Las Tunas celebrated its 230th anniversary of founding on September 26, while its residents were demanding an urgent solution to the accumulation of garbage, solid waste, and illegal dumping sites affecting various areas of the city.
The official newspaper 26 surveyed the residents of Tuneros about what the most urgent issue to be addressed for a more beautiful city was, and the responses published this Sunday almost unanimously pointed to the deterioration of urban hygiene.
A reader expressed her wish for Las Tunas to become "the cleanest city in Cuba" again and lamented seeing it turned into "a giant dumpster."
Another summarized her complaint about the cleanliness of the streets and described the city as "a living dump on every corner."
The reports indicate that the problem is not limited to a specific location. A resident reported a trash pile 15 meters in front of their building, accompanied by foul-smelling waters and mosquitoes.
A dump located at the intersection of Avenida 2 de Diciembre and Calle Primero de Enero was also noted, which, according to a resident, occupied the entire roadway at eight in the morning and was already on fire two hours later.
"How long will we continue to disrespect the city and its residents?" questioned one of the participants in the consultation, held precisely when the city was celebrating a date that should have been marked by the commemoration of its anniversary.
Local authorities acknowledged that the precarious situation of the Community Services Company - still being formed - and the fuel shortages are the main obstacles, although they indicated that there are options on the table related to the economic transformations underway since last June.
Citizenship, however, is not limited to complaining. The people of Tunero proposed to reactivate door-to-door cart services, sort waste, impose penalties on offenders, and invest in solar lights on the main avenues.
A reader pointed to the private sector as a reference: "In Holguín, there is an excellent initiative. A small and medium-sized enterprise is addressing that problem," he said.
In August, the mipyme Asfaltunas S.U.R.L. started voluntarily collecting waste due to failures in the state service, and the Raw Materials Recovery Company promoted the Reciclo Mi Barrio and Reciclo Más projects.
The 230th anniversary also coincides with the 150th anniversary of the fire that Major General Vicente García (1833-1886) ordered on September 26, 1876, when he chose to burn the city rather than surrender it to Spanish troops during the Ten Years' War. The symbolic weight of that date makes the current situation even more poignant.
"There will be no better tribute than that," declared a reader, referring to restoring urban cleanliness.
In February of this year, the official organ of the Communist Party in the eastern territory acknowledged that the landscape of Las Tunas was marked by “hundreds of micro-dumps” that have transformed the city into a “stench-filled” landscape, with trash piling up next to schools, clinics, and homes.
At that time, the province needed 657 waste collectors to handle the refuse, but only had 229; in the capital city, just over 60 were active. Although the media reported a salary increase to 15,000 pesos per month, it acknowledged that inflation and taxes made the job of collector less appealing.
In September, a mountain of garbage blocked the passage of the Havana-Guantanamo train in the Aguilera neighborhood, and the passengers themselves had to get off with makeshift shovels to clear the tracks.
Days later, neighbors reported on social media about an enormous dump next to the railway tracks, with reports indicating that in some areas, trash has not been collected since October 2025.
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