In Havana's La Marina neighborhood, a shoe repair cobbler's home features a small pink sign reading 'Thank you for your love' and moldy cassette tapes holding tracks by Van Van, Irakere, and other artists. This setting mirrors the toll of time and everyday hardships in Cuba, where shortages and the system burden residents. Nester Nuñez's photo feature portrays it as a museum of the revolution.
Nester Nuñez's photo feature, published on March 12, 2026, in Havana Times, delves into a shoe repair cobbler's home in Havana's La Marina neighborhood. It includes nine photos depicting a small pink sign stating: “Thank you for your love.” Moldy cassette tapes preserve audio tracks by Van Van, Irakere, Julio Iglesias, and Roberto Carlos, possibly including Ruben Blades' voice in his Pedro Navaja tale: “Around the corner of the old neighborhood I saw him pass by, with the swagger that tough guys have when they walk… His hands always in the pockets of his coat so they won’t know which one holds the knife.”
La Marina is no longer a site of fights and threats from years ago. Residents are weary of enduring, delaying personal wishes, and accepting shortages as normal. They attribute the root of their hardship chiefly to the system, rather than individual efforts. Time has weighed heavily on the house, the neighborhood, the city, and the nation, crushing aspects of life, though time itself bears no fault. Once sacrifice shifted from a moral choice to a historical imperative, collapse followed, echoed in the line: “(...inside me, inside me, even my breath now tastes like bile, tastes like bile…).”
The cobbler's home stands out as more of a revolution museum than others.