14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 30 November, 2023 – Soft and comfortable and long-lasting, that’s how they marketed the mattresses sold by the Lavín company more than half a century ago at the central Havana corner location of calles Neptuno and Lealdad. Only a memory remains of that private concern, nationalised and converted into the Office for Consumer Registration (Oficoda). On Wednesday a mountain of rubbish blocked the entrance to the building and forced the Communal Services to remove it, after weeks of accumulation. (14ymedio)
A neighbour watched from her balcony as a truck and a bulldozer tried to remove the waste that covered the pavement and made traffic flow difficult on a street that is used by many independent taxis to connect Old Havana with El Vedado and the western districts of the Cuban capital. “Oh, they finally turned up then?” bellowed the woman from her vantage point, and a number of other nearby residents gave support with similar shouts of indignation, which fell on deaf ears as far as the workers of the state monopoly were concerned.
With a flaky shop front and ancient windows covered in cardboard and wooden boards the place is no longer recognisable even by those who used to visit it in its former splendour. With the slogan “A
