I HOPE TO LIVE WITH THE SMELL OF BURNED OIL. I hope to live long enough to visit a free Havana that I see closer and closer. Not to take Daiquiri in Floridita but to walk between its old walls and touch them as you caress an old lover DR ORLANDO VICENTE ALVAREZ CUBANO URUGUAYO GENIO

Orlando Vicente
3 h
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2016

Havana, a city frozen in time, with its old emblematic buildings that defined it in the 40s and 50s, looks like a lady who flushes her face to have a good presence before tourists but who cannot hide the old age from the rest. of the body that is where the true people reside.
But those tourists, knowing that the lipstick on the face is not the real Havana, go to the other city, to see how communism has wreaked havoc on their skeletal arms and famished legs: the last haven of Castro communism in the western hemisphere. , with its deteriorated neighborhoods without mentioning part of Old Havana and Central Havana that are full feet of cays and bunions and where a world of poor people crowds. That is what tourists want to see as the photos of East Berlin immediately after the fall of the wall.
But that smell of burnt oil that gets in your face in Central Havana is a smell that defines me in Havana and that I miss here in Uruguay. Meanwhile Havana patiently awaits the great change that is just around the corner. People are full of hope that the Castros will die and the future will be decided, but they do so silently, within themselves, while telling any reporter that they are happy there. They have learned to be silent. Communism is the art of putting a big gag and introducing a policeman inside every Cuban, except for a few brave men who dare to challenge the new Gestapo.
Meanwhile Havana waits in silence. A beautiful city in its surroundings with its beautiful beaches and people who learned that Contex and Cuba Moda are not the ones that dictate the haute couture wardrobe but the Miami shops. It looks like a little Miami parading in its usual clothes. The people have become consumerists of the goods of the brutal North and the government can no longer do anything.

I hope to live long enough to visit a free Havana that I see closer and closer. Not to take Daiquiri in the Floridita but to walk inside its old walls and touch them as you caress an old lover



DR ORLANDO VICENTE ALVAREZ

CUBAN URUGUAYO

GENIUS