“Do you have the volume and the page?” asked the employee without looking up at the man. “Without that data we can’t do anything,” she stressed as she checked the contents of a drawer. After three hours in line at the office of the Palacio de los Matrimonios in Old Havana, the illusions of this 45-year-old from Havana crashed on Tuesday against the bureaucracy. “And with the names and the date, you can’t find that marriage certificate?” He asked with a small voice. The woman stared at him. “No, my child, No. That was before, now we are exceeded.”
If you wanted to verify the Cuban exodus a few years ago, you had to go to the airports or the most intricate areas of the coast in the middle of the night. It is no longer necessary. It is enough to go through the long lines on the outskirts of the premises where criminal records are processed to birth certificates to check the number of those who want to leave the Island. A fever to recover any personal document from the archives has taken over of all. Transcripts from universities, high school diplomas or cards with the vaccinations received throughout life: the demand for any of these papers has skyrocketed.
Transcripts from universities, high school diplomas or cards with the vaccinations received throughout life: the demand for any of these papers has skyrocketed
“Here, from very early on, the sun begins to shine strongly in the area where people wait to enter,” a resident of Paseo del Prado, between Ánimas and Virtudes, clarifies to the newcomers, who earns his living marking from early morning in the queue of the Palace of Marriages, also archive, to later resell the turn. “A few years ago I sold one or two every day, but now my wife and son-in-law help me with this, because there are many people desperate to get their papers out,” he told 14ymedio.
For a price that oscillates between 300 and 500 pesos, the client who hires the services of this neighbor saves hours of waiting and “safe sunstroke,” advertises the retiree. But he’s still left with the worst part: dealing with the cranky employees from the heat and the oversubscriptions they have to deal with. A high percentage of those who enter leave without even having been able to start the process to obtain a certification.
“I don’t know why they talk so much about the computerization of society if everything has to be brought to them chewyThey are not looking for anything. They practically ask you to bring them the original certification to make a copy. For that it is not a civil registry, “lamented a woman on Tuesday who was looking for a marriage certificate of her parents to present in the application process for Spanish nationality, based on the Law of Democratic Memory.
“Sometimes I have to ask the person interested in a literal certification to bring me the sheets from home to print them because we don’t even have paper”
Employees give their reasons for so many obstacles. “Sometimes I have to ask the person who is interested in a literal certification to bring me the sheets from home to print them because we don’t even have paper. The printer toners should have been changed months ago and what we can take out is hardly readable so clearly”, he details to this newspaper. “There are people who have turned a document back on us because when they presented it they did not accept it because they did not see what it said.”
The same retiree who offers the services of colero, for a higher price arrange a “more personalized” appointment with a registry clerk. Under this modality, which is charged in a four-digit figure, the client offers the information he has, even if he lacks the volume and folio, the exact date or some other details of the marriage that he wants to endorse with a document. By magic, the process begins, the printer cartridge appears, the sheets of paper are not missing and the worker looks into the applicant’s eyes while he explains what he wants. She is very attentive to the applicant and smiles at him, while outside a crowd melts in the sun.
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