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The Cuban government, with funding from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is conducting a practical workshop this week in the province of Guantánamo focused on traditional construction techniques. This includes the building of adobe houses—unfired bricks made from clay soil and straw—as an alternative due to the scarcity of cement and rebar.
The workshop, which runs until July 17 in the area known as Cabaña de Mariano, features a polygon with three types of constructions: a brick vault house, another made of adobe, and a third built with shipping containers, highlighted this Sunday by the official newspaper Venceremos.
The initiative is led by Mexican architect Ramón Aguirre Morales, from the Ibero-American Network of Architecture and Earth Construction (ProTerra), who heads a team of eight specialists from Mexico, Chile, El Salvador, and Colombia.
Aguirre emphasized "the importance of these practical training sessions that, under the 'learning by doing' methodology, enable the use of these techniques to build housing without the use of steel and with very little cement."
The Cuban side is represented by the provincial construction company Epcons, the construction materials company Epmalco, and the construction brigade of the Alimentaria.
The Guantanamo experiment is not an isolated case, but the latest in a series of similar initiatives that the government has promoted in response to the collapse of its construction industry.
In July 2025, Mexican specialists taught earth construction techniques in Pinar del Río, also with support from the UNDP.
That same month, the government of Villa Clara announced two experimental homes without cement or steel in Santa Clara and Remedios.
After Hurricane Melissa, which left 137,000 homes damaged in Santiago de Cuba, authorities also assessed prototypes of cement-free houses for the victims in the municipality of Segundo Frente.
The backdrop of all these experiments is a housing crisis of historic proportions. The official deficit exceeds 929,000 homes, and 35% of the housing stock, equivalent to about 4.1 million units, is in fair or poor condition.
Cement production is operating at only 10% of its installed capacity due to energy shortages and industrial obsolescence.
The state construction plan for 2025 was not fulfilled by 78%: only 2,382 homes were completed out of the 10,795 planned.
After analyzing official data, economist Pedro Monreal highlighted that in 2024, 5.5 times fewer homes were built than in 1984 and 15 times fewer than in 2006.
The regime has also invested in housing with shipping containers, although with meager results. Despite announcing the transformation of over 3,500 units, by April 2026, only 133 had been delivered across the country.
The architect Abel Tablada from the Technological University of Havana warned that these solutions "should be considered as a temporary and emergency solution, as they should not be confused with a long-term housing program."
Tablada himself also warned that containers can turn into an oven under the climatic conditions of the tropics, a warning that is particularly relevant in a province like Guantánamo, one of the hottest in Cuba.
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