Neglected Cuban Towns Without Electricity or Potable Water
By Laura Roque Valero (El Toque)
HAVANA TIMES – Life in Cuba’s towns is fading away. A set of photographs from San Antonio de Cabezas, in the municipality of Union de Reyes, Matanzas, bears witness to the decline. The streets show barely any movement: few people and no vehicles appear in public. A park without people, buildings without paint. The monotony of nothingness.
The images reached El Toque through private messaging, accompanied by an even more devastating message that began: “A call for help from the residents of San Antonio de Cabezas.”
The sender claims that in San Antonio they are living in a humanitarian crisis, which is rapidly worsening due to the “total neglect” of the authorities. They have neither drinking water nor electricity.
“While the number of protected circuits in the province grows (some without justification, like the governor’s circuit), and in other provinces there is scheduling and at least some information, the abused circuits in Matanzas only get electricity a couple of hours a day. For us there is no schedule, no useful information at all,” the message says.
They clarify that when they have two or three hours of electricity a day, they consider it a “good situation,” because on other days not even that. They don’t know exactly when power will return, and during the brief periods they do have service, the voltage fluctuates or cuts out—sometimes briefly, other times for longer. These ups and downs stress out residents and make any activity difficult.
The government’s abandonment is worsened by more than two months without drinking water. The pumping equipment breaks down frequently and no one seems to intend to repair it. “Right now, they have left us abandoned; they don’t come to fix anything and haven’t even sent a water truck so people can survive in some miserable way,” the person says.
They mention two ways of getting water: collecting rainwater or paying for a water truck (cistern trucks) at “astronomical prices.” According to reports from the independent press, in some places in Cuba a tanker can cost up to 25,000 pesos.
“Now we also have an outbreak of an unknown disease, which will surely be the first of many to come due to the terrible sanitary conditions we are living in,” they lament.
The message concludes by saying its purpose is to make the crisis visible as a way to pressure local authorities to shake off their habitual indifference, stop worrying only about their personal issues, and serve the people. “Every sick person and every death caused by this health crisis will be their responsibility,” they sentence.
San Germán: Another Town, the Same Story
When on September 10, 2025, the National Electro-Energy System collapsed for the fifth time in less than a year, the residents of San German, in the Holguín municipality of Urbano Noris, had already been more than twelve days without electricity. Neither the local delegate, nor the head of the People’s Council, nor any other local authority has managed a solution.
“The electric company is nowhere to be found. They say they don’t have a vehicle to come fix the breakdown. How long is this going to last?” a resident told elTOQUE.
When the transformer broke, they were told that the affected homes would be connected to another transformer to restore service. To this day, that hasn’t happened. “No one looks out for the needs of the people,” the complainant stresses. “We have infants, and they always give the same excuse, but we remain in the dark.”
The breakdown of the transformer also worsened access to drinking water. Three years of trying to stockpile water, and still no government response to restore the pumping system, which has also stopped working.
Other Towns Across Cuba Suffer the Same Neglect
In August 2025, a woman concerned for her family wrote to our outlet to report that, in the place where her 60-year-old sick sister lives in Santiago de Cuba, residents had been waiting more than 15 days for the local government to fulfill its promise to supply water to the block through cistern trucks.
The lack of water extends across the country. In August 2025, the state-run press reported that more than 35,600 residents in the province of Sancti Spíritus had no access to running water, and the State was attempting to supply them via trucks.
According to data from the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources, in 2024 more than 600,000 residents in Cuba received water that way. Eighty percent of those customers had to wait more than 15 days to get service.
The absence of electricity doesn’t only affect water supply. Another message to El Toque begins with the warning: “I am extremely worried.” The user explains that when Zaza del Medio, a small town in Taguasco, Sancti Spíritus, loses electricity — which can last more than eight hours a day — Internet connectivity and mobile phone coverage also go down, while landlines stop working.
“This is extremely stressful and dangerous because we don’t know about our children during those hours, and the town is cut off, unable to call an ambulance or a fire truck,” the affected resident shares.
In Cuba’s towns, a deeper crisis is brewing, marked by disconnection and abandonment. Basic services do not reach these territories, nor does state interest. No one listens, no one solves anything.
First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.