Not quite what Raul had in mind

Friday’s Granma reports on citizens using ingenuity and personal effort to build housing, but not exactly according to the book.

About 300 houses were built in Corralillo, mostly replacing summer homes wrecked by hurricane Michelle in 2001, according to the article. The construction materials include steel rails from dismantled railroad lines that belonged to the sugar ministry – 9,631 meters’ worth, according to “specialists” in the local prosecutor’s office – plus roofing material that was designated for post-hurricane housing reconstruction. None of the materials were authorized, however.

The article details a large-scale scandal of misappropriated resources, unauthorized construction, and officials who were at minimum asleep at the switch. “Where were the leadership of the Party and Government in this territory,” it pointedly asks, and notes also that the local Committees for the Defense of the Revolution took no action either.

(Photo from Granma; the article has many more.)

Odds and ends

• Q. Who loses in Cuba’s move to close workplace cafeterias? A. Joaquin, described in this article from Cubaencuentro as an “obese cook” who pilfered and sold enough rice, chicken, oil, and flour on the black market to add two rooms to his house. Also enough, as he put it, to help his daughter “have a roof for tomorrow.”

• Reuters on the problem of doing business in Cuba these days, and getting paid.

• This website is Cuba’s Craigslist.

• Haaretz on Cuban bloggers.

• A Cuba photo essay by New York Times’ David Gonzalez.