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The ruins of the former hospital Joaquín García Lebredo, located in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo in Havana, are now an open-air dump surrounded by tall weeds, debris, and revolutionary slogans. What was once considered the best maternity hospital in Cuba has been destroyed without bombs or armed conflict; it was enough for the state to abandon it and for decades of neglect to take their toll, as digital creator Aldo Ruiz recalled on his social media.
The building was inaugurated in 1936 as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, initiated by the Cuban Anti-Tuberculosis League and designed by architect Luis Echevarría. It had a capacity for 400 patients and included an operating room, X-ray facilities, fluoroscopy, a pharmacy, a clinical laboratory, and a morgue for twelve corpses, among other facilities. Its level of care impressed delegations of foreign doctors who visited it, and it was featured in the magazine Arquitectura in November 1937.
After the 1959 revolution, the regime added two additional floors to the original three-story structure and turned it into a gynecological-obstetric hospital. Fidel Castro himself described it as "the best maternal hospital in Cuba," according to residents of the municipality.
The decline accelerated with the Special Period. The doctor and activist Agustín Figueroa, who worked there during that time, documented that between 1991 and 1996 the hospital already exhibited "almost total destruction." The exodus of doctors, systematic theft of materials, and the apathy of the authorities hastened its collapse, according to a report by 14ymedio.
In 2000, the Ministry of Public Health definitively vacated the facilities. All equipment and machinery were moved to the nearby Julio Trigo López Hospital. Since then, doors, pipes, and any salvageable materials have been taken by thieves or by the neighbors themselves.
"The Government came a few years ago with a crane, and no matter how much they tried to bring it down, it wouldn't budge. In the end, they gave up," Tomás, a 67-year-old neighbor, tells 14ymedio. The intention, according to his 42-year-old son Julián, was clear: "The idea was to demolish the hospital and build a vacation home for the military."
Today, the perimeter of the building is filled with debris and trash. "It's the dump of Havana," Tomás defines it, noting that the Lebredo "continues to be a collapse zone." On its walls, someone painted in large letters: "There is no aggression that Cuba cannot withstand," a slogan that the neighbors themselves describe as ironic.
The case of Lebredo is not an isolated phenomenon in Cuba: other historical sites have met the same fate, from the Elderly Home Lidia Doce to architectural gems of Old Havana and other abandoned historical structures. In Havana, there are approximately 1,000 collapses annually and the housing deficit in Cuba exceeds 805,000 homes, with independent estimates raising it to 929,000 for this year.
"To think that Fidel Castro once said this was the best maternity hospital in Cuba," concludes Tomás, in response to what Figueroa described as a place "straight out of a horror movie."
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