Smells of Cuba That Even Distance Cannot Erase

By Dany Cesario

HAVANA TIMES – There are things about Cuba that I can still feel even though I am far away. One of them is the smell of burning garbage.

In my neighborhood, trash piles up on the corners: first one bag, then another, and little by little that heap of waste ends up becoming an open-air dump.

And around it appear the “divers,” as we Cubans call them, looking for anything that might still be useful to take home, sell, or trade.

Years ago, I would have seen it as an everyday scene. Today, I see it differently.

Because behind every person rummaging through the garbage is a need that should not exist. And while some search for something worth salvaging, others wait for someone to come and collect the trash.

But unfortunately, that never happens, and the days go by.

When there is no more room for the garbage and the smell becomes unbearable, someone gets the idea to set it on fire. Then everything changes.

Now, on top of the dump on the corner, there is smoke coming in through the windows.

When that happens, my mother has had to leave her own home just to be able to breathe, and one of my daughters and my brother had to go to the emergency room because they live surrounded by accumulated garbage, smoke, rodents, and pollution.

In the country where I live now, there is a culture of recycling that is practiced every day. Many people separate what they throw away, and there are others who make a living by finding reusable materials.

But there is an enormous difference between collecting things for recycling and having to plunge into rotting garbage, desperately searching for something that might still have some value.

And I think about how easy it is to become accustomed to such a toxic reality when we have spent our entire lives immersed in it.

For me, one of the greatest dangers would be to stop being shocked by it. For a garbage dump on the corner to no longer outrage us, for seeing someone searching through rotting waste to seem normal, and for a black cloud of smoke hanging over the neighborhood to simply become an ordinary part of yet another afternoon.

I am convinced that every Cuban knows this is not normal.

That is why today I remember my neighborhood differently.

Before, I saw garbage. Now I see people, unmet needs, and the indifference of those who pretend to govern us.

I see a painful reality that, for far too long, we have learned to endure in silence. Because behind every garbage dump there is more than filth: there are families breathing smoke, there are children growing up amid unsanitary conditions that should never have become part of their lives.

We were taught to survive, to wait, and to settle for what we have.

But I do not want to get used to it.

I do not want to call indifference normal. I do not want to call abandonment necessity. I do not want to call resistance what has so often simply been forced survival. And much less do I want my girls to grow up with the bitter feeling that this was simply the life they were given.

Because a country should not measure the dignity of its people by how much they can endure.

It is unacceptable for garbage to remain piled up on street corners, for smoke to come in through the windows, and for a person to have to rummage through filth to find a means of survival.

But even more inconceivable is that, after so many years, those who call themselves “leaders” continue to have excuses for everything except acknowledging their mistakes.

What lies on those street corners is not just garbage. It is the visible result of misgovernment that has allowed the streets, neighborhoods, and souls to deteriorate.

And as long as they keep searching for excuses to cover up what they have been unable to solve, I will keep remembering that behind every pile of garbage there is a family, a child, a mother, and an entire country that deserves so much more…

Read more from the diary of Dany Cesario here on Havana Times.