HAVANA, Cuba.- I agree with what my colleague Ana León said in her work for this media “There are no garbage dumps in Havana: Havana is a garbage dump,” Posted a few days ago. Although the topic is repeated, I will expand on the information provided by her with a situation that unfortunately is no longer unusual in the capital: in the Mantilla neighborhood, Arroyo Naranjo municipality, it is no longer the corners that are invaded by garbage, but entire streets.
Fourth and Sixth streets, in the stretches between Progreso and Delgado, are completely blocked to traffic, both vehicles and pedestrians, due to the waste that covers more than 50 meters. To cross the road, one must go around the dump and the mud that surrounds it.
Obviously, the rubbish has not been collected for a long time. The day they decide to do it, they will have to come with several trucks, because there are several tons to be removed.
In some places, the waste almost reaches the houses, either from the front or the side. The stench can be felt from afar.
As a result of this situation, residents of the area are at risk of contracting viruses and diseases that invade the country today.
I asked a neighbor who was sitting on the sidewalk at the corner of Fourth and Progreso how it was possible to live in a place like that and if the authorities were aware of the problem, and the man responded with resignation: “Everyone knows about this and they do nothing.”
About 200 meters away, behind the old Ruta 4 bus stop, on the corner of Progreso and Primera streets, there is a similar mess. The rubbish extends more than 50 meters on each side, and if action is not taken soon, the intersection will be blocked at both points at any moment.
Seeing this situation, I remembered what garbage collection in Havana was like several decades ago. It was an almost manual process, always done at night. A truck would pass by, with two or three men on the bed, and two or three more on the street beside them, who with astonishing skill would pick up the containers with the garbage that the neighbors took out of their houses and throw them to those who were in the truck, who would empty them and return them to the person below to put them back at the door of each house.
To warn that the garbage truck was approaching, they would hit the sides of the truck with a rebar and shout: “garbage.” This way of warning gave rise to a cha-cha-cha which became very popular and whose lyrics said: “Hide, here comes the garbage.”
In the 1960s, Czech trucks were used to collect rubbish, with a collection system attached to medium-sized containers placed on street corners. But this system did not last long, as the trucks broke down and the necessary spare parts were not purchased.
Since then and up to the present day, different systems have been experimented with, thanks to donations of Japanese and Chinese vehicles that, in a mechanized way, use large collection tanks, which were first made of metal and are now made of plastic. But these means have also been insufficient to provide the service, not only due to the lack of spare parts, but also because there are people who steal the containers to use the wheels and to make plastic objects that are then sold by the self-employed in the markets or on the public streets.
