Just One Account

Just One Account / Josue, Rojas Marin, Cuban Law Association
Posted on April 12, 2014

I live in a community with more than sixty buildings. Behind them, as is
the case with my home, many residents—at the request of the government
itself—began planting fruit trees and banana plants. When the marathon
of demolishing everything began, I decided to make an estimate of the
economic losses that were indiscriminately carried out by people who
came from other cities to destroy what had been so passionately
harvested for more than a decade.

To give you an idea, there were about 300 banana plants when demolition
started, some 50 new bunches were uprooted and another 130 were cut and
thrown in a corner of the building, their remnants remaining there since
July 2012. In that same time frame, 50 or 60 bunches had been collected
monthly, which means about 660 per year, or about 16,500 pounds that
were contributed to urban consumption and that represent about 9,900
pesos taken from the pockets of those citizens to whom no one came to
meet their needs.What is more aggravating is that when the Director of
Physical Planning visited the town and I gave him that assessment, he
told me that it didn't matter, that many residents reported that they
now had more open space. I responded that people can't live on open
space, but they can live on food. He shut up and couldn't get out of
there fast enough.

Translated by Tomás A.

Source: Just One Account / Josue, Rojas Marin, Cuban Law Association |
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