Casino Without Roulette

Casino Without Roulette / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado
Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado, Translator: Unstated

House currently advertised for sale in the Casino Deportivo neighborhood
The Sports Casino is a residential neighborhood built before 1959. It is
pretty, and there are many good houses there, although until recently
and as expected, it was rather neglected. Its streets eroded by
government indifferencelooked like embankments, but that has changed in
recent months. They have begun to resurface the roads, even Vento
Avenue, which is its mainartery and was ingood condition, has benefitted
from the general maintenance around it.Locals say that the substantial
sprucing up that is reviving the neighborhood is due to the fact that in
recent years they have been givinghouses to the upper middle hierarchy
of the Cuban armed forces. As is logical, everyone is pleased with the
favorable change, but they do not stop asking if other
popularneighborhoods will get the same attention.

It reminds me of a song by theslain Chilean singer Victor Jara entitled
"The little houses of the elite neighborhood," in which he denounced the
class differences existing in the Chile in which he lived. It is true
that there are inequalities in all countries, but they are more notable
in the leftist dictatorshipsbecause they only recognize some rights that
are convenientto the political model, those that the giant
propagandaapparatuses accentuate and overestimate, and that support the
idea that they are the example to follow.

From the time they came to power, the households of the powerful who
fought in the Revolution were located in residential neighborhoods such
as Miramar, Siboney, Vedado, Kohly, etc. For the people they built
shabby buildings that have never solved the demand of the ever growing
population. According to the order of class importance, they continue
marking the differences on the housing map of the capital city, and it
is no coincidence that the chosen neighborhoods and the real estate
thatthey share were built before 1959.

With facts like this, they continually highlight that they have the
resources and control; they ironically label as "citizens" those
whosupport themin return for the violation of theirfundamental rights,
of discrimination, of historic promises broken, and of the chimera of a
reward that the State reserves fundamentally for people or groups who
share its interests. What they used to euphemistically call "stimulus"
are the perks of an enthroned dictatorial oligarchy that is more and
more stratified and shows it more.

June 30 2012

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