The building collapse at Zulueta 505 and the garbage heaps at the Monte and Egido portals are the field of action of those known as “piranhas” and “termites”
By Juan Diego Rodríguez (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – The scavengers of Havana are happy. A mass of debris, bricks, iron and garbage has extended, since Monday, in the area of the facade of the old Vía Blanca hotel at 505 Zulueta Street. It took three months since this newspaper’s last visit to the property – then converted into a nest of thugs and drunks – for the collapse to be total.
Now, iron bars surround the collapse zone and prevent passage through the streets that surround it. The residents of the neighborhood, standing on the sidewalk of the neighboring police station on Dragones Street, launch their hypotheses: “They put the fence there in place of yellow tape because people would just lift it, duck under and keep walking.” Others, such as scavengers and criminals, continue to “explore” the ruins, trying to dodge the station’s surveillance cameras.
The decline of 505 Zulueta has accelerated in recent weeks. “The building began crumbling, and a part was closed, but finally the facade fell on the structure and destroyed it,” says one of the masons who works in the buildings on the street. Now you can’t walk there, and the neighbors complain that the ruins prevent them from going through the passage.
For the scavengers, however, the building collapses are good news. Dedicated to dismantling buildings in poor condition to reuse what is possible – rebar, sticks, bricks, nails and even dust for concrete – the craft has proliferated in a city that is falling apart. A door knocker from the 50s or the Soviet era can end up in a tenement building or in a slum on the periphery of Havana.
Any corner of the city can attest to their feats. In front of a mutilated wall on Hospital Street, a neighbor describes the scavengers: “T
