By Esther Zoza
HAVANA TIMES – Yesterday, I ran into my former philosophy teacher in Centro Habana. Her face showed signs of deep distress. After the hugs, she asked if I had time to talk, and I agreed. It wasn’t difficult to understand that she needed someone to listen to her.
During the walk to the La Fraternidad park, I noticed she was avoiding looking at her surroundings and quickening her pace. Once we sat down, she let her feelings flow. When she left, I felt the urgent need to write about her anguish, an anguish I share but couldn’t express until today.
It’s obvious that not everyone can hear the lament of a city that has been disappearing before our eyes. Most of its inhabitants are absorbed in their own groans. To recognize its death would force us to question a reality that not everyone is willing to admit.
When did we become silent accomplices of its deterioration? Why didn’t we demand the relevant authorities take responsibility for protecting our architectural heritage for future generations? A heritage that has become a physical pain. Could it be that negligence and immobility were an excuse? Could it be that the death of the city is the answer for us to stop existing?
That I now live outside the city and visit occasionally doesn’t exempt me from the pain. Walking on the streets of San Lázaro, Belascoaín, and Galiano feels like witnessing a war zone. The city of my memories, the city I love, no longer exists. I wonder when we stopped preserving memory, when we became builders of oblivion.
The city no longer exists. Its people, once joyful and lively, are now a gray shadow, a shadow that extends its hands, that watches its children leave as the city falls apart and searches among the ruins for a place to forget its former splendor.
Read more from Esther Zoza’s diary here.
