A video recently published by the Facebook page Holguín Memories shows a person digging through waste and debris in an improvised dump on the road to Gibara, in the Alcides Pino neighborhood of the Cuban city of Holguín, with the overlaid text "Holguín hurts."
The recording of just 20 seconds sparked a wave of comments from residents describing a city unrecognizable compared to what was considered the cleanest in Cuba for decades.
"It is sad to see the City of Parks, known over the years for its cleanliness, in such precarious conditions," wrote the page when posting the clip.
The comments from the residents of Holguín paint a picture that goes far beyond the filmed point. Elder Ochoa warned that "50 meters from that dump, next to the river, there is another, much larger dump" and that "the Zayas neighborhood is sinking in garbage."
Margarita Rodriguez was more emphatic: "That's how it is in all the neighborhoods of Holguín."
Moraima Hernández described a city that "sinks among landfills, sewage waters, and heaps of fluttering garbage," with a proliferation of rodents, mosquitoes, and flies. "We are lost, Cuba is fading," she wrote.
Enrique Pozo added that anyone who walks through the neighborhood behind Loma de la Cruz "will be shocked," while Romarico Suárez warned, "Before long, we’ll be sleeping and eating in them if the dumps keep expanding."
The deterioration is neither new nor spontaneous. The garbage dumps have been burning every night in neighborhoods of Holguín, where plastics, LED tubes, food scraps, decomposing animals, and expired medication containers are burned, reported the provincial broadcaster Radio Angulo.
In January, that same outlet was already warning that the city was living under a toxic cloud due to garbage burning, with emissions of dioxins, furans, and carbon monoxide, and that each resident generates approximately 1.5 kg of waste per day while only 35% of the provincial garbage is being utilized.
The Community Services Company identified shortages of trucks, spare parts, fuel, and labor as direct causes of the collapse, but did not provide concrete solutions.
In April, residents demanded to know if Holguín would return to being a clean city, following a brief cleanup in the Alcides Pino neighborhood that lasted only a few days before waste returned.
In October and November 2025, Holguín reported cases of dengue -serotype four confirmed by PCR- and chikungunya in almost all of its 14 municipalities, with accumulated garbage identified as a factor that promotes the breeding grounds of the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
The deterioration also extends to heritage. The old Holguín-Gibara railway station, inaugurated in 1893, is now a dump for debris and rodents, with an official sign reading "The Rebirth of the Mambí" in front of its ruins.
The Los Caballitos playground was demolished without a replacement plan and its lot has also turned into a dumping ground.
Alexis Carracedo summarized in a comment what many feel: "Sadness is all over the country; it’s impossible to survive in Cuba."
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