A Cuban identified as Daudy Cuervo posted a video on Facebook where he shows a street in Havana completely covered in waste and exclaims indignantly: "Three kilometers of trash. With crocodiles, with lions..." he expressed in outrage.
The recording shows a public street turned into an open-air dump, with mountains of accumulated waste. It even captured the moment when a man arrives and unhesitatingly throws a bag of trash.
The video was made at the intersection of Industria and San Miguel streets in Central Havana.
"Just seeing this made my stomach turn, how disgusting," wrote Daudy, summarizing in a few words what thousands of Havana residents experience daily in their neighborhoods.
The scene is no exception: it is the daily portrait of a city operating with only 44 of its 106 active garbage trucks, mainly stalled due to chronic fuel shortages.
Havana generates between 13,000 and 23,814 cubic meters of waste daily, but the collection capacity is minimal. It also has only 10,000 containers when it would need between 20,000 and 30,000, many of which are in poor condition.
Neighbors from various neighborhoods report that "a garbage truck hasn't come by in over 10 days," with accumulations equivalent to "six or seven trucks worth of waste" in some areas.
In the face of inaction from the State, the residents themselves have resorted to burning trash in the streets as a desperate measure, which creates new health risks.
Last Wednesday, activist Silverio Portal documented these burnings in several municipalities across Havana.
On Monday, independent journalist Camila Acosta reported on a fire at an improvised landfill on Maloja Street at the corner of Lealtad, in Centro Habana, which occurred during a blackout.
Days earlier, another fire in Águila and Monte spread to a nearby store and required the intervention of firefighters.
The dense smoke creates a nocturnal fog with a pungent smell that affects the respiratory pathways of the residents, while the accumulation of waste promotes the proliferation of mosquitoes that transmit dengue and chikungunya, as well as rats, flies, and other pests.
The official response has been inadequate and at times grotesque: Prime Minister Marrero even asked citizens to collect the trash themselves over a weekend, on February 28.
The government also deployed 450 brigades, including soldiers, for "priority sanitation" efforts in Havana municipalities, and has employed prisoners with minor sentences to manually collect waste without gloves or appropriate tools.
In November 2025, the so-called "Operation Cleanup" was launched, and last February the government presented a plan with 49 measures for the short, medium, and long term, which includes importing 15,000 containers and recovering idle equipment.
At the same time, the regime is promoting a foreign investment project for waste management, led from Portugal, which is still awaiting final approval and has been met with widespread skepticism.
The garbage crisis in Havana made headlines internationally last February and remains unresolved, as evidenced by Daudy Cuervo's video, which summarizes 67 years of failed state management in just 14 seconds. “It seems like a great mockery,” said a Cuban artist while denouncing the same situation last month.
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