Residents of the Mantilla and Fraternidad neighborhood in the Arroyo Naranjo municipality of the capital experienced at least seven days without drinking water before a distribution truck arrived in the area, triggering scenes of desperation captured in a video circulating on social media.
The 18-second clip shared on Facebook by journalist Mario Vallejo shows residents emerging with buckets, bottles, tanks, and any available container to collect water.
"Seven days without water. We turn off everything for everyone. That's Mantilla, right? Mantilla Fraternidad," a neighbor can be heard saying as the truck is surrounded by the community.
"In any normal country, turning on the tap and having water shouldn’t be news. In Cuba, however, a water truck can become the event of the day," Vallejo wrote when publishing the material.
"This is how a large part of the Cuban population lives: without water, without electricity, without gas, and forced to celebrate scraps of survival while the official discourse continues to speak of resistance," concluded Vallejo in his post.
The situation in Mantilla is not an isolated case. According to data from the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources analyzed by the news agency AP, almost 2.7 million Cubans lack regular access to drinking water, and nearly 10 million face intermittent supply.
Only in Havana, more than 376,000 people were experiencing issues with water access in mid-May, 66,961 due to infrastructure breakages and over 309,000 due to lack of electricity for pumping.
Eighty-seven percent of the water supply system relies on the electrical grid, and of the 480 national pumping stations, only 135 are on circuits that are protected from outages.
With blackouts that the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, acknowledged exceed 20 to 22 hours a day in the capital, the pumps of the aqueducts stop functioning and water stops flowing.
The regime's response pattern is always the same; in the face of community despair, authorities send water trucks as a temporary solution.
On Friday, residents of Regla closed Maceo Street demanding water and electricity and outright rejected the tanker that the authorities sent in response.
"They brought a pipe and the people refuse to touch a bucket of water; they should put the water and the flow," denounced content creator Elio Rafael Sosa.
In Mantilla, the story is different only in the reaction. Neighbors rushed to find water because they had no other choice. Cacerolazos and street protests have been reported this week in Vedado, Centro Habana, Playa, Regla, San Miguel del Padrón, Marianao, and Boyeros.
The Mantilla neighborhood itself has a history of protests. On March 12, residents held pot-banging demonstrations and blocked a street in response to the prolonged blackouts.
The organization Cubalex documented at least 14 arrests in Havana related to protests over blackouts since that date.
Filed under: