On the road towards the house of Roberto Miranda Hernandez in Havana Vieja, the old downtown, we stumble upon people standing in line for food, as Romanians did in the '80's, waiting to get their quota of poultry, rice or sugar. With 18 convertible pesos, the would not survive without the state-given quota cards. In stores that offer imported products, prices in convertible pesos are close to the level in Europe. But the Cubans' poor wages are paid in "pesos national", which can't be used in the supermarkets. Imported goods are for the apartheid tourism, for the one that "get around" and the nomenclature. As we had the "shops" during the Communist regime, if anyone remembers.

In the apartment of Roberto Miranda Hernandez, an independent librarian in Havana, we find some Cubans from the countryside. They tries to arrive in Havana for the Hundimiento (the celebration of The Sinking), but they were taken in custody by the political police. The same service prevented them from going to the American Consulate on the 4th of July, where they had been invited to celebrate the US national day. They arrived in the house of Roberto Miranda Fernandez when they were no longer needed in Havana.

Roberto lets us no in a dry voice: "If you would have come yesterday, when the police were watching the house, you'd be expelled today". We were simply lucky, we only heard about the doom's day right there, in the librarian's house: dissidents can't be visited on July 13. Every one knows it, except for us.

Roberto's library is called Ellen Martinez, after the name of a six-months old girl killed in Hundimiento. They asked the Government to allow them to throw flowers in the sea. The answer was no.

The July 13 catastrophe

What is Hundimiento? A terrible collective trauma: on July 13, 1994, a group of refugees took over a ship in the H