A video published this Wednesday on Facebook by the channel JSant TV, featuring digital content creator Dyango Pulido, reveals, according to his testimony, the existence of organized structures that control access to trucks and landfills in Cuba based on the value of the waste they transport.
"Of course, there are mafias; there are garbage trucks that have owners. This is organized by clans. These clans own certain types of garbage," says Pulido in the recording, which has surpassed 123,000 views and received more than 109 comments, many of them from Cubans who claim to have witnessed similar situations.
The narrator explained that the value of trash depends on its origin. Trucks coming from impoverished areas would be of less interest, while shipments from cigar factories or laboratories would be particularly sought after.
"It is not the same for a garbage truck coming from humble areas, where that garbage has little value, as it is for a truck from the cigarette factory, which, thanks to that garbage, obtains the tobacco they use to make cigarettes on their own," he concluded.
Pulido also warned about the risks of entering those spaces. In the video, he advised against trying to access areas used by recyclers and stated that those who venture in could expose themselves to dangerous situations.
The comments posted alongside the video provide testimonies that primarily point to the Boyeros dump. One user claims that there, drivers have designated areas for unloading based on the source of the waste and asserts that the site's administrator even has bodyguards.
Another commentator recalled being at that landfill in 2004 and 2005 and asserted that there were clashes over disputes related to the waste, as well as children, women, and elderly individuals working there, and people building homes with cardboard and other materials found among the trash.
Other testimonies described episodes of violence related to the dispute over waste. One user claimed that workers associated with the garbage trucks at Havana's airport confronted each other over products from the crematory, and that one of these disputes ended with individuals injured by a knife and the intervention of the police.
Another commentator recalled that during their childhood in Altahabana, some people would go to the dump to collect items and then had to flee from those who controlled the area with machetes and sticks.
"That is totally true; he is only saying 1% of what happens in that place," concluded one of the video commentators. "It could be turned into a documentary series," he added.
The stories are not limited to Havana either. Users report having encountered similar situations in landfills in Varadero and Camagüey.
One of them stated that at the dump where Varadero's waste was deposited, "battles over garbage" took place, and he added that some of the discarded food ended up being used to feed pigs in Cárdenas.
Several comments place these practices from the Special Period of the 1990s, when scarcity turned certain waste into valuable resources.
Among the memories, the so-called "tupamaros" emerge, a term used by some Cubans to refer to handmade cigars made from cut tobacco recovered from the remnants of tobacco factories.
The testimonies published in the comments do not, on their own, constitute an independent verification of each of the reported facts, but they reveal that stories about disputes, informal recycling, and waste exploitation are part of experiences that several users claim to have lived in various Cuban landfills.
This underworld operates amidst a structural collapse of garbage collection that the authorities themselves have acknowledged. At the beginning of the year, only 44 out of 106 garbage trucks were operational in Havana due to a lack of diesel.
The largest dump in the country, known as El Bote, located at Calle 100 and Boyeros, covers 104 hectares, has been in operation since 1976, and receives nearly 80% of the capital's waste.
More than a decade ago, in a comprehensive report, the independent journalist Carlos Manuel Álvarez documented machete wounds, stabbings, and discoveries of corpses in that place.
The street sale of items salvaged from the trash has become common in Cuba, while central street portals in Havana today appear transformed into informal markets where everything is sold, from broken appliances to items found among the waste.
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