"Brother... look, what I want to communicate to people with my hidden camera is for example, that if they walk through the street and they see a camera they should see it as something normal, because here in Guantánamo if you walk around with a camera on the street you are a policeman or you work for someone... you work for the guards, or you are from the Technical Department of Investigation. People are afraid of the cameras on the street."
"This is really desperate, because look... My normal salary is 2,600 pesos. Do you understand...what are you gonna eat with 2,600 pesos?"
- "How much can you buy for that?"
"It’s 80 pesos for a good bread, if you buy that everyday that’s 2,400 pesos for month. One loaf of this bread a day... and you’re only buying that for yourself. Like you got this bread, you eat it for breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, and another snack. From the 200 pesos you have left over, you buy yourself a soda."
- “You can't even buy oil or anything...”
"No, no... You buy yourself a soda and then you drink it cup by cup, each cup with a little piece of bread. That’s what you can do with this salary, that's really all this salary serves you for. If you wanted to buy a liter of oil that would be... you know like 1,500 pesos. I mean now it's around 800 pesos. Or I don't know, then you want a pound of rice... and you eat the rice alone."
"Just imagine... when my mom got ill, she had to go to the hospital. They went in the same car together with my wife, who was close to giving birth at that time. And she was going to be hospitalized. But for my mom… the process took six months. Thank God she had the chance to meet her grandchild. I am telling you I was in the hospital together with my wife. My mom had already suffered six months with this awful psoas muscle cancer."
- "How do you rate the medical care that your mom received?"
"The medical care she received from the doctors was good, because they were colleagues, my mom was a pharmacist at the general hospital, and they were all workmates. But I think that my mother's life could have been longer if they had proceeded correctly, because they did a biopsy, and it took 33 days to get the results. And my mother had already been operated twice by that time. It was then when they realized she had cancer.
- "I mean, she got sick, and they did the biopsy. And without knowing the results... they operated her twice?"
"Yes, because were saying there was an abscess in her psoas muscle."
- "And that maybe sped up..."
"Yeah... exactly, the metastasis... When they got the results from the biopsy, it was already too late. She had cancer."
Luis Caballero Parra was born on March 12, 1995 in Guantánamo. First seven years of his life he lived with his parents and grandmother in the Ho Chi Minh neighborhood. In the muddy streets of this poor neighborhood, he spent his childhood with the other kids playing typical Cuban games like spinning tops, ball games, and marbles. The relationships in his family always remained strong despite the humble conditions they were living in. His father worked as a prison guard and his mom was a pharmacist. His grandmother instilled good values into him based on her strong religious beliefs. It was her, who moved to the center of the city of Guantánamo with Luis when he was seven years old, to Calle 5 Sur which is located near the famous Polvo en el Viento square. This place known for its high level of violence and the surrounding streets became his new home. The negative aspect of the neighborhood did not influence him as much as it did some of his friends though, as he had always been passionate about sports. After finishing school, there was a period of time in which he had nothing to do, but it didn’t last too long as he was soon called into the military service. First, Luis went to Havana and later he became a guard in the prison El Combinado del Este. A whole year without any vacation later lead to several conflicts with the authorities in the army. Luis had enough and went on a hunger strike. Eventually, the bosses let him go home. He stayed there for about 3 months, drinking quite a lot of alcohol, which resulted in stomach ulcers, and he had to be operated. For his condition, he was released from military service. Currently he works in a dairy plant, however, due to lack of ingredients, the factory cannot produce. With his salary of 2,600 pesos, he can‘t afford much. He shared with us, that this money can only barely buy him a bread and a little soda for the day. A few years ago, his mom got cancer and passed away. She was operated twice without the doctors being sufficiently informed about her medical condition, which could have accelerated the metastasis. Lately Luis has been spending his time trying to get famous on YouTube recording funny videos with a hidden camera for his channel El Pibe Lucho.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
