Vedado, heart of fun in Havana, today turned into a desert

Havana/It’s Saturday and I’m leaving for El Vedado. The mere mixture of this day of the week with La Rampa, 23rd Street and the surroundings of the Habana Libre hotel and the Coppelia ice cream parlor, meant a few years ago fun, meeting friends and ending the night enjoying a show. But that city no longer exists. Now, the avenues are almost empty, the clubs remain closed and the acquaintances who put a face and name on every corner have left. Only those who could not leave remain.

I head through the La Timba neighborhood until I border the Plaza de la Revolución. Don’t even think about getting a transport that will take me to the vicinity of Avenida de los Presidentes. I do the entire journey on foot. Paseo Street is a desert at ten in the morning. On a pole, someone has dared to hang a sign that says “Gasoline” and a mobile number. I imagine that if I call they will tell me the price of that liquid that, right now, monopolizes the dreams and efforts of the entire country. Yesterday a neighbor told me that the liter was on special for 4,000 pesos, but it must have already gone up.

In a corner, several bright pink convertible cars participate in the filming of a video clip. The contrast is brutal. Passengers smile at the camera from the peculiar row of shiny vehicles a few meters from an immense landfill. As I watch the spectacle, a mosquito bites my ankle, a patch of skin I forgot to smear with repellent. Insecticides have become an inseparable part of our “war module” before leaving home. We are in a permanent battle to avoid the contagion of any of the arboviruses that corner us.

My husband has been suffering from the effects of chikungunya for months. Swollen hands, joint pain, weakness and slow walking that have become the hallmark of those who have had the disease. In front of me, on D Street, walks a woman with that robotic gait that the illness has left her with. I can’t stop remembering the scenes from the movie John of the dead, with a city full of zombies that attack those who still breathe. But in Havana there are no people left alive to attack, we are all already corpses, in one way or another.

I am in front of the tallest building in Cuba. One would expect that in the surroundings of the Iberostar Selection hotel, also known as Torre K, there would be a coming and going of taxis, clients and tour guides, but nothing. The absolutely empty entrance gives a touch of abandonment to this ugly block of concrete and glass. Only a man who is delirious and screams with disconnected phrases shakes the lethargy that extends on that piece of sidewalk to the once most hectic corner of Havana: 23rd and L.

I cross to the other side of the left atrium of the heart of El Vedado although the light for pedestrians is still red. It doesn’t matter. I could dance for a while in the middle of the popular intersection and there would be no danger of being run over. Two teenagers pass by with their scooters and another madman moves his arms like the blades of a fan in front of the Yara cinema. Losing your sanity is easy in a reality that challenges us with new absurdities every day. The friends who have not left live taking pills that anesthetize them. “I don’t want to go crazy,” a neighbor repeats to me while showing me the blister of tiny pills she carries in her purse.

I reach Infanta Street. It smells like urine. I sit in a doorway in front of Radio Progreso. In a few minutes several elderly people parade asking for money. A nearby business has hired two burly security guards who prevent panhandlers from interacting with their customers. A family of tourists, the first I have seen on my trip, approaches to read the restaurant menu. The woman asks the employee if he can help her access the internet because the SIM card she bought from Etecsa is “not working.” The man explains that the service is bad and there are times of the day when it does not work. Her face is a poem: she doesn’t understand that they have charged her for something that doesn’t work.

A bright yellow excavator passes in front of me. It’s the first vehicle I see after several minutes of sitting there. Five men are on the shovel. I’m going to have to ask my neighbor for one of those little pills so I don’t go crazy.