The letters, painted in green and in capital letters on a wall at 464 Belascoaín Street, almost on the corner with Zanja, in Centro Habana, drew attention. “I buy women in bad shape”, the passers-by read, surprised.
It would surely not last, this newspaper conjectured when it saw it for the first time, last Thursday, given the rush of the authorities to remove spontaneous billboards from the streets. However, three days later, he was still there. On Sunday, next to the graffiti, on the step that formed the wall, framed with the carpentry drawings that adorn the hardware store to which it belongs, an old man was sitting. He seemed simply to rest, while, a little further away, informal vendors displayed his wares under the arcades.
But this Monday, the same man and the same poster were in the same place. The old man was dressed the same, light blue pants and shirt, with the crossbody bag he had been wearing days before. Do you offer anything for sale? Is the link of another trade to the left? Construction materials? Or, on the contrary, does it have to do with the poster itself? Are you taking care of him? Are you waiting for “the author” to come?
“Could this be the one who buys women in poor condition?” said a young woman who looked like her mother with a sneer as she passed by. “I don’t know, a hundred, but here he will not find them, the one who is in bad shape is him and the entire country”.
Despite the misogynist nature of the poster, neither the Federation of Cuban Women nor Mariela Castro, the official standard-bearer for equality, have spoken about it. It is seen that the government of the capital, for the rest, has not seen the need to delete it. It does not say, of course, “no to the Communist Party”, “down with the dictatorship”, “patria y vida” or “Díaz-Canel singao”.
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