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Along Carlos III Street in Havana and Back Toward Ethiopia

Without internet, without public transportation, and with household appliances fried by power surges, Havana seems to be returning to its harshest origins.

By Yoani Sanchez (14ymedio)

HAVANA TIMES — “You just keep going straight down Carlos III,” warns a weary-looking state employee when I ask for the address of a repairman who fixes electric cookers. With mobile internet down and phone calls also disrupted, people have gone back to using the most reliable “street map” there is: asking for directions along the way. On the broad avenue that cuts through Central Havana, that’s easy enough because there is always some bustle. The hard part is figuring out when someone is just making something up without knowing, and when they actually have reliable information.

As I walk toward the area near Reina Street, a woman sitting in a doorway tells me she has “the good Alprazolam,” a powerful benzodiazepine drug that in this city is sold as casually as children’s candy. An old man who has placed a few broken objects on the sidewalk to attract buyers gives me more directions to my destination. Meanwhile, a stray dog stares insistently at the pork sandwich vendor stationed with his cart on a corner, hoping he’ll toss him at least a strip of skin.

Carlos III has become an avenue of makeshift stalls. The soft drink bottling plant that fascinated me with its sounds in my childhood is closed. The garden of the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, which I loved walking through, has been fenced off for decades. The cultural center where I learned to draw and first stepped onto a stage barely organizes activities anymore. But the worst thing is the Plaza, converted into a dollar-only market, as lacking in merchandise as it is in customers. No voices or laughter emerge anymore from its dark interior.

I walk past a sign announcing the Knowledge Management Center for Domestic Trade (CGC). “What kind of information might be stored there?” I ask myself. Will they teach how to share........

© Havana Times