The Almendares River – from Havana’s Lung to Open-Air Sewer
Industrial pollution, fecal contamination, and neglect mark day-to-day life for those who live in “El Fanguito,” beside the Almendares River.
HAVANA TIMES – The hot humid Havana heat presses down, and when the thermometer passes 30 C (85 F), the idea of taking a dip immediately comes to mind. However, the beaches are far from the city center and the city’s main river, the Almendares, is so polluted that bathing there is unthinkable. The waterway snakes through the capital city, dragging garbage and exuding a foul smell. To dream of swimming in its waters seems an ever more distant fantasy.
A couple pause on the bridge that connects El Vedado with the municipality of Playa, to look at the quiet, turbid waters going by several feet below. The river’s aspect is depressing. Passers-by hasten their pace to escape the foul smell that invades the zone – a mix of decomposing garbage and sewer waste.
“Don’t even sit down on the benches,” a young man in the Almendares Park, who’s gone down to the riverbank, counsels me. Although the area could be an ideal space for family outings, nowadays it repels more than it attracts. “It’s very dirty, and I’d be scared to rent a rowboat here. If you fall in that water, you’ll be heading right to the hospital,” he sums it up.
The garbage piles up on the shore: a broken doll, juice boxes, plastics, even an old mattress. “This should be Havana’s lung, but what you have is tuberculosis,” Dayris says ironically. She’s from the adjoining neighborhood and is taking her four-year-old to the playground under the bridge. “I keep him far away from the river – it’s a hazard.”
When the river rises, it leaves behind the waste products that come from the lack of an efficient cleaning system: refuse from the houses around it, and the religious offerings that visitors have thrown in from the bridge. Despite that, some continue using the park, because it’s nearby and offers an open space amid the small, overheated houses. “At least there are trees here, and my son can run, but the conditions are terrible,” Dayris laments.
The kids play, but no one dares to go near the water. The industrial and residential discharge has turned the Almendares into a focus of infection. And when the rains come and the river rises, its polluted waters invade the surrounding houses.
In El Fanguito, a poor neighborhood that has sprung up along its banks, some kids are splashing in the mud near their improvised wooden houses. Marta, a neighbor from the zone, sits in the shade of a tree with a jar of half-frozen water, trying to escape the heat inside her zinc roof house. To her, the bad smells from the river are just one of the many problems of living in this slum, slapped together out of necessity.
El Fanguito has filled with internal migrants who haven’t managed to obtain an identity card with a Havana address, despite years of residency. They live on the margins of society: without a ration card, without access to formal employment, dependent on the black market and the philosophy of “find a way.” “We haven’t had any streetlights here for over four years,” Marta complains, gazing with envy at the other side of the river, where there are modern buildings with brightly lit penthouses.
The government projects to clean up the Almendares “haven’t been enough,” states Marta, while swatting away the mosquitos and flies that buzz around her. Another neighbor remarks: “That smell sticks to your clothes, your hair. I don’t let my grandchildren get near that river for anything in the world.”
Studies confirm what Havana residents know from experience. Water samples taken in 2021 revealed the alarming state of the river: little oxygen, high concentrations of lead and zinc, excessive ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, phosphates and an abundance of E-coli bacteria.
Higher up, in the zone of Puentes Grandes, almost no one stops to look at the river. “If anyone does so, it’s to throw in an offering,” a neighbor comments. He himself, although he sweats it out in his house without electricity, has no plans to take a dip. “You’d have to be crazy.”
Imagine a Havana where the Almendares is a clean river, with families all around it, fishermen casting nets, and children playing on the banks? It sounds like “something from a movie,” he sighs with resignation.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.