HAVANA.- On his 50th birthday, Mauricio decided to celebrate with his wife in a private bar. Before, they went to see a play and then walked hand in hand along the Havana boardwalk. It was a special occasion. They had already celebrated twenty years of marriage and after raising 7 thousand pesos, equivalent to 37 dollars, they did not want anything to ruin their evening.
But on the Island not even a good plan usually works. Stubborn reality is the greatest enemy of Cubans. In the theater, the air conditioning was broken. And when they left the bar, there were 1,500 pesos left in their wallet. “The prices are exceeded. Four beers at 500 pesos each, two caipirinhas at 400 pesos and a picadera that cost us an arm and a leg,” says Mauricio.
They wanted to end the night even if it was just a couple of hours in a heated room. “But the cheapest room was not less than 2 thousand pesos. We live in a two-bedroom house with seven other people: my wife’s parents, her grandmother and three children. My wife sleeps with the children and I sleep in the living room. To make matters worse, the elderly watch television all night. In addition to the stress due to the lack of food and resources to expand the home, we have no privacy. When we wanted to share a pleasant time, we didn’t have enough money,” he points out.
Joel, a father of two children, agrees that the housing deficit and the fierce systemic crisis that the country is suffering has influenced the deterioration of many marriages.
According to official statistics, the housing deficit on the Island affects 800 thousand people. Roger, municipal architect, considers that the deficiencies are many more than those reported by the government. “The deficit probably exceeds one million homes. To this we must add that more than 40 percent of the properties in Cuba are in fair or poor construction condition. There is currency to build one hotel after another, but when it comes to building housing for the people, the pretext is the ‘Yankee blockade’. Propaganda, speeches remembering Fidel and pseudo-patriotic harangues are not going to solve the problem. It is necessary to build 80 to 100 thousand homes annually and repair buildings that are in danger of collapsing. But Díaz-Canel continues to live by the story. And with each passing year the housing deficit worsens,” says the architect.
The hairdresser Maite and the barber Luis Alberto also have no privacy in their home, “and renting a one-bedroom apartment, with a kitchen, refrigerator and a fan, costs more than 20 thousand pesos a month, almost 100 dollars (in the informal currency market, one dollar was trading at 270 pesos). “If you want air conditioning, a television, and a shower with hot and cold water, you have to pay $200 a month.”
Jean Carlos, a university student, states that “the majority of young people do not have a room to themselves in their homes and ‘kill play’ (have sexual relations) in abandoned and dark places. Sometimes we go to Monte y Barreto beach, in Miramar, and have sex in the sea. A room in a second-class private inn does not cost less than 2 thousand pesos for two hours. And if you have a beer or order something to eat, your life will go away.”
Reinier, a custodian of a junior high school, indicates that “couples frequently enter the school yard to have sex. Almost all of them are boys, sometimes they are members, who, not having privacy in their homes, come here. “It’s free for them.”
Yadira, a specialist in sexually transmitted diseases, explains that “it is a real tragedy what many couples in Cuba are going through by not having the slightest privacy. Although the most serious problem is the lack of condoms, antibiotics and other medications, because cases of HIV/AIDS and venereal diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea and others have multiplied in the country.”
If we believe reports from the state press, some 1,600 people were diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the first seven months of 2023. Even before the end of the year, the figure exceeds the 1,500 cases of 2022 by one hundred.
Jorge Pérez Ávila, a doctor who has studied HIV for three decades, declared in official media that due to COVID-19 and the confinement due to the pandemic, there is a percentage of people who still do not know that they have the virus. Some 32 thousand people live with HIV/AIDS in Cuba since the first case was diagnosed in the 1980s. 19% are women and 30% are over 50 years old. In 2022, 366 Cubans died from AIDS (the total number of deaths amounts to 6,087 since April 1986).
Specialist Yadira assures that the increase in people infected with HIV on the Island is very worrying. “There are various factors that cause it. The main one is the irresponsibility of people when having sex without protection. The condom is the best prevention to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. But for two years there has been a shortage of condoms in the country’s pharmacies. The government blames the shortage of condoms on the economic crisis, the blockade and the lack of foreign currency. These are hardly credible arguments. The condom is an article that could be produced here and is not expensive to import, not to mention that international health institutions have donated millions of condoms. It seems to me to be highly imprudent for the State to play with the health of the population, particularly among youth, where “The cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and other venereal diseases have skyrocketed. Added to the lack of condoms is the shortage, even in hospitals, of antibiotics to treat sexually transmitted diseases.”
Daniel, a high school student, clarifies that “a condom on the street costs 60 to 100 pesos. And if it is colored and flavored, brought from the United States, you have to pay 200.” Yuri, a bank employee, alleges that with the rise of sexually transmitted diseases and the high cost of living “the ideal is to have a permanent partner and avoid promiscuity. Even with your partner, the safest thing is to have protected sex and avoid an unwanted pregnancy. When I separated from “My girlfriend only had virtual sex.”
A young man who suffers from AIDS points out that he cannot always buy the medicines he needs. “Sometimes two months go by and the retrovirals do not enter the pharmacy. The same thing happens with the diet we receive due to HIV. In the last month they have only given me eggs and two packages of mixed mincemeat. The beef has not arrived. And from the notebook they took away the milk, the fish and the food.”
Mauricio remembers that on the day he turned 50 he walked around the city looking for a place to have some privacy. “It is not like before. The stairs of the buildings, for fear of theft, people have blocked with bars just like the hallways. And in the parks the street masturbators are hunting you. And we are too old to jump over a school fence,” he says smiling.
That night, when they arrived home, after two in the morning, the in-laws were awake watching the soap opera The Sopranos. His wife went to sleep with her children. And Mauricio fell exhausted on the living room sofa.
