Most of the residents are over 60 years old, and apathy reigns
14ymedio, Havana, 27 September 2024 — While the notes of an untuned violin mistreated the Bayamo anthem, a dirty lightbulb illuminated the flag, some papers and a desk in the middle of the street. It was the first accountability assembly in a neighborhood of Cojímar and the premiere of a nervous Francisco Rodríguez Cruz – a journalist in the personal circle of President Miguel Díaz-Canel and First Lady Lis Cuesta – as the delegate. What was intended to be a manifestation of revolutionary stoicism ended up having pathetic overtones.
Known as Paquito de Cuba, the gay activist who defines himself as “troubled but happy” was the laughing stock of his own neighbors, who recorded and published a scene that has been repeated dozens of times this week: that of the leader who, in the midst of a dense blackout, tries to “comply” with the “orientation” of holding the assembly.
The energy debacle has been the worst enemy of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), determined to demonstrate their usefulness by organizing accountability assemblies in each neighborhood of the Island. The other has been the shortages. In a country where “donating a head of garlic is now like giving part of your liver” – in the words of a resident of Luyanó – the future will be black for the traditional stews, every year more meager and watered-down, for the celebration of CDR day, September 28.
“Yesterday we peeked out in the middle of the blackout and saw a group of people gathered under a lightbulb,” a woman tells 14ymedio. “We hadn’t even heard about the assembly. There was a flag on the door of a house, and people say that they will be collecting money in the neighborhood. But here no one is going to pay anything, and the person who comes asking will be made to feel like a fool.”
“Yesterday we peeked out in the middle of the blackout and saw a group of people gathered under a lightbulb,” says a woman
Things have changed, she adds, and apathy is widespread. “There is no movement of anything anywhere. Before, every September 27th, people started from 6:00 pm to prepare the firewood for the stew, if only for the food and t
