can be used to repair another home or to sell on the informal market.
“They have been taking everything like ants,” he tells 14ymedio the employee of a nearby motorcycle and tricycle parking lot who has seen how the remains of the property are paraded into the hands of those most in need. The collapse of the ceiling of state commerce, in mid-August, claimed the life of an employee who worked in the premises on the ground floor. That day, the exterior of Café Boulevard and the quarters at the top still displayed doors, windows and even clothes hanging on the balconies.
/ 14ymedio
However, in less than two months, the fragments that could serve to support a structure have been disappearing from the structure. barbecue or melt a kitchen counter. “Some things were taken by the owners before they left, but others have gone. cannibalizing“At night and in the early morning, the same people who live here,” explains the employee. “I have seen toilet bowls, complete blinds, electric cables and many boards come out.”
If in nature scavengers remove corpses from the environment and recycle them, in the Cuban capital scavengers They destroy any ruin, empty the large rooms where there was once a screen, carry the bidet from the old stately bathroom of the mansion that fell down with the last rains, and skillfully extract the bricks from a façade. Like their counterparts in nature, these collectors are guided by noise and smell: the shouting that comes after columns fall and the musty stench that spreads through the remains of a collapsed building.
In a couple of months, it is very likely that only a few unadorned pillars will remain on the corner of Galiano and San Rafael and the memory that laughter, conversations and beers were shared inside.
