Her quinceañera was going to be the biggest day of her life then came lockdown Eliana Aponte
Karla González waits for a bus to take her to buy supplies for her
quinceañera, the most important birthday in a Cuban girl s life. Though Cuba did remarkably well containing the coronavirus pandemic at first, the country has been hit with a food scarcity reminiscent of their worst economic crisis, after the Soviety Union crumbled. Karla and her family saved for three years to pay for her party, only to be postponed by the lockdown in Havana.
When Karla González Toro turned 15 on September 9, she knew the day would not be marked with a party. Havana, where she lives, was under lockdown after a spike in COVID cases, and Cuba’s food shortages were the worst in recent memory. The González family had meat to eat only because Karla’s parents had begun keeping pigs three years earlier to raise money for a special event: their only daughter’s