A video shared this Friday on social media shows one of the side streets of the Cuatro Caminos Shopping Center in Havana, completely flooded with murky green water along with plastics, charred cardboard, and mud.
The images were posted on the Facebook profile of user Iván Rosa Armenteros, who accompanied the recording with a text that summarizes the indignation of many Cubans: "They have turned this country into a tremendous mess. Even beauty gets tiresome."
According to one of the comments under the post, the green water has been stagnant in that spot for more than three months without any action taken by the authorities.
"It is a shopping area with a lot of traffic, nothing is being done to channel that green water, which is a pollution problem for the community," he stated.
Other neighbors described an even broader situation. "My block is also filled with sewage water on both sides and no one does anything. Today, it's just the neighbors digging ditches because we've been dealing with this for months," wrote one person.
Resignation is also evident among those who reacted to the video. "Most Cubans have normalized that precariousness, which is why Cuba is getting worse over the years," lamented another commenter.
Someone else pointed out with irony the contradiction of the State: "That's it. Then they want to go home and issue fines for the mosquitoes."
"That’s how Havana is, fully represented with all its municipalities at 100%, and that’s how we survive, because God is great and hasn’t unleashed another epidemic, without drinking water, without electricity to keep food, without medicine," summarized a commentator. Another was more direct: "Cuba is destroyed and it hurts."
Cuatro Caminos is a high-traffic commercial area that has historically experienced recurring flooding due to inadequate drainage, but the current crisis adds the complication of uncollected garbage.
The Cuban capital has a shortfall in waste collection vehicles. Of the 106 collection trucks it had at the beginning of the year, only 44 remained operational, 41% of the fleet, immobilized due to a lack of fuel and mechanical deterioration.
The city of over 1.8 million inhabitants generates between 24,000 and 30,000 cubic meters of solid waste each day, but up to 23,814 cubic meters remain uncollected daily.
The government acknowledged at the end of 2025 that it cannot clean the capital or pay street cleaners a decent wage, an admission that has not been accompanied by real solutions.
The situation in Cuatro Caminos is not an isolated case. In recent weeks, garbage overflowed in Trillo Park in Centro Habana, and the deputy director of the Historian's Office, Perla Rosales, acknowledged that Old Havana cannot stay clean for even two hours after a sanitation day.
The health consequences are serious. Cuba closed 2025 with at least 81,909 official cases of dengue and chikungunya and 65 deaths. In 2026, the outbreak was still active in 134 municipalities.
More than 500,000 residents of Havana remained without regular access to drinking water in July, while days earlier it was reported that the cracked pipes may draw sewage into the system when power outages shut off the pumps, further increasing the risk to the population.
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