With power outages becoming the rule rather than the exception, nightlife in the main arteries as well as in the communities is dwindling.
In the former, at most on weekends, especially on Saturdays, some cultural offer becomes an escape valve that closes at nine o’clock in the evening at the latest.
After that hour, a piercing loneliness is distilled from the pavement. The bohemia of yesteryear, with its touch of Cuban street life that so pleases those from here and attracts those from there, seems to have gone to the dogs.
As soon as evening falls, the neighborhoods are not the same as they were yesterday, when neighbors were playing dominoes on the sidewalk and young people took over the corner for their most healthy complicity: talking, listening to music, falling in love…
The night, and sometimes even the day, has become dangerous: criminals, regardless of age or physical condition, will trade a motorcycle, a cell phone, even a pair of tennis shoes, for the life of anyone. Material things are on the rise, like Marabú.
These days, a significant number of Cubans prefer to close the bars of their homes, put on padlocks -which are not infrequently broken to steal- and if there is something to celebrate, because there is always reason to hope, it is behind closed doors.
What we hear and read – with little or no effectiveness and rigor in confronting the prevailing nonsense – alerts us to the need to take good care of ourselves.
There are stabs in the flesh and others in the pockets of many of us workers who cannot afford even one family outing a month, because for one person alone, the cost of transportation to and from work, a pizza and a soft drink is more than half of our salary.
The last days of each year have always been characterized by illuminated streets, people coming and going, fraternizing, hugging, wishing each other the best for the time to come… This is what I dream of, this is what we dream of. This must be the bet, in spite of economic austerity, social decadence and lack of civility. Among the things we cannot allow to be taken from us are joy, peace and security. Cuba has never been a place of loneliness, let it not be now.
