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FROM
CUBA
Makeshift housing spreads in Havana
Ernesto Roque Cintero, UPECI
HAVANA, Cuba - June (www.cubanet.org) -
Cubans in need of shelter in the city of
Havana are erecting structures of any material
at hand and in any area big enough to lie
down.
These squatters, typically immigrants from
the impoverished eastern provinces of the
island, have proved to be quite resourceful.
They build out of cardboard, wood, metal,
plastic, foam, or any other material they
can "recycle." As to a building
lot, any space will do; a few square feet
in someone's roof, a corner in somebody's
back yard.
Such housing, considered illegal by authorities,
is periodically torn down by government
officials, only to sprout up elsewhere.
According to an official with the State
Council, the supreme governing body in Cuba,
there are 113 of these squatters' villas
in the city.
One in Casablanca, a small community across
the bay from Havana proper, the first such
structures started rising 18 years ago,
said Manuel Rodiles, who pronounced himself
one of the longest and oldest residents
of the improvised settlement.
Rodiles said once there were as many as
1,500 housing units in the area, but today
there are only about 500 left. The government
started evicting squatters and bulldozing
the structures about 5 years ago.
Rodiles said he is legally a resident of
La Maya, near Santiago de Cuba, at the other
end of the island, and that he makes a living
selling stuff in the streets, naturally,
without a license.
Rodiles, who said he has conducted a census
of the slum, showed some papers that show
945 residents, of whom 244 are children
under 10; 63 are handicapped, 8 are pregnant,
10 are under psychiatric care, 230 are housewives,
90 are elderly and 400 are men of working
age.
Rodiles said the population encompasses
young and old, white and black, Communists
and dissidents, workers and unemployed,
but to the government, they are all illegal.
Versión
original en español
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