An Endless Line To Get a Cuban Passport
Some people have waited over four months
Cuba’s energy crisis exacerbates delays in document preparation, and there are days when offices cannot serve a single applicant.
By Natalia Lopez Maya (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES -The day begins long before they open the doors of the Identification, Immigration and Foreigners Office on 17th Street in El Vedado. When dawn breaks, dozens of people are already waiting in the vicinity, and some have spent much of the early morning there. Obtaining a Cuban passport has become another race of resistance within the crisis that the country is going through.
Waiting, moreover, does not guarantee that applicants can complete the procedure. If electricity does not arrive during the early hours of official business hours, the line may extend until mid-morning and end up dissolving without employees having attended to a single person.
To the problems of starting the process is added another, much more distressing: the preparation and delivery of passports currently involves about four months of delay, according to reports collected by 14ymedio. The situation particularly affects those who have planned trips, family reunions, or need to return abroad.
“I came to apply in mid-May and still nothing. Every time I ask what day the passports are being handed over, I realize that progress is very slow; there are weeks when the line doesn’t move a single day,” said a mother of two children who is waiting for documents to travel to Brazil, where her husband is.
The problem is not new, though now deadlines have multiplied. In November 2022, this newspaper documented delays that were then around 30 business days, compared to the usual two weeks previously. An employee explained that the offices did not prepare the documents there and depended on their transfer in vehicles of Sepsa, a company then responsible for transporting them under custody and already suffering fuel shortages.
Four years later, the energy crisis has added new obstacles to an already deteriorating system. Power outages make it difficult to serve the public and add to the transportation and resource shortages affecting many state agencies.
“I came to Havana to visit my mother and my passport was damaged because we had some leaks in the house, so I requested it again and I have been waiting for more than three months for the new one and nothing”, a young Cuban naturalized Spanish and settled in Seville tells 14ymedio. His stay on the Island, which was supposed to be temporary, is prolonged while waiting for the document.
A few meters from the 17th Street office, a parking attendant in a red vest guards several cars and electric motorcycles while watching the crowd grow daily. “I counted more than 300 people here one morning. Since there is so much delay, the line is getting bigger and the people look more desperate,” he says.
Translated by Regina Anavy for Translating Cuba.