“Don’t take off your shoes!”, a mother shouted this Monday morning to her newly arrived son at Playita 16, a stretch of coastline west of Havana that serves as consolation for those who cannot afford a trip to the white sands of Santa María del Mar or Boca Ciega, in the eastern part of the city. The precaution of keeping shoes is not only because of the sharp dog’s tooth that appears before reaching the water, but also because of the garbage that fills the area, bottle covers, empty cans, paper and other waste.
An employee wipes a damp cloth over the counter of a coffee shop a few meters from the waves. There are hardly a couple of customers in the place because, despite the heat, the high prices of beer and soft drinks scare away thirsty bathers. A young man asks the woman if the Comunales company never goes through the place to collect garbage. “Ah, I don’t know. This is my bit and it’s clean,” she replies as she shrugs. Outside, the heap of various thermopacks lying on the floor gleams in the August sun.
La Playita 16 has never been a place that is well cared for by the authorities. Rather it is about an annoying place where hippies, rockers and all kinds of people uncomfortable for the Cuban power and their desire to “parameterize” any hint of diversity met in the 70s. In that piece of coast of the municipality of Playa, the police were fattening themselves by issuing fines and taking away the long-haired youths. Also from there innumerable and rustic boats departed during the 1994 Balseros Crisis.
Then, at the end of the last century, dollarization began to change the face of that coastline without sand or umbrellas. The appearance of several kiosks selling drinks and food attracted other visitors who alternated looking at the sunset with a cold drink or a piece of pizza. Perhaps from those years there are still some more gentrified bathers who parade their bathing suits, their colorful towels and their purebred dogs around the place, but they are few. Most of them have migrated from the beach or the country.
This Monday, almost at noon, despite the harshness of The Indian and of their arrows, a drunk who spent the night on the concrete road was still snoring. Some children frolicked on the shore and a lady watched the horizon under the protection of a huge hat. Around them, the torn bags, some tetrapack boxes that once contained juices or small doses of Planchao rum, and the empty bottles were also part of the scene.
A piece of cardboard flew from a nearby bench to land on one of the piles of waste, right next to a couple with a baby stroller who were taking a photo with the little one’s red cheeks in the foreground, behind the already blue sea. aside the motley mountain of debris.
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