14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, December 1, 2023 — The colorful paint behind the building on the corner of Campanario and Malecón, in Havana, is only there to hide the hole left by a collapse on the San Lázaro side. The same function is fulfilled by a kind of park – if you can call it that, a piece of gray cement land, bare of trees – where a building once stood.
However, it cannot be hidden, because, attached to the adjacent number, there are remains of the façade. As if they had purposely wanted to record one more trace of the ruin of Central Havana.
With its back to the avenue that faces the sea, whose buildings do, from time to time, have the good fortune to receive maintenance, as it is an obligatory gateway for tourists and foreign guests of the regime, San Lázaro is one of the most forgotten streets in the capital. Here it doesn’t matter if saltpeter, scarcity and apathy eat into the facades until they collapse.
It wasn’t always like this. This same corner is halfway between two arteries that once bustled with commerce and exuded luxury: Belascoaín, on the one hand, and Galiano, on the other.
Next to Belascoaín and San Lázaro is one of the emblematic places of the municipality, Parque Maceo, where the Torreón de S
