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FROM
CUBA
The clinic and the dollar store
HAVANA, Cuba, February 11 (www.cubanet.org)
- In the town of Candelaria, Pinar del Río
province, the polyclinic and the Panamericana
dollar store stand less than a hundred feet
from each other. By day.
At night, during one of the frequent power
outages that Candelarios have become used
to, they could be a hundred miles apart.
The store remains brightly illuminated;
it has its own generator. The polyclinic
goes dark along with the rest of the town.
It's not that the polyclinic doesn't have
a generator, says William Borroto, an electrician
in town. It's just that "it's been
sitting in the sidelines for a long time
at the maintenance center." No one
remembers what is the matter with it, but
whatever the case, the parts must be paid
for in dollars, and the polyclinic does
not generate dollars in the normal course
of business. So the generator sits, and
the polyclinic goes dark from time to time.
Such as for instance, at 10 p.m. last Thursday,
February 5, when someone brought in an older
patient suffering from a heart attack. The
car in which they brought him in had to
be pressed into service, shining its headlights
into the building to shed what little light
was ultimately available to treat the patient.
"There used to be five battery-powered
fluorescent lamps for emergencies, but they
have disappeared," said Borroto, the
electrician.
Next door, La Panamericana hummed.
Versión
original en español
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