The photos of David Estrada Rodríguez were chosen for the exhibit “Documenting the Impact of Covid-19 through Photography: Collective Isolation in Latin America,” curated in collaboration with ReVista and the Art, Culture, and Film program at Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS.)

The exhibition, based on an Open Call for Photography launched in July 2020, aims to create a critical visual record of our unprecedented times so they can be remembered by future generations.

A la vanguardia va el corazón. _DSC0706

These photographs were taken in the neighborhood where I was born, Altahabana in the city of Havana, Cuba. I went out to accompany medical students two days in a row, first, close to an hour going up and down five flights of stairs in two buildings with 30 different apartments and then a kilometer away in a small community of five houses.

Students from all the areas of medical sciences were called upon to collaborate with the Public Health Ministry to detect possible cases of  Covid-19, a disease sadly robbing as many headlines as it is life.  The Cuban strategy does not wait until the victims arrive at hospitals; it develops a preventative house-by-house search for cases of contagion.

Some of the aspiring doctors were still only 18 years old and had been studying only a few months. But there they were, on the front lines, where they were most needed. The routine is daily and because of that fact, risky. It is well known that everyone’s sanitary conditions are not the best, and that complicates the task, but one must go on. Every day, the students have to get up early, put on their uniform and mask—and if possible, gloves and hat—and go on out into the neighborhoods.

A team of two students are responsible for surveying 130 homes. They arrive at the neighborhood around 9 a.m. The neighbors are already waiting for them; it’s a new habit. Some, anxious because they live by themselves and it’s the only opportunity to talk to someone else in the entire day, now that they can hardly go out.

The students go from house to house, up and down staircases, to ask how people are feeling and if they have have any Covid-19 symptoms and also to answer any questions people pay have about the coronavirus. They take the necessary precautionary measures, which means they have to turn down offers of water or coffee that the neighbors hospitably offer in order to preserve social distancing and avoid touching shared surfaces and objects.

Before 1 p.m., they’ve reported back to their zone’s polyclinic, but their work does not end there. They return home, and without greeting anyone in thir family, they go directly to wash their hands, take off their clothes and work gear and disinfect them, bathing themselves from head to foot to eliminate any possible contact with the virus. And they go on with their day and their studies, because they cannot abandon their books in spite of the situation. And at 9 p.m., they applaud from their balconies, along with everyone else in the neighborhood, for the doctors and, yes, for themselves.

One of the apartment buildings they have to survey used to be a local elementary school. Every door opened to a class of 20 children. Those that live there today arrived in Havana several years ago from other provinces during their vacations (a time when schools were closed and empty) and took over the building for their own use. Although they have no legal rights to occupy the building, they are not ignored in this health crisis; on the contrary, they are considered and attended to at the level of Primary Health Attention with the same care as the rest of the population.

The idea of a series of photographs arose after learning about a wave of disinformation and fake news providing a distorted image in social media about the  intent of the house-to-house visits; I found out about these rumors through discussions with relatives who live outside of Cuba. After I got to talk with the medical students, I realized how far these rumors were from the reality and decided to create a photoessay to show the story from my perspective.

A la vanguardia va el corazón. _DSC0652

A la vanguardia va el corazón. _DSC0700