Miguel Díaz-Canel has set a date for the improvement of water supply in Havana: late September.
The ruler assures that by then results should start to be seen in two or three of the main supply systems and that during October other sources would be consolidated, with solutions based on renewable energies before the end of the year, according to the Presidency website.
The date deserves to be taken seriously, but not because Díaz-Canel has earned reasons for trust. On the contrary: after eight years of promises, adjustments, plans, and schedules that have rarely yielded the announced results, the end of September may become a concrete test of his credibility.
The question is no longer what the ruler has promised. It is much simpler: what reason do the Cubans have to believe him this time?
A crisis too deep to be resolved with another promise
The situation that the new plan aims to address is not temporary. More than half a million residents of Havana suffered from disruptions in July, after around 200,000 were affected in April and over 376,000 in May. Nationwide, approximately 2.7 million Cubans face difficulties in regularly accessing water.
The crisis is not solely dependent on rainfall or the state of the reservoirs. About 87% of Havana's pumping system relies on electricity, while the infrastructure has suffered decades of deterioration. Pipelines that have been in use for 60 to 70 years, losses of between 40% and 70% of the pumped water, and degraded pumping equipment are part of the problem.
The government now intends to respond with generator sets for 29 supply sources, repairs, and later, solar generation and storage systems. However, it has not yet disclosed how much the program will cost, how much fuel will be required, or how many residents would need to regain stable service to consider the first phase accomplished.
This makes the September deadline significant, but also limited: a date is not a solution and an installation does not equate to a result.
Electricity: promises that piled up as blackouts worsened
The relationship between water and electricity makes the new announcement particularly unsettling.
Díaz-Canel acknowledges that hydraulic systems require between ten to twelve continuous hours of electrical stability to function properly. However, electricity is precisely one of the areas where the government has promised a recovery that never materialized.
Since 2019, Díaz-Canel has spoken about ending blackouts, stabilizing the system, recovering thermoelectric plants, incorporating new generation, and transforming the energy matrix.
In 2021, he had to request that the public be informed about when "the undesirable blackout" would arrive. In 2022, the government promised to minimize blackouts before the end of the year. By 2024, after once again focusing on repairs and maintenance, Díaz-Canel stated, "We need to provide light to our population before the end of the year."
The result was not a sustained recovery. In 2024, there were national disconnections and new fuel crises; by 2026, the deficits of the National Electric System had exceeded 2,000 megawatts, and in some areas, power outages lasted practically all day.
This is the immediate precedent for the promise regarding water: the same government that for years failed to ensure the necessary electricity for pumping now claims it will guarantee water precisely through solutions that depend on equipment, fuel, investments, and energy.
The pattern is repeated
Electricity is no exception. It is the most visible example of a larger problem: the gap between what Díaz-Canel says, what his government does, and what ultimately happens.
In terms of food, the government acknowledged in 2020 the failure to meet its targets for rice, beans, and pork. In 2022, Díaz-Canel admitted that in Cuba there were "no food, no livestock, and no fish" and, nevertheless, years later he reiterated that "we are going to eat what we are capable of producing".
In the economy, the promise of recovery has also not materialized. The estimates cited by CiberCuba place the real GDP for 2025 more than 15% below the 2018 level.
Tourism, presented as one of the country's major engines, ended 2025 with barely 1.81 million international tourists and a hotel occupancy rate of 18.9%. The Minister of Economy acknowledged that exports had only met 62% of the plan.
It is not necessary to turn each of those pieces of data into an isolated accusation. Together, they reveal something more significant: eight years later, the government continues to announce solutions for problems it had already promised to resolve.
The currency shops: when reality contradicts the narrative
The case of the MLC stores provides another example of the gap between rhetoric and reality.
In 2020 Díaz-Canel denied that Cuba would dollarize and stated that stores would continue operating in CUP and CUC. The first stores in foreign currency were presented as a concrete measure to collect resources and support the economy.
Afterwards, something very different happened: the network expanded, basic goods began to shift into those circuits, establishments directly in dollars emerged, and the government itself acknowledged the existence of a "partial dollarization".
Meanwhile, CiberCuba has documented the expansion of stores that exclusively operate in dollars and also the shortages of MLC establishments.
The lesson is not that a measure cannot change. It's that what is announced is one thing, what is done is another, and what the population ultimately experiences is yet another.
From "prosperity" to the 176 measures
In 2018, when he took office as President, Díaz-Canel promised to move towards a "prosperous and sustainable socialism" and assured that there would be no "capitalist turns" in Cuba.
Eight years later, the government has had to resort to a package of 176 economic measures that expands the space for private activity, foreign investment, and various market mechanisms.
It is not necessary to determine here whether that change means abandoning socialism or not. The point is different: the same leader who promised prosperity ended up having to profoundly modify the economic rules because reality did not bring about the promised prosperity.
That is the context in which the promise of water now arrives.
The true test will be the outcome
Therefore, at the end of September, it should not be assessed by the number of installed generators, the meetings held, or the repairs announced. The evaluation should be much simpler.
How many habaneros recover water? For how many hours? With what frequency? How many stations operate stably? What happens when the National Electric System fails again?
Those are the indicators that will determine whether the plan is working. Everything else belongs to the realm of discourse.
Díaz-Canel has stated that it is necessary to “reinvent the entire water supply management system.” That may be true. But that statement also contains an admission: the system that the government has been managing for decades has reached a point where it needs to be reinvented.
After years of promises regarding electricity, food, growth, salaries, tourism, and basic services, the issue is no longer about what the leader announces. It is about deciding how much credit his word deserves.
At the end of September, the first response will arrive. It won't come from Díaz-Canel. It will come from the faucet.
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