A resident from the Mantilla neighborhood in the Arroyo Naranjo municipality posted a video last Tuesday in which she shows a water leak on Progreso Street, between Calzada de Managua and Carmela, where water appears to be gushing from a broken pipe and mixing with the garbage accumulated on the public street.
In the Facebook recording, the woman, identified as Grise González, points out the exact location of the break and warns: "Look, that's where the water isn't getting in. There's something broken there. Water won't flow beyond that point." She then pans her cellphone lens back and forth over a large, partially flooded dump in the middle of the street.
In the text accompanying the clip, the author urges the locals to take action without waiting for the state-run company responsible, given its usual inefficiency: "Come on, neighbors, because if we wait for Aguas de La Habana, it will never be resolved; every time they come to collect the garbage, they break that. Let's solve the problem among ourselves, please."
The comments on the video reveal that the situation is neither new nor isolated.
A user points out that the breakage has been "like this for months" and specifies the exact location as "Progreso Street at the corner of Carmela," while another requests structural solutions: "If they fix it, afterward they need to eliminate that garbage dump by putting up a fence, something around it, and imposing fines on anyone who brings trash there, so that nothing else gets broken."
Another forum user broadens the perspective on the deterioration: "And what can you tell me about 6th Street and Progreso? The bulldozer broke the pipe over a year ago, and they haven't fixed it, with water spilling and the neighbors without water."
A third comment warns that the reported breakage does not solely explain the lack of supply: "That is not the only reason why it is not coming in, because that break is from a few days ago and water hasn't been coming into Anita Street since December."
The anger of the residents is also directed squarely at the local authorities, to the extent that someone suggests imprisoning all the officials of the Arroyo Naranjo government "for corruption."
The complaint is part of a crisis in basic services that is hitting Havana and all of Cuba, particularly hard in recent months, to which the Government has not proposed viable solutions nor recognized its inability to resolve it.
In terms of waste collection, only 44 out of the 106 garbage collection trucks in the capital are operational, barely 41% of the fleet, which has led to makeshift dumps throughout the city.
In parallel, the hydraulic infrastructure has suffered from decades of deterioration: obsolete pipes, leaks in main conduits, and blackouts that halt the pumps have left entire neighborhoods without supply for weeks or months.
Aguas de La Habana has acknowledged the failures in the hydraulic network, but without offering concrete timelines for resolution, while the citizens continue to face the same combination of broken pipes, accumulated trash, blackouts, and lack of institutional response. A few days ago, this explosive combination prompted a protest by women at the intersection of Mario and Calzada streets in Diez de Octubre, after months without the supply of this vital resource.
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