A Man With Neither Privilege Nor Obedience

Yoani Sanchez Award-winning Cuban blogger

Cuba: A Man With Neither Privilege Nor Obedience
Posted: 09/09/2013 1:40 pm

Beto was one of those who handed out beatings in August of 1994. With
his helmet, his mortar-splattered pants and an iron bar in his hand, he
lashed out at some of the protestors during the Maleconazo. At that time
he was working on a construction team and felt like part of an elite. He
had milk at breakfast, a room he shared with other colleagues, and a
salary higher than any doctor's. He spent the years of his youth
building hotels, but a decade ago, when his brigade was demobilized, he
became unemployed. He didn't want to return to the village of Banes
where he was born, not him, nor many others of that troop ready to build
a wall or break heads.

Several of these construction workers were allowed to settle in a
makeshift neighborhood in the Havana suburbs. The received the benefit
of permission to build a "llega y pon*" -- a shantytown -- near Calle
100 and Avenida Rancho Boyeros. A crumb, after so much ideological
loyalty. Without the perks and high wages, many of these bricklayers had
to survive on what they could find. Beto set up a workshop for
fabricating "creole bricks." Other neighbors in his makeshift
neighborhood also dedicate themselves to building materials: sand, stone
powder... bricks. With the new relaxations giving permission for the
repair and building by one's own efforts, the business of "aggregates"
prospers, involving more people every day. The producers, transporters,
brigade leaders, and finally the men who load the sacks on the trucks. A
chain of work -- parallel to the State's -- more efficient, but also at
higher prices.

Beto doesn't like talking about the past. In his shirt full of holes he
walks between the stacks of Creole blocks coming out of his little
factory. When he sees one that has cracked or that has a broken corner,
he shouts at one of his employees who mixes the mortar for casting the
molds. He carries an iron rod in his hand, as he did on 5 August 1994,
but this time it's for knocking against the blocks, checking the
strength of his product. He frequently glances over to the little house
he is building at the end of this unpaved street with no drains. For the
first time he has something of his own, something no one has given him.
He is a man with neither privilege nor obedience.

*Translator's note: "llega y pon" is literally "arrive and put."


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Source: "Cuba: A Man With Neither Privilege Nor Obedience | Yoani
Sanchez" -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/cuba-a-man-with-neither-p_b_3894870.html