Residents at the former Latin American Solidarity School in Las Guásimas, Havana, protested this Friday over the poor conditions of the premises and the lack of food. The families, relocated to the building converted into a shelter after suffering collapses in Old Havana and Central Havana, complained along with their children about not having milk or food.
“They are very poor people who, in the past, have already staged some protests and who today placed their children holding hands, claiming on the outskirts of the building that they have no milk or food,” he explained to 14ymedio the freelance journalist Amarilis Cortina, who lives in Managua, near Las Guásimas.
Some 60 families live in the three-story building, including more than 20 children, who lost their houses in landslides and now inhabit what were previously the classrooms and common areas of the school, located in the Arroyo Naranjo municipality. Poor conditions at the site have sparked similar protests in the past due to water supply problems and roof leaks.
The families share the bathrooms that are for collective use and in the past they have reported hygienic problems that caused illnesses in the minors, such as scabies and asthma
The families share the bathrooms that are for collective use and in the past they have reported hygienic problems that caused illnesses in the minors, such as scabies and asthma, due to the dirt in the premises and excess humidity. This Friday’s protest occurs three days before the Civic March, called for November 15 by the Archipelago platform, which has caused nervousness among the forces of order.
Sources close to the Government of the capital told 14ymedio that several troops were sent to the area as soon as the protest was made public. “To be aware that people took to the streets in Managua, it seems that they overtook it [en alusión a la Marcha Cívica]”was the message that was received in a command post of the Ministry of Public Health.
“They told my father, who is on rest today, to be aware because in the event of a riot, he has to go and take care of his workplace,” a young man from Havana tells this newspaper. The state employee was informed a few minutes after the protest that was taking place in Las Guásimas became known.
Several parents with children who study at the Adolfo del Castillo elementary school, in nearby Managua, confirmed that the students are summoned to an act of revolutionary reaffirmation at three in the afternoon today in response to the protest this morning.
“No one can be absent because they announced that it is necessary to give ‘a forceful answer to the ungrateful and counterrevolutionaries’, but I am not going to let him go”
“My child came to the house for lunch and told me that he had to go back to school, although he had been told before that he had the afternoon off,” explains a mother from the area. “No one can be absent because they announced that it is necessary to give ‘a forceful answer to the ungrateful and counterrevolutionaries’, but I am not going to let him go.”
Arroyo Naranjo was one of the municipalities of the capital where the population, on July 11, threw themselves into the streets with great force shouting for freedom and down with the dictatorship. Among the neighborhoods that demonstrated that day is the cast La Lira, as evidenced by several videos published on social networks. On La Güinera It was where he died, by police shots, Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, the only deceased recognized by the ruling party so far during those days.
The protest on Monday, July 12, in La Güinera, one of the most depressed areas of the capital, was also broadcast in several videos through social networks, despite the fact that the Government kept the internet connection cut off for several days.
Last April, a group of mothers made a protest with which he prevented traffic on a street in the Trebol district, in the Havana municipality of Boyeros. During more than two hours, the protesters complained about the poor conditions of the shelter where they live.
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