Havana/There are monuments that take on a different reading with the passage of time. This Wednesday I was walking near the Marianao Obelisk, that stone spire raised in tribute to Dr. Carlos J. Finlay, and I couldn’t help but notice the irony. The structure stands elegantly, with a shape reminiscent of a gigantic syringe, but under its shadow, in the Cuba of 2026, obtaining a simple hypodermic needle or an antibiotic usually depends on having relatives abroad or venturing into the informal market.
It was mid-morning when I arrived at that large area where several health centers are concentrated: the Pando Ferrer Hospital, which many continue to call the League against Blindness; a polyclinic and the popular Maternidad Obrera. A little further away, there is also Ciudad Libertad, former Camp Columbia. A fragment of the city where the incessant movement of patients, companions and health personnel puts to the test transport networks that long ago stopped functioning normally.
I see a woman with one eye blindfolded approach an old Chevrolet that has just stopped to pick up passengers. To take her to Infanta and San Lázaro, in Central Havana, the driver warns her that the trip costs 1,000 pesos. The price is enough to deter her. Take a step back and return to the sidewalk. A few meters away, a young pregnant woman tries to convince the driver of a dilapidated Ford to take her to the bridge over the Almendares River. “I can’t give you more than 300,” he clarifies. The man shakes his head and drives away.
The thieves also took “the yellow outfit in which the child was going to leave the hospital, in honor of the Virgin of Charity.”
The real stars of the avenue are the electric tricycles. They are so loaded that they can barely move forward. In its narrow seats, patients who have just been discharged, nurses who finish a twenty-four-hour shift, family members loaded with toiletry bags, doctors who try to arrive on time for relief, and elderly people who return home after a consultation for which they waited for months, travel. Some are so tired or old that they barely manage to negotiate the high step to get into the vehicle.
In smaller numbers, some surviving almendrones and a handful of motorcycles circulate. The rest of the traffic appears to have evaporated along with the fuel. The nearby bus stop looks like a medical observation room. Exhausted faces, improvised fans with x-rays and conversations that end up leading, inevitably, to blackouts, gasoline or hospitals. A woman says that her mobile phone was stolen while she was taking care of her recently given birth daughter in El Materno. “I went to the bathroom and when I came back he was gone.” The thieves also took “the yellow outfit in which the child was going to leave the hospital, in honor of the Virgin of Charity.”
The line at the nearby Banco Metropolitano is so long that it has spilled out onto the sidewalk and almost reaches the roundabout at 31 and 100. Customers crowd under the flowering flamboyant trees while they wait for the electricity to return and the branch to be able to return to paying those pensions and salaries that will lose a good part of their value before the end of the week. Some elders have brought folding chairs; others, bottles with water; some even a book. Waiting has become the activity that takes up the most time in our days.
A friend says that every morning she wakes up looking at the horizon, convinced that one day she will see an enormous silhouette approaching from the sea. A neighbor on Tulipán Street claims that he has been waiting for three years for one of his two children to send him a package with frozen chicken, oil and some of those soda crackers that he sees advertised on the internet but has not tried for decades. My former History teacher lives waiting for the email where one day she will be informed if she has been approved for the visa that will allow her to reach one of those countries that serve as the first stepping stone to embark on the route to the South, the same one that thousands of Cubans continue to travel every month.
It’s not just mosquitoes. It bites the heat that gives no respite during blackouts; they bite the endless queues; they bite prices, uncertainty, scarcity and that immobile clock that seems to have been installed over the country
We have become the country of waiting, the nation of the suspended compass. There are those who wait for the electric current to return; others, that water appears through the pipe; Many wait for the bus that does not arrive, the medicine that never enters the pharmacy, the call from abroad, the permit, the package, the money, the news that changes the course of their lives. We wait so long that the verb has stopped being an action and has become a place where we live.
From the sidewalk I look at the obelisk again and think of Finlay, the scientist who dedicated his life to fighting diseases transmitted by mosquitoes. As I walk past the monument I feel a couple of bites on my ankles. I jump around to scare away the insects, hit my legs with the closed umbrella and reproach myself for forgetting to apply repellent before leaving the house.
A nurse witnesses my bizarre dance and laughs. “Mosquitos no longer bite, now they bite,” he jokes.
You are right. It’s not just mosquitoes. It bites the heat that gives no respite during blackouts; they bite the endless queues; They bite prices, uncertainty, scarcity and that immobile clock that seems to have been installed over the country. The entire reality has become an insatiable mouth that tears small pieces from us every day. We are fragments of people trying to get somewhere while we wish for the vaccine against so much national paralysis to finally appear.
