Tania Díaz Castro
HAVANA, June - The first park in the city was the Plaza de Armas, sited
between the Church and Government House. Today, this public space is very
distant from what it was in its heyday, with its luxuriant trees, tall palms and
well-tended gardens. Instead our parks have few trees, no grass and no flowers.
In a word, neglected and abandoned.
Gardeners and park wardens dissapeared decades ago, and only a few residents
sweep small park areas near their own houses with palm fronds or worn-out
brooms.
Havana's director of support for Community Services admitted recently that
there's a pressing need for workers to be assigned exclusively to care for park
fixtures and green areas, and for police to enforce existing laws against people
who deface or damage public parks.
In 1936, there were some 50 parks in Havana, with more than half a million
meters of forested areas. Today, more than six decades later, there are 810
parks, most of them dedicated by governments previous to the present one. Very
few compared to the increase in population to more than two million people. The
government press tells us that only a few Havana parks are rated as good, even
though many of them now sport small commercial centers that do not contribute to
their beauty or cleanliness and that none have a caretaker to mind them.
That's why we ask who assigned to NOBODY the care of our parks, which are so
necessary to a healthy environment.
To evade responsibility, the government blames social indiscipline.
The government press commented recently about the danger of children who go
swimming in the Luminous Fountain, risking electrocution from the many broken
light fixtures and drowning in open registers that they themselves remove. The
situation continues unaltered because there is no caretaker at the park.
In spite of generalized neglect, some residents have put their own
initiatives into effect in neighborhood parks, such as the Pogolotti forest,
Marianao, La Ceiba and Puentes Grandes.
Paradoxically, the United Nations program for the environment has granted
two prizes to Cuban organizations for their role in defense of the environment.
Havana, along with the Italian city of Turin, was selected as the seat for the
international celebration of Environmental Day this past June 5. For the
occasion, the Cuban government rushed to reopen several areas of Parque
Almendares that had been neglegted for years.
The park, inaugurated in 1937, had always enjoyed well-deserved renown for
its natural beauty and the cleanliness of its river. Nowadays, the waters of the
Almendares are so polluted that anyone swimming in them would risk certain
death.
Examples like these show that the Cuban government has never given priority
to the care of natural resources. A flight over our parks would show a
depressing picture. Amusement parks, like the Lenin and Coney Island, and many
others have died a natural death; there's not even grass where they used to be.
The Italian marble sculptures in Central Park are not there any more.
However, Cuban parks are the ideal place for lovers; there are no caretakers
or lights to hinder furtive kisses in the dark.
\Versión
original en español
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