Yirmara Torres Hernández, former president of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC) in Matanzas, reported on her social media that her block and several nearby ones in the Los Mangos neighborhood have gone almost two months without receiving a single drop of water, while the liquid runs wasted through the streets as leaks.
«To be more precise, in my block and in some surrounding areas, not a drop of water has entered for almost two months,» wrote the journalist, who directly tagged the Presidency of Cuba and the First Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman demanding answers.
Torres Hernández documented with video how water flows down Compostela Street, near the Pediatric Hospital, in the form of permanent leaks, while residents in higher areas are not receiving water supply.
"Here runs the water they pump, but it doesn't reach my house, nor the houses of so many people from Matanzas," he pointed out in a second post about the leaks in which he also quipped: "Will we have to wait until they lift the blockade?"
The journalist points out several possible causes for the lack of supply: the closing of a valve, leaks that hinder distribution, or a deliberate action by someone.
Before these two months without water, the supply arrived every 10 days, sometimes every 21, and on occasions only reached the lower taps or the hose at the corner. Torres Hernández warns that there are areas in Matanzas that haven't received water for over a year.
"That's enough. No one can keep paying for water tanks permanently," he wrote, describing the situation starkly: "It hurts to see elderly women pushing boxes with water jugs uphill, and elderly men with makeshift carts."
The journalist also warned about the health risks associated with the lack of water: "Hepatitis? No, not Hepatitis, we could contract bubonic plague in this reality."
His conclusion was emphatic: "In Matanzas, in many areas, we do not seem like the third world... we seem like the underworld."
The complaint is not an isolated case. According to data from April 2026 on the water supply in Matanzas, over 300,000 residents of the province lack stability in their water supply, and out of the 518,000 residents who receive water through pipes, more than 29,000 face ongoing shortages due to breaks in the networks.
87% of the water supply system in Cuba relies on the National Electroenergetic System, meaning that every blackout paralyzes pumping. The outages have reduced pumping to only 2-4 hours daily, far below the necessary 16 hours, according to data from May 2025 on the collapse of the water supply in Matanzas.
This is not the first time that Torres Hernández has stepped away from her institutional role to denounce the crisis. In March 2026, she described the blackouts as psychological torture after experiencing power outages of 32, 24, and 26 consecutive hours. In September 2025, she reported on the arbovirosis outbreak in Matanzas and recounted deaths that the authorities were denying, which resulted in censure from Radio 26, the state media with which she is affiliated.
In April 2026, Vice Prime Minister Chapman met with executives from the Aqueduct without offering concrete solutions or timelines. As the only structural response, the authorities projected the construction of a new well over 20 meters deep with a submersible pump of 100 liters per second, with no defined execution date.
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