A citizen of Holguín published a series of videos on social media in which he documents with images the contrast between the condition of the public roads in the city depending on whom they serve: pristine asphalt in front of the Provincial Government headquarters and deep, impassable potholes on the access road to the main hospital in the province.
In the first of the videos shared, the author drives along the road that runs in front of the Provincial Government of Holguín and describes it bluntly: “This road is flawless. There are no potholes, and there are no open manhole covers, posing a danger of people falling in.”
Then it moves to the Valley Road and the Real Street, the route that connects 90% of the city with the "Lucía Iñíguez Landín" Clinical Surgical Hospital, the provincial reference center, and the contrast is striking.
"Here, you can't even pass by bicycle," says the author as the camera captures deep potholes that follow one after another from the Villanueva bridge to the little square in Pueblo Nuevo.
According to the citizen, this road has been receiving "around fifteen to twenty years" without a layer of asphalt, and it is daily used by ambulances, patients recovering from surgery, convalescents, and people attending consultations.
"Patients, including those who have undergone surgery, have to pass through here," he points out, while documenting pothole after pothole on a stretch that, he claims, connects the majority of the population of Holguín with their only provincial referral hospital.
The video also includes a third point of comparison: the road to the Mirador, which provides access to the Provincial Patrol Unit, also in good condition, with not a single pothole.
The author avoids making explicit statements and appeals to the viewers to judge for themselves, a common tactic among Cubans who speak out on social media to minimize the risk of reprisals: "Look, I'm not going to say anything; I'm not going to speak ill. You are going to compare that, and you will come to your own conclusion about the level of priority here in Holguín."
In the end, he ironically resorts to the official slogan of the province: "We are Holguín, we're aiming for more, all of that was delayed, but the priority, the reality is this."
The complaint is not an isolated case. The Minister of Transportation, Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, acknowledged the failure of the road recovery program before the National Assembly in July 2024: only 22.3% of the planned pothole repairs were carried out in the first half of that year, with 12 out of 25 asphalt plants shut down due to breakdowns.
The minister himself admitted that road maintenance "is not always the top priority" for local Cuban governments, a confession that the videos from Holguín illustrate with surgical precision.
Meanwhile, the regime has allocated resources to repair roads to tourist centers, such as the road to Marea del Portillo in Granma or the causeway to Cayo Santa María in Villa Clara, highlighting a policy of allocation that favors tourism and power centers over the everyday needs of the population.
In Holguín, the history of road deterioration is extensive: a truck fell into a huge hole in Banes in July 2024, and reports about the poor condition of roads in the province date back at least to 2020.
Nationwide, 75% of Cuban roads are in fair or poor condition, according to official data from June 2025, and in the first four months of that year, there were 2,377 traffic accidents in Cuba, with an increase in fatalities directly attributed to the deterioration of the roadways.
Filed under: