A neighbor from Matanzas identified as Emilio Prieto Núñez posted on Facebook over the weekend photographs of a massive dump at the corner of Embarcadero, Blanco, and Mujica streets, right in the city center, sparking a wave of outrage on social media.
The accumulation of waste —mattresses, plastics, debris, cardboard, organic matter, and puddles of stagnant water with weeds growing among the refuse— completely blocked vehicular access and extended for over 100 meters along Mujica Street.
The post accumulated 554 reactions and sparked frustration among the neighbors, who asked, "How far are we going to go?" The complainant was more direct: "Are our leaders blind?"
The municipal authorities and the Communal Company did not issue any response to the complaint.
The episode is not an isolated incident. The garbage collection crisis in Matanzas has been worsening for months and has a structural cause: the shortage of diesel.
The Municipal Communal Company receives between 300 and 550 liters of fuel daily, when it needs more than 2,700 liters to cover all its routes. This has left only 11 of its 24 collection trucks operational, and out of an estimated workforce of 1,400 employees, only about 930 are active.
The municipal mayor Michel León Rodríguez himself acknowledged it in May before the cameras of the Con Voz de Pueblo program on TV Yumurí: "We have a debt to the city."
The series of complaints throughout 2026 paints a picture of sustained collapse.
In April, an improvised dump occupied almost the entire intersection of Levante and Solís, with residents going nearly a month without regular waste collection. In May, journalist Yirmara Torres Hernández reported a dump just meters away from the Eliseo Noel Caamaño Pediatric Hospital, amid outbreaks of hepatitis A, dengue, and chikungunya. Only after pressure on social media did the authorities remove some of the waste near the hospital, although the cleanup operation was only partial.
During August, the rains swept the accumulated debris from streets and canals into the San Juan and Yumurí rivers and the bay of Matanzas, causing direct environmental impact. In September, a garbage dump caught fire in Santa Marta, in the municipality of Cárdenas, and a container was completely melted down.
The provincial press described the situation as a "rotten tumor" associated with rodents, flies, and mosquitoes.
The problem is not limited to Matanzas either. In Havana, at the beginning of the year, only 44 out of the 106 garbage collection trucks in the capital were operational, leaving up to 23,814 cubic meters of waste uncollected each day in the city.
While the regime does not address the fuel crisis that has paralyzed community services, the residents of Matanzas continue to live alongside garbage in their streets, asking themselves the same question: "How far are we going to go?"
Related videos:
Filed under: