The journalist Yirmara Torres Hernández posted on Facebook a video denouncing the existence of a garbage dump just one block away from the Eliseo Noel Caamaño Provincial Pediatric Hospital in Matanzas, Cuba.
In the 41-second video, Torres shows the landfill located behind the FU Ramón Matiu and visually points out the hospital, demonstrating its proximity. “This beautiful dump is just a block away from the Pediatric Hospital of Matanzas. Here, see. I'm not lying to you, I'm going to show you now where the pediatric hospital is,” the journalist says while filming.
This is the second complaint Torres has made on consecutive days: on Friday, he documented another dumping ground right on the corner of his own house, at the intersection of Salamanca Street and San Carlos, in the heights of Matanzas.
"I am a journalist and I do not speak for myself, but for my neighbors and for all the people of Matanzas who are suffering," Torres wrote in the post that accompanied the video.
The journalist demands that Comunales and the Government take responsibility. "It is the task of Comunales and the Government to resolve the waste issue before it becomes a larger problem. Do not shift the responsibility onto the people anymore," she warned.
Torres also rejected the idea that the solution lies in citizen mobilizations: “This cannot be resolved with token efforts of volunteer work or calls for social discipline.”
The journalist notes that the situation has worsened, especially after May 1st, with garbage piling up in places where it had never accumulated before. "Summer is approaching. A lethal combination," she warned, directly addressing CITMA and the Ministry of Public Health.
The alarm is based on recent events. The Eliseo Noel Caamaño Pediatric Hospital collapsed in October 2025 with its 75 beds at 100% occupancy due to a simultaneous outbreak of dengue, chikungunya, and oropouche, forcing the establishment of an auxiliary center with over 100 beds at the University of Medical Sciences of Matanzas.
The waste crisis in Matanzas is structural. The official press of the province acknowledged this week the seriousness of the problem, describing the landfills as a "putrefying tumor" and warning about the proliferation of rodents, flies, and mosquitoes. The main cause is the fuel shortage that prevents the Municipal Communal Company from conducting regular pickups: in some areas, trucks pass every two months.
The problem is not exclusive to Matanzas. In Havana, only 44 out of 106 garbage trucks were operational in February of this year, and a "Hygienization Operation" launched by the government with 450 brigades did not address the underlying issue.
Torres, who served as provincial president of the Union of Journalists of Cuba in Matanzas for seven years before resigning in February 2023, also responded to an anonymous comment suggesting she pick up the trash herself: "I invited the person to live our life. How easy it is to ask us to endure from the comfort of their own."
"Then they say that those of us who publish are the problem, when the problem is the fact itself," lamented the journalist.
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