Two videos posted on Facebook by the page Mi mundo show Cuban women washing clothes in a river due to the water shortage in their municipality. These images have circulated widely on social media and evoke practices from the pre-revolutionary period.
In one of the viral videos of women washing in the river, a female voice candidly laments: "The situation we have with water as well, gentlemen."
In the second clip, another woman speaks directly to the camera: "Women, speak up. Here we are, we came to clean the river, because unfortunately our municipality also has problems with water."
The scene is not an isolated case. According to official data from May 2026, almost three million Cubans suffer from daily water shortages, while nearly 10 million — practically the entire population — experience intermittent supply issues.
The root of the problem is structural. The Cuban hydraulic system operates with only 37% of the fuel necessary for pumping, and more than 80% of the equipment relies on electricity, which means that every blackout also cuts off the water.
In 2026, electricity outages of up to 50 consecutive hours have been reported in some municipalities.
The daily struggle of Cubans for water is repeated across all provinces. In Santiago de Cuba, 50 supply systems are out of service, and there is fecal contamination affecting 180,000 people.
In Havana, over 376,000 residents are facing disruptions due to outages and electrical failures. In Guantánamo, authorities are preparing to distribute water using animal traction, and in Las Tunas, an entire municipality has been without stable service for more than a month.
The phenomenon of washing in rivers, previously associated in Cuba with earlier times or rural areas lacking infrastructure, has reemerged as an urban and semi-urban practice documented in multiple provinces. In May 2025, people in Pinar del Río were forced to wash in the river after weeks without water and temperatures exceeding 30 degrees. In April of that same year, a Cuban connected her washing machine directly to the river using homemade hoses in an image that went viral.
In June 2026, a Cuban who reported 42 consecutive hours without electricity or water summarized the collective desperation with a phrase that also spread on social media: "They are robbing us of our lives."
The expression "the old times have returned," which circulates as an ironic and painful reaction to these images, encapsulates the regression the Cuban population is experiencing: decades of underinvestment in hydraulic infrastructure, aging pipes with massive leaks, and an energy crisis with no solution in sight have forced thousands of families back into practices they thought were behind them.
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