Garbage and water shortages, the most recent daily difficulties that overwhelm Cubans

Garbage dumps on corners and a severe water shortage in homes have become the most recent problems in a long list of daily difficulties that Cubans must face on the island, where the crisis of recent years has worsened.

“I feel bad, sincerely bad,” Elsa Infante, a 74-year-old retiree, told The Associated Press with tears in her eyes in an example of the discouragement that is permeating the people. She is a resident of the Villa Panamericana neighborhood, one of the many areas of the Cuban capital where garbage piles up, fills with flies and can become a source of disease.

“If I could go to a mountain near a river I would go,” added Infante when also asked about the scarcity of water. “I lived in the countryside and I never saw the situation I am experiencing, a terrible situation.”

The lack of collection of solid waste and a serious shortage of vital liquid in recent weeks is reaching critical points and adds to a chain of daily setbacks that have continued in recent years, such as blackouts, lack of fuel and food, inefficient transportation or non-existent medicines along with high prices.

Many citizens compared what they are experiencing with one of the hardest moments on the island: the so-called special period of profound deprivation that occurred in the early 1990s when the Caribbean nation was left without the crucial economic support of its main partner—the Union. Soviet—after its collapse.

“From the last six months to this point we are in a worse situation than the years of the special period and COVID,” Cuban economist Omar Everleny Pérez, professor at several foreign universities, considered in an interview with AP. “Even then the basic basket was guaranteed, people were sure that on the first of each month they had a few products, but there were some: chicken, hot dogs, beans were distributed.”

“There is (now) no area related to social issues that is not failing extraordinarily. There is no way to grab it, that is, there is a lack of water, electricity, garbage increases, doctors are there but they do not have medicine, food, citizen security… there is unrest in the population,” Pérez considered.

According to a report offered in July by Servicios Comunales – the state company that collects garbage – Havana, the largest city with the largest population in the country, produces 30,108 cubic meters of solid waste per day, about 7,000 cubic meters more than in the same period of the previous year.

On the other hand, only 57% of the collection equipment is working due to mechanical damage and lack of spare parts in dump trucks and mini loaders, among others, the authorities explained.

“You can go to the corner and right now (the container) is overflowing, wherever you want it is a garbage dump,” said another resident of the Pan American Village, Aymé Rodríguez.

An AP tour of several capital neighborhoods such as Centro Habana, Old Havana – one of the tourist areas par excellence in the Cuban capital -, Diez de Octubre, La Lisa or Lawton showed similar landfills.

Rodríguez, an independent worker whose home is adjacent to that of the retired Infante, said that the lack of water is added to the garbage problem. He assured that only one tanker truck was sent to the neighborhood recently because there were some children with suspected hepatitis and oropouche fever, which is caused by mosquitoes and is exacerbated by heat and lack of hygiene.

They had been without a liquid supply for 15 days, carrying buckets from other neighbors or sharing among themselves.

Many people reported having to ration the use of water in the kitchen or flushing the bathrooms, postponing washing clothes or cleaning their homes in general.

Other areas of the capital, such as Vedado or San Miguel del Padrón, reported not having water for 10 days.

According to information provided by José Antonio Hernández, of the Water and Sanitation Business Group, at the beginning of the month, when the issue became critical in Havana, some 600,000 people throughout the country suffered from water shortages also due to breaks in water equipment. distribution and lack of fuel for pumping.

In Havana alone there were more than 130,000 users without water. The provinces of Santiago, Holguín—in the east—and Villa Clara—in the center—also faced the shortage.

Both the lack of water and the accumulation of garbage caused complaints, especially on social networks, and sporadically, specific street protests. However, there were no reported demonstrations such as those caused by the power outages in July 2021 – considered the largest in decades and which ended with one person dead and hundreds arrested – or those in October 2022 and last March.

The fear of many is that these problems will further deteriorate the health situation in the communities. Health authorities recognized the presence in various areas of the capital and the rest of the island of diseases such as dengue, Zika, oropouche – all three caused by vectors – and leptospira, transmitted by mice.

The hardships on the island began to be felt more strongly with COVID-19, as the consequences of the stoppage due to the pandemic, a financial reform plan – including a monetary unification that unleashed an inflationary process – were mixed, as well as the increase in United States sanctions sponsored by the then government of President Donald Trump that were not modified by his successor Joe Biden.

A report to the UN presented this month indicated that the Caribbean nation’s losses due to the North American embargo were about $5 billion annually in the period from March 2023 to February 2024.

At a macroeconomic level, government figures indicated that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Cuba fell 11% in 2020 and barely grew 1.3% in 2021 and 2% in 2022, to contract again by 2% in 2023. While inflation official was 70% in 2021, 39% in 2022 and 30% in 2023; although observers indicated that these numbers are conservative with respect to the real deterioration of purchasing power.

In this context, emigration skyrocketed.

The perception in the streets is that the crisis is possibly equal to or worse than the so-called special period when between 1990 and 1993 the GDP fell 35% after the loss of support from the Soviet bloc. It was a period of great scarcity in which the nutrition of Cubans deteriorated like never before.

More than half a dozen people interviewed by AP agreed that politically, the difference between that crisis and this one is probably the absence of the leadership and charisma of the late President Fidel Castro, the lack of adequate responses and hope for a quick improvement.

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