A City Invaded

A City Invaded / Fernando Dámaso

Fernando Damaso, 26 February 2017 — The lack of hygiene has taken over
the city: poorly maintained and filthy streets and sidewalks, garbage
everywhere, nauseating streams of sewage, grimy floors and walls in
state establishments, widespread environmental contamination, and even
dead animals rotting in squares and courtyards, in full sun under the
laziness of passersby and the authorities.

Today's Havana has no resemblance to the Havana of the Republic: it has
lost all the cleanliness and hygiene that characterized it, the pride of
the people of Havana and the admiration of those who visited it.

The authorities can blame numerous factors, but the key one has been
their inability to organize and operate an effective cleaning system.
Faced with chaos and prolonged inefficiency, social discipline was lost
and today everyone contributes, with their citizen irresponsibility, to
make the so-called "capital of all Cubans" dirtier, which is not the
case in other cities and towns in the country, where the sense of
belonging to the place where you were born has not been lost.

Unfortunately for Havana, the majority of those born here, the original
Havanans, abandoned it, and their place was occupied by emigrants from
other provinces, without any affectionate bond with it, becoming a city
invaded, with all the evils that such a situation entails. In Havana
they did and do what in their places of origin they did not nor would
they dare to do.

The Havana of "dudes," "bros," "homies," "uncles and aunties," "chicks,"
"moms," "pals," and others in that vein, is not my city.

Translated by Jim

Source: A City Invaded / Fernando Dámaso – Translating Cuba -
https://translatingcuba.com/a-city-invaded-fernando-dmaso/