The funeral service drivers in Pinar del Río remained at home unable to work due to the lack of operational vehicles, as admitted this week by a provincial official quoted by the state agency ACN. This revelation was buried under the triumphant tone of the official note, which announced the arrival of seven hearses to the province.
Alberto Weekes Hernández, general director of the provincial bus passenger company, acknowledged that the new vehicles represent an "injection" for the entity, "considering that the drivers were at home due to the lack of fuel."
The received fleet includes four combustion vehicles and three electric ones, purchased with funds from the Ministry of Transport aimed at the development of public transportation, as explained by Carlos Rodríguez González, the Transport delegate in the province.
The territorial distribution assigns one of the vehicles to the municipalities of Guane, Mantua, and Sandino; another to Consolación del Sur; and the rest to the central territory.
This latest assignment is particularly significant: in January 2025, mourners in Consolación del Sur had to carry a coffin on foot to the cemetery due to a lack of funeral transportation.
The three electric vehicles feature 120 kilometers of range and can be fully charged in three and a half hours using the National Electric System, as detailed by Luis Alberto Palacios Rivero, transportation operations technician. They will be operated by a single driver, while the combustion vehicles will require two.
The collapse of funeral services is not exclusive to Pinar del Río. On July 13, a deceased woman in Holguín was taken to the cemetery in a yoke of oxen because the hearse had no fuel. In February 2025, Ciego de Ávila was operating with only eight of its 19 hearses.
The regime has responded with incremental measures that have not resolved the structural deficit: in May 2026, the government announced the arrival of JMC pickup-type hearses manufactured in China at the Port of Mariel; the Ministry of Transportation is working alongside the Military Industry Union on the assembly of 50 electric hearses for municipalities across the country; and in Havana, the state company ServiAxess has been operating 15 electric vehicles since December 2025.
The timing of the delivery is not coincidental: Pinar del Río has been designated as the venue for the national central event on July 26, in commemoration of the 73rd anniversary of the attacks on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks. The ACN note itself explicitly mentions that the province is "the venue for the central event on July 26" as part of the justification for the service improvement.
The new cars join the electric vehicles from Tabacuba and a diesel minibus that recently arrived in the province, although the acknowledgment that the drivers had not been working for some time reveals the depth of the crisis that these seven vehicles are only beginning to address.
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