Fifteen months after the community transformation program began in Guantánamo, the Mayor of the capital municipality, Rolando Cantillo Hernández, told the Cuban News Agency that in the 31 in which work is being done, at the end of November, almost the half of the 32 million 200 thousand pesos allocated to fully improve them.
With this amount, many requests from the population were satisfied, but the most sensitive one was far below: housing, an essential and highly appreciated material good, explained the also head of the Municipal Administration Council (CAM).
He specified that the investment plan included the delivery of 90 homes in those neighborhoods.
The budget assigned for this purpose exceeded 27 million pesos, equivalent to 69% of the total financing.
The deficient reception of the cement from the Cienfuegos factory and the non-entry of hydraulic and electrical accessories hindered the purpose, the manager specified.
Consequently, at the end of November, 57 completed properties were reported, 34 of them in the communities where this differentiated attention was inaugurated: Cecilia, Arroyo Hondo and La Sombrilla, located in the Green Belt that surrounds the city, and the so-called Ho Chi Minh, in the city's Sur Isleta Popular Council.
Cantillo Hernández explained that the Guantanamo jurisdictions in the process of transformation are served directly by entities of the municipality and the province.
This follow-up does not leave room for ineffectiveness or diversion of resources, he clarified, since weekly those responsible render accounts of the progress or stagnation of the task under their responsibility, to the Party, the Governing Council and the CAM.
He referred to the pleasant impression made on the First Secretary of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz Canel-Bermúdez, his exchange with the population of Cecilia, immersed in core changes, including those of the housing fund, food production and improvement of services.
He also mentioned the praise received from the members of the Political Bureau by Esteban Lazo Hernández, President of the National Assembly of People's Power and the Council of State, and Roberto Morales Ojeda, Secretary of Cadre Policy of the Central Committee, for their respective visits to Arroyo Hondo.
With the deep improvement work in that town, where on April 25, 1895 the mambises defeated the numerically superior Spanish forces and the life of José Martí was preserved, this project gained momentum in the head municipality to consolidate the conquests of the Revolution. .
In unison, they began to carry out, as has been said, the rehabilitation of the constituencies of Cecilia and La Sombrilla (all of the Popular Council of Paraguay) and also of the neighboring community of El Giralt.
In Arroyo Hondo, 20 houses have been erected, 10 floors of dirt have been eradicated, the local monument (proposed for national) has been restored, the commercial complex has been built, the Family Care System and its hydraulic network have been rehabilitated and an organopónico has been created for self-consumption.
Likewise, in Cecilia these tasks are undertaken and follow-up is provided, with the leading intervention of the People's Power delegate, their organizations and the rest of the neighbors.
And it is in that picturesque place, where the progress of the housing fund is most visible and palpable, inseparable, without a doubt, from the proximity of a mini-industry erected by the Provincial Construction Materials Company, for the good of the Guantanamo housing program.
An acceptable number of blocks and other local assortments contributed to the verticality and foundation of the first 10 houses (seven of them inhabited by their inhabitants) erected in the old batey of the once central Santa Cecilia.
Fifty hundred families live in this oasis of the Green Belt of the City, including that of Raúl Leyva Rodríguez, who praises the efforts of the “minindustriales” and the “Guanco” Integral Construction Company, in order to solve these urgent needs.
As in this community, in more than 20 of the Guantánamo municipality, classified in conditions of vulnerability, similar actions are carried out, for this reason it has been explained to the neighbors, even by the President of the Republic during the exchange he had with them , who should participate in the works, supervise them, and not get impatient.
Angelina Pérez de los Ángeles now lives in her new home, which before it was, "was a sugarcane hostel for a long time."
She evokes that she lived on the main street of Cecilia, when in one of the floods that hit Guantánamo in May and November of 1993 or 1994 - she does not remember which one - the swollen river tore apart her house.
Retired since 2004, in the Gastronomy sector, she thanks the Revolution for her new home on the same esplanade where others appeared as if by magic, and that according to the Program, in the not too distant future, more will be erected until they reach the middle hundred.
The same joy is expressed by her husband, Silvino Martínez, 68 years old, welcomed retirement like her, and also grateful for this national purpose of transforming the economic-social environment and improving the quality of life of the inhabitants of the Caribbean island, from Punta de Maisí in Guantanamo to the western end of Cabo de San Antonio.
Text: Pablo Soroa Fernández
Photos: Lorenzo Crespo Silveira, Leonel Escalona Furones and Revolution Studios
Published on January 2, 2023 on the digital site of the Cuban News Agency (ACN)