A video published on Friday on Facebook shows a large garbage dump apparently at the intersection of Águila and Estrella streets, in Centro Habana, accompanied by a text describing it as "achievements of the so-called revolution."
The complaint adds to a series of similar reports documenting the collapse of the waste collection system in the Cuban capital throughout 2026.
The 56-second reel was published on September 11 and mentions these two streets—"Águila entre Estrella" (sic)—as an expression of government neglect, with a text that also labels the regime as "cowards, torturers, murderers."
The complaint comes just days after new videos showed the streets of Havana overflowing with garbage in at least three locations in Centro Habana: El Curita park, the intersection of San Juan and Virtudes, and the area around the La Época store. "The trash dumps in Havana stretch for miles, and no one is doing anything to solve this," stated the content creator about El Curita park.
The structural background of the crisis is well documented. At the beginning of 2026, only 44 out of the 106 collection trucks remained operational —41% of the fleet— due to a shortage of diesel and mechanical deterioration, while the capital generates between 24,000 and 30,000 cubic meters of waste daily, and over 23,000 may go uncollected each day.
The neighborhood of Los Sitios, also in Centro Habana, has been one of the hardest hit. There, a fire originating from an improvised garbage dump destroyed the side door of the Parish of San Judas Tadeo and San Nicolás de Bari on the 9th. Brother Ernesto Cuba, Sch.P., from the Escolapia community that administers the parish, publicly denounced it: "The Parish of San Judas Tadeo has just lost its side door due to a new fire in the garbage dump this afternoon. This is a result of the abandonment by both the Government of Havana, mainly Centro Habana, the Party, and local authorities. They have not fulfilled their promises."
The regime's responses have proven to be insufficient, and the authorities themselves acknowledge this. In August, the pilot project for electric tricycles for waste collection in the Rampa Popular Council failed because, among other factors, the solar charging station that would supply them remained unfinished.
Pedro Lizardo Garcés Escalona, the president of that Popular Council, admitted: "Unfortunately, the initial idea and the objective with which the collection of solid waste using electric tricycles was designed have not been realized."
At the beginning of September, the Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman presented a batch of 20 trucks and more than 240 Ampliroll containers of Chinese origin, with an investment exceeding one million euros, although the authorities themselves admitted that this "is not the definitive solution." Previous donations of equipment for this purpose have deteriorated rapidly due to lack of maintenance and fuel.
The health consequences of such a buildup of waste lead to outbreaks of diseases like dengue and chikungunya, which affected thousands of people in 2025. More than 500,000 residents of Havana lacked a regular supply of drinking water last July.
Citizen indignation is strongly expressed on social media. "Not just Havana, that's how all of Cuba is," wrote an internet user. Another noted, "The government thinks they can force the people to be their trash disposers too."
The poet Juan Carlos García Guridi summed it up in verses published at the end of August, while capturing mountains of garbage in Bejucal, Mayabeque: "that we have become / a country of trash."
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