Four years after Hurricane Mathew passed through the city of Baracoa, residents of that town in the eastern end of Cuba continue to wait for the help promised by the government to repair their homes.
In statements to the independent portal Cubanet, several people affected by the weather phenomenon that devastated that Guantanamo territory in 2016 stated that they have only been sold some tiles and the salary they earn is insufficient to afford repairs.
Eliades Ramos Azahares says that after the cyclone passed his house was declared total collapse ceiling. However, the government only sold him 22 tiles for 1,600 Cuban pesos (about $64 dollars). They haven't given him anything else.
"There is nowhere to complain here, you are going to complain and it is a mess," said Ramos Azahares, who has never received a visit from a social worker nor can he pay the prices of construction materials on the black market.
"Here he who can buys, he who can't doesn't buy. (...) Here one day you eat chicken and the rest, greasy food," he explained.
In the same situation is Yoelvis Furón Hernández, who lives in a small wood and guano house, and although the government agreed to replace the roof, this help has not yet arrived.
"They say there is no cement and on the street the bag costs 10 dollars," he lamented.
This man says that he has three children and earns 600 pesos (24 dollars) a month, which is not enough to support his family, much less to improve the conditions of his home.
"I don't have enough for my three children a month. A pound of meat costs 80 pesos and a knob of oil costs 100 pesos," he said.
For her part, Rosalina Legrá Carcasés was one of the more than 35,000 people evacuated in Baracoa in 2016, and affirms that when she returned home after the hurricane, she had lost everything.
Since they did not have ownership of the property, the government denied them the subsidy to be able to fix the house, he explained. Cubanet.
The woman says that they then took advantage of a "mountain module" through which they were able to buy 20 tiles, 20 bags of cement, large roof nails, a back door and some of the cables to restore electricity.
They were promised a sink and tanks but they have never been able to acquire them. Legrá Carcasés says that through their own efforts and by purchasing construction materials at high prices they were able to fix the house.
In 2018, the Cuban Government had only managed to rebuild 945 homes of the 3,529 completely destroyed in 2016 by Matthew.
On that occasion, the authorities warned that Baracoa's housing fund would not be recovered for another 5 years, and only "in case similar catastrophes do not happen."
On August 23, the situation worsened with the passage of tropical storm Laura, which damaged more houses near the Baracoa boardwalk.
The housing deficit in Guantánamo is 162,753 homes, according to official data from the Ministry of Construction from 2018.
A plan developed by that entity until 2028 indicated that the problem of these families would be solved, as well as another 77,937 whose houses are classified as fair or poor, almost 50 percent of the province's housing fund.
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