HAVANA. — At twelve noon he finishes classes, goes home, and takes off his school uniform. He lives in Central Havana with his mother and little sister. There he eats whatever his mother has managed to cook despite the constant blackouts and food shortages, and almost immediately he heads out to look for passengers on the streets of Havana. Leandro is 14 years old, in the eighth grade, and drives a pedicab to help support his family.
“With what I earn, I buy rice, chicken, bread for dinner and for snacks at school the next day. I help my mom with things around the house. Things are bad right now — I work to support my mother,” he says while adjusting the seat of the pedicab.
He speaks quickly, with the strange mix of innocence and maturity that many Cuban children forced to grow up too soon possess. He says the money is never enough. That they have to think about food, clothes, shoes. That next month is his mother’s birthday and he wishes he could give her something.
In the middle of everything, he still holds on to one intact dream: boxing.
“I’m a boxer. I train at the Sports City complex. Transportation costs me a thousand pesos a day,” he explains. Sometimes the money he earns barely covers the cost of getting to training. But he keeps going. He does not want to give up the sport. He feels that it could be his way out. Leandro believes that if he trains hard, studies hard, and does everything right, he may be able to build a better life.
He lives in a neighborhood with “a lot going on.” That is how he describes an environment of violence, drugs, problems, and bad influences. But he quickly adds: “I’m not involved in any of that. I’m focused on studying, my work, and sports. My mother keeps me on the right path.”
As he speaks, many Cubans walk beside him, so absorbed in their own problems that they do not notice that it is a child driving the vehicle. Havana around him seems to move slowly; there are hardly any cars on the streets, and the sun is blazing. Nothing gets better. He, however, talks about a better future, convinced that it is possible to achieve it.
“I wish I could help my mother more and get ahead so we can live better,” he says. “I’m poor, I live modestly, but happily. My mother gives me love.”
Editor’s note: The teenager’s name was changed to protect his identity.
