A journey of just over a minute recorded in the streets of Bayamo and published on Facebook has become a document of the deterioration experienced by the capital of Granma province: heaps of trash piled up on every corner, debris, plastics, organic waste, and open-air burning sites in the heart of the urban area.
The video was published by Marisleydis Pérez Acosta on Facebook, where it sparked dozens of comments within a few hours.
What hurts those who reacted to the video the most is not just the dirtiness, but the contrast with the collective memory. For more than a decade, Bayamo was recognized as the cleanest city in Cuba, a title that was part of its identity. "We were one of the cleanest cities in Cuba; now all that’s left is the memory and history," wrote one user. Another summed up the decline in a single phrase: "The city that was the cleanest in Cuba. Look what it has become."
The images show active smoke, indicating that some of the waste is being burned directly in public areas, posing a significant risk to the respiratory health of the neighbors.
Health concerns are clearly expressed among those who commented on the video. "My God, help us so that this new outbreak of dengue doesn't gain strength, because with all that rotting garbage throughout Bayamo, we won't have a single life left; there are already some cases, but no organization seems to care to find solutions," warned a resident. Another noted that food is sold "full of flies and all kinds of things" and added, "In the same way, the entire country is in that situation."
This situation is neither new nor exclusive to Bayamo. In April 2026, the accumulation of garbage and debris blocked more than half of a railway crossing on the line connecting the city to Havana. And in the first weeks of June, new sources of unsanitary conditions were reported near Guajiro Natural.
The causes are structural: a chronic shortage of fuel that paralyzes garbage collection trucks, deterioration of the vehicle fleet, and the collapse of communal services. In Havana, only 44 out of 106 garbage collection trucks were operational in February 2026, with up to 23,814 cubic meters of waste accumulating uncollected each day. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero himself acknowledged the institutional failure on December 31, 2025, and Díaz-Canel admitted in October 2025 that there is no long-term structural plan to address the problem.
Various comments directly point to the regime's responsibility. "There is a lack of governance: inspectors and police should play their role where they are most useful, in the dumps," wrote one user. Another was more straightforward: "Misery, hunger, diseases. That's how life is in Cuba." And one more, with resignation: "They clean it up, and the next day it's the same."
Cuba closed 2025 with at least 81,909 infected and 65 deaths from dengue and chikungunya, and in June 2026, Matanzas was already detecting the first cases of the new season. The accumulated waste in the streets of Bayamo, a city of around 200,000 inhabitants, is not just an aesthetic issue: it is a breeding ground for epidemics that the regime has been unable —and unwilling— to contain for years.
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