The Cuban comedian Ulises Toirac once again denounced the garbage crisis in Havana this Tuesday with a five-second video posted on Facebook in which he depicted, with irony and colloquial language, the collapse of waste collection services in the Cuban capital.
"In every block a mess / in every neighborhood an infection / Block by block / neighborhood by neighborhood / dirty, the mess," wrote Toirac alongside images of municipal blue containers completely overflowing, with waste spilled onto the pavement of a tree-lined street in Havana.
The post accumulated over 10,000 views, 705 reactions, and over a hundred comments, reflecting the resonance that the topic has among Cubans.
It is not the first time that Toirac has raised concerns about this situation. In February, he warned about the dangers of burning waste in public spaces and shared a photo of a "mound of garbage" in the Playa municipality, commenting: "If this is the case in this proletarian aristocratic neighborhood... I don't want to see the rest."
In May, he criticized the government for prioritizing mobilizations and propaganda instead of addressing the issues of garbage and power outages, and just three days before this publication, he described Cuba as a "maze without a solution" where "it is no longer the light at the end of the tunnel... there is no tunnel."
The comedian's complaint reflects a structural crisis that has reached critical levels in 2026. According to data collected by Infobae in its coverage of the health crisis in Havana, the city generates between 24,000 and 30,000 cubic meters of waste per day, but the collection system only processes between 16,000 and 17,000, leaving up to 23,814 cubic meters daily uncollected.
The collapse has specific causes: in February, only 44 of the 106 collection trucks in the capital were operational, paralyzed by a shortage of fuel and the mechanical deterioration of a fleet lacking maintenance.
The infrastructure is also insufficient. Havana has barely 10,000 containers when it needs between 20,000 and 30,000 to meet the city's actual demand.
Due to the collapse of services, the burning of trash in public spaces has become a makeshift solution, worsening health risks. The New York Times en Español reported on the link between waste accumulation and the spread of dengue, chikungunya, leptospirosis, and hepatitis A in the capital.
The magnitude of the problem even forced the Cuban state press to acknowledge the situation in February, an unusual occurrence given the usual official silence regarding the system's failures. The crisis was also reported by international outlets such as Euronews and Infobae itself between February and June of this year.
Toirac, one of the most recognized comedians in Cuba with over 45 years of artistic experience, has turned his social media into a platform for sustained criticism against the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel, addressing issues ranging from blackouts and repression to poor economic management and, recurrently, the problem of the garbage that sickens and suffocates Havana.
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