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Wow! That's really sad to hear about Detroit, I did not know things were that rough there.
I do know my home town: Havana, surprisingly enough, in spite of those old run down buildings and those worn out streets, still has a charm difficult to explain, you have to be there to feel it. What a pity of a city, what a pity of a country!
Really doesn't matter. Detroit is destroyed because its industry left town. Havana is the capital and most important city in Cuba. When you are able to show that NYC is equally shabby then we can talk.
Havana is charming and one can see the potential of this city. However, Cuba is still in a time warp. Havana hasn't changed much since 1959. The fact that university education is free is great but there are so many younger Cubans waiting around for opportunity. That's sadder than some buildings falling down. Taxi drivers and hotel maids still make more than doctors and teachers.
Havana is charming and one can see the potential of this city. However, Cuba is still in a time warp. Havana hasn't changed much since 1959. The fact that university education is free is great but there are so many younger Cubans waiting around for opportunity. That's sadder than some buildings falling down. Taxi drivers and hotel maids still make more than doctors and teachers.
Really doesn't matter. Detroit is destroyed because its industry left town. Havana is the capital and most important city in Cuba. When you are able to show that NYC is equally shabby then we can talk.
Havana, (Centro Habana and Old Habana mostly) is in dilapidated condition because owners left when Cuba became a communist country (1959). Buildings were confiscated, and later occupied by squatters.
Squatters are legal squatters, since government allowed them to stay, but once lush properties were divided and subdivided until becoming slums. Most inhabitants of Havana left the country, and the city was occupied by eastern peasants, most are blacks, so Centro Habana and Habana Vieja are now black ghettos.
The rest of the city is in various states of decay, as some squatters have some means to restore confiscated properties. Parts of west Havana are in faily good condition, Miramar, etc, and Vedado in Havana, but even in those "posh" areas the communist built "microbrigadas" or soviet style buildings inhabited by criminal elements that multiply, they are called Gremlins.
There are areas of Cuba that are more preserved, Havana was mistreated by the communists that purposedly made a slum out a beautiful city because it was considered "bourgeois".
Lets face it, the only areas where Detroit looks bad is in the abandoned neighborhoods. In Havana its the neighborhoods where the people live that looks bad and the buildings are collapsing while people still live in them. In my opinion, there is no comparison between Detroit and Havana.
Well, not really....In Havana, most collapsing buildings in Habana Vieja and Centro Habana are quite old and were abandoned by owners, in some cases inhabitants were relocated to soviet style buildings such as Alamar....but most people living in those buildings are squatters in their fifth generation that constrct inner platforms or "barbacoas", provoking a collapse once in a while, a "derrumbe".
So it could be said that many collapsing buildings supposedly are empty, but are packed with illegal immigrants from the east. In Cuba, Cuban without permission to stay in Havana are "illegal immigrants", they don't have papers, can't work, don't exist.
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