A neighbor from Alamar, East Havana, sharply summarized the situation in his neighborhood in a post published on Thursday in the Facebook group «Alamar calle ancha»: he suggests dismantling the communication tower that stands there useless and making use of its metal angles for garages, gates, or street lamps.
"Why don't they dismantle the tower in Alamar and put its angles to something more productive? That tower has no purpose there," wrote the author, identified as Esneyder Gonzales Fifteem, who clarifies that connectivity is just one among a list he sarcastically summarizes: "in Alamar, besides the one million five hundred twenty-four thousand problems... well, five hundred twenty-five, since I forgot about the water supply issue, we also have the problem of connectivity and mobile phone service."
The proposal to convert the street corners into lampposts has its twisted logic: if there are at least three hours of electricity at night, they might as well be used to illuminate streets whose dangers the author describes bluntly: "in Alamar, when it's not an assault, it's a murder, if not a theft of an electric motorcycle or from someone's house, and no one saw anything."
The diagnosis regarding the tower is devastating. "There’s never any internet connection, and you can even see the 4G symbols, but it’s just a façade; it doesn’t exist. And there we go, like fools, toggling airplane mode on and off 80 times, it’s like we’re at an airport," he wrote, describing the desperate ritual of the neighbors every time the power comes back.
The most serious issue is the emergency dimension of the problem. "Let’s suppose I’m riding my motorcycle and I get mugged by Hanoi [...] and I have to call the police: just trying to communicate by dialing 106 costs me 3 to 4 hours, not to mention the additional 15 hours for the police to arrive. By that time, the thief may have gotten home, taken apart the motorcycle, sold it for parts, and that’s when I’m going to hear the 'ORDENE' from the PNR operator on my phone."
And this is not an unfounded exaggeration: according to reports from July 22, two 19-year-old young men died in a violent attack in Hanói Park, area 6 of Alamar.
Regarding ETECSA, the verdict is equally swift: "The people of ETECSA in Alamar, what are they up to? What are you doing? If I were you, I'd take over the telephone center there in Zone 6, next to the cinema, and set up a food MIPYME, after all...".
The neighbors who commented confirmed that the collapse goes beyond the power outages: one internet user reported that the cables from the tower on 5th Avenue were stolen with no solution in sight; another reported that the electric company removed the three transformers that supplied the Falcón tower, leaving it inoperable "neither with power nor without power." The one in zone 23, in front of the gym, faced a similar fate: "they stole everything months ago, even the door."
The phenomenon overwhelms Alamar. ETECSA has acknowledged that power outages leave more than 45% of mobile radio bases and over 55% of telecommunications cabinets across the country out of service, with systematic theft of infrastructure documented in Camagüey, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, and other provinces this year.
The author also highlights the lack of drinking water and the overflow of sewage—"Alamar is the Venice of Cuba," he ironically remarks—along with the official promises regarding the situation. The closing delivers the sharpest jab at the prime minister: "Our charismatic and beloved Prime Minister [Manuel] Marrero said that we will be better off by January. There are 70 days left for all these problems to be solved. I can only imagine that the Council of State has summoned or resurrected some magician like Houdini to perform magic that resolves all the issues."
The neighbors closed the circle with the same bitterness: "Your satire is striking and true, what we don't know is how much longer we can endure."
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