A Record of Cuban Life
Photo feature by Elio Delgado Valdés
HAVANA TIMES — Our everyday consists of what we do on a daily basis, how we dress, what we eat, how we behave socially, what work we do as professionals and how we interact with the social, ethnic and cultural community we belong to. In the images below, I have tried to capture the way we are, what we do and how we live today, when the magic of photography, new technologies and social networks allows us to reach innumerable people, scattered across our global village.
It is for me a privilege to be able to share our customs, tastes, religions and outlook on life with other cultures. My hope as a photographer is to be able to leave behind a photographic record of contemporary Cuban society, a record that, next to the work of others, will one day constitute a visual memory available to future generations, who will have an image of what we were…and what we are.
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Recording contemporary Cuban life is a good idea providing that the photographs reflect life as experienced by the average Cuban. The crumbling infrastructure, disintegrating homes, the forty or fifty people waiting for bread at the Empresa with a nearby pensioner trying to extend his monthly pension of $8 by selling plastic bags for 1 peso, families of four on one bicycle, a few avocados, mangoes, tomatoes or pineapples displayed on the porch wall hopefully to sell to passers-by for a few pesos. A woman walking the streets with two or three sweeping brushes on her shoulder and crying out her wares for sale. Huge billboards displaying BIG Brother Fidel and little brother Raul smiling benignly at their subjects surviving on $20 per month. Other billboards extolling the virtues of “Ideas” but only those of the Communist Party of Cuba which purports to have a monopoly of good ideas. This is what future generations of Cubans should know, the reality of the effects of the Castro family regime upon everyday life. I hope that a photograph will be included of those sleeping on cardboard on the sidewalk of Cristo street in Old Havana when waiting overnight to sell the few beer cans, cardboard and other refuse suitable for recycling for a few pesos. A true photographic record of the actual results of the Castro family regime’s fifty five year long control of everything in the country is necessary to ensure that future generations have access ti the truth – a picture is worth a thousand words!
The Castro family regime itself will ensure that there is record of the investment by the rest of the world through UNESCO of the restoration of Old Havana, Trinidad and other UNESCO sites – and they will claim the credit. Hypocrisy is one of their assets.
Subject to recording the truth and reality, I encourage the project!