MADRID, Spain.- Young Cuban mothers residing in Manatí, Las Tunas province, live in “homes” in precarious conditions, without government help, despite asking for it for years.
Yine Palomo Rodríguez, 21, the mother of a two-year-old boy and a four-year-old boy, lives in a ranch built by her and her husband, who could not even finish it because they did not have the necessary money.
“I would like to have a (house) where one could have everything,” he wished before the cameras of CubaNet the young woman, who works “putting nails” and whose husband works for a cooperative, guarding the fields, and earns 1,200 Cuban pesos.
“When the child was born, the eldest, they told me (the authorities) that they were going to give me cement to put on the floor. The boy is four years old and I’m still waiting. From what I see, they will never give us that help, ”she said hopelessly.
For her part, Adibel Palomino Guevara, 22, lives together with her in-laws, in a rustic, extremely poor “house”, together with her husband, her five-year-old daughter and three-year-old twins.
Palomino Guevara told CubaNet that, due to this situation, she occupied an uninhabited office years ago, but the Public Health authorities removed her from the place, alleging that they needed it for a nurse who had returned from a mission in Venezuela.
“But the nurse has never lived there and is still uninhabited,” he said.
The young woman recounted that some time ago, when the law on the help that should be given to mothers with more than three children under 17 years of age was approved, she went to the region’s authorities to find out about the law.
“They told me that I had to wait because that law had not been approved in Manatí, something that is uncertain because after it comes down from Havana it has to be approved throughout the country,” he said.
“They always tell me that there are no resources, that there are no materials, that my situation is complicated,” he adds.
After several procedures in Housing and Physical Planning, they sold him a piece of land and gave him the papers to build a house within a year.
If they do not build within that period, they return 60 percent of what they paid and they lose the land.
“I can’t build the house because I don’t have the resources, I don’t have the economy to do it. And I don’t think about myself, I think about the future of my children”, said Palomino Guevara.
The family is supported by the husband’s salary, “which is not enough to support the five of them.” According to her, she assured, in Manatí there are many mothers in her same situation.
