The psychologist and communicator Manuel Calviño called for regulated hours for street vendors in Cuba, noting that their activity from the early hours of the morning until night constitutes a form of noise pollution that impacts the quality of life for residents.
The proposal arose in his program “It's Worth It”, aired by Cubavisión under the title “Let's see who makes more noise.”
The trigger was a letter that a citizen left at the door of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT), which Calviño read on air. In it, the sender described his block as "the loudest in the country": the baker whistling at six in the morning, the honking of a car at six-thirty, a chain of vendors shouting for potatoes, coconut pie, gold buying, and mattress repairs, joined by cars playing music at full volume. And late into the night, night owls shouting until two or three o'clock.
"I say, street vendors, with all due respect, and I understand that it is their job and that they have to seek sales, etc. But they do not need to start at six in the morning; they don't even have to start at seven. The market opens at seven-thirty or eight-thirty, not before. And they also shouldn't be shouting about their products at ten o'clock at night; this needs to be regulated," Calviño stated on the program.
The communicator clarified that his complaint does not question the existence of street vendors - an activity that the National Assembly formalized in June with a vendor's license and a simplified tax regime - but rather the lack of control over their operating hours and the acoustic impact they generate.
Calviño supported his argument with data from the journal Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo, published by the provincial delegation of SIDMA in Villa Clara, which indicates that 50% of citizen complaints in that province pertain to noise. The identified sources range from music equipment in homes to state recreational centers, mechanical workshops, carpentry shops, and generators.
The problem is neither new nor exclusive to Havana.
The noise in Sancti Spíritus has worsened since 2022, with loudspeakers, engines, and music often exceeding legal limits.
In June, residents of Nuevo Vedado complained about the unbearable noise from an ETECSA generator that operates continuously in a neighborhood that receives barely two hours of electricity per day.
Calviño pointed out that Cuba has legislation to regulate noise pollution - Law 81 on the Environment, Cuban Standard NC 26:2012, and Decree Law 200/1999 - but that its enforcement is virtually nonexistent.
"There are laws that regulate all these matters; however, they are not enforced, and since they are not upheld, they are even less likely to be followed," he said. Regarding the police, he was direct: "They rarely intervene when there is noise."
Beyond the impact on physical and mental health, the communicator framed the issue as a failure of coexistence: "There is a fundamental problem of respect, of consideration for people, of respecting others' rights, and of avoiding noise invasion in shared public spaces."
A fragment of the program published on Facebook by Cubavisión accumulated over 31,000 views, reflecting the resonance of the topic among the Cuban audience.
Calviño closed the episode with a warning that sums up her stance: "The difficult part is realizing when one is the source of the noise. Believe me, it's worth it."
Filed under: