Old Havana's boom good only for some
A renovation effort in Old Havana is pulling in the tourists, but
residents still living in squalor complain there is little benefit for them.
Posted on Thu, Dec. 13, 2007
BY JAMES C. McKINLEY JR.
New York Times Service
HAVANA --
These days, when Eusebio Leal Spengler walks the streets of Old Havana,
people treat him like a rock star. Ladies kiss him on the cheek and
whisper that they love him. Children point at him.
He pumps the hand of a tour guide he knows. ''Ladies and gentlemen,
there goes the man most responsible for the restoration of the buildings
you see here,'' the guide tells his flock.
It is not an exaggeration. Over the past 40 years, Leal, the official
historian of Havana, has pulled off a most unusual feat. While much of
Cuba's infrastructure has crumbled and its economy has limped along, he
has rebuilt and refurbished more than 300 landmark buildings in Old Havana.
ATTRACTIVE STREETS
The center of the city was once a dark warren of cobblestone streets,
worn facades and decaying ruins. Now it has some streets that rival
Prague or Paris for cleanliness and beauty. Tourists throng the Plaza de
la Catedral, with its 259-year-old cathedral, and wander up Calle
Obispo, a street lined with luxury shops, to the Floridita, the plush
bar where Hemingway drank mojitos and daiquiris.
''There were years when not everyone believed in this,'' Leal said.
``But now it's easier, because now you can see all the people, how they
support you . . . and this makes it possible to continue at least for a
little while longer.''
Yet the renovation has gone only so far, and tens of thousands of people
are still trapped in squalid buildings just blocks from the refurbished
zones, giving rise to grumbling among some residents that the renovation
amounts to a Potemkin village for visitors. They point out that few
Cubans can afford the $7 drinks at the Floridita, and by law Cubans
cannot stay in the restored hotels, even if they could afford the rates
of $150 a night.
''The reconstruction doesn't have anything to do with the state system
we live in,'' said Yadira Amoros, a 30-year-old single mother who was
using a plumber's wrench to try to get water flowing to her dingy
apartment a block from Calle Obispo. ``None of this benefits us.''
Leal says the key to the renaissance of the old city has been a strategy
of restoring old hotels, restaurants and historic sites to attract
tourists, then using the revenue from tourism to finance more restoration.
In the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost billions in
subsidies, Fidel Castro gave Leal's office extraordinary powers to
collect taxes and reap the profits of tourism in the old center, through
a state-owned company called Habaguanex. Leal has plowed the profits
back into the construction work, not only for hotels, but for schools
and residences as well.
''It's a law to try to save the patrimony rather than sell it, in the
moment when the country was in a very profound crisis and all of us were
looking for a way to eat, a way to get to work,'' he said.
As a result, the Spanish town founded in 1519 around a deep harbor has
come back to life, along with a treasure trove of buildings in the
baroque and neoclassical styles.
More than 350 buildings have been renovated, about a third of the
1.5-square-mile center marked by the old city walls.
The United Nations has praised Leal's development model and named the
zone a World Heritage Site.
More than 220 buildings are being refurbished. But just a half block
from the Bodeguita del Medio, a famous eatery favored by Hemingway that
is constantly mobbed with tourists, Cubans troop into a sparsely stocked
government store to get their monthly rations of beans, powdered milk,
cigarettes and soap. POVERTY CONTINUES
One reason for the continued poverty is that the workers in the hotels,
museums, restaurants and hotels reap little of the tourist money.
All receive a state salary of $10 to $20 a month in Cuban pesos plus a
bonus of $12 in hard currency, but most of the profits from the
businesses go to the renovation efforts.
Those workers are the lucky ones. Others hold down jobs and receive a
salary only in Cuban pesos. Even with subsidized food and free
healthcare and education, Cubans complain that they cannot make ends
meet and that they must resort to selling stolen goods or running
confidence schemes aimed at tourists.
''Everyone has to do something,'' said one man, who ran a state-owned
grocery store for a $12 salary. ``I sell cigars.''
No comments:
Post a Comment