Women Block a Street in Regla, Havana Over Lack of Water
As usually happens when people protest, within minutes, uniformed police and plainclothes agents began arriving on the block.
By Darío Hernçandez (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – A dozen women blocked a street in the Havana municipality of Regla on Friday afternoon to protest the lack of water. Residents of Martí Street, between Pereira and November 27, stopped traffic using buckets, chairs, and empty containers after almost a month without water service, as 14ymedio confirmed on site.
“Water only comes here only by tanker truck,” said a woman from the area, who explained that even those trucks don’t arrive regularly. “One of those women is the mother of a July 11, 2021, protester,” she added, referring to one of the participants. Within minutes, uniformed police and plainclothes agents began to appear on the block.
In a video shared on social media, a strong police presence can be seen, along with an officer arguing with one of the women protesters. “You should’ve gone to the Government offices right there,” the officer scolds the woman, reproaching her for leaving the institution’s headquarters before being attended to.
Blocking streets—whether to protest the poor condition of housing or to denounce the lack of water supply—has become more frequent in Cuba in recent years. In Havana, it’s now common to see groups of people cutting off traffic to demand anything from solutions to housing problems to the arrival of a water truck to ease shortages.
At the end of September, a group of women blocked Monte Street, just a few meters from Fraternity Park. The demonstration was led by Magalys Anglada Mena, daughter of US-based activist Ariadna Mena Rubio. Moments later, a water truck arrived at the scene escorted by police. Anglada later received a police summons.
The protest resembled one that took place nearly two years earlier, staged by other mothers nearby and for the same reason—evidence of the capital’s worsening water crisis, which has intensified in recent weeks and now affects almost every Havana municipality.
Last July, also in Regla, about ten women and their children blocked traffic on Calzada Vieja between C and D Streets, protesting the fact that no water had reached their neighborhood for nearly four months. After fruitless complaints and bureaucratic paperwork, the women from Reparto Unión decided to act.
Under the blazing sun—with temperatures in Havana that day exceeding 30 degrees Celsius (86°F)—the women expressed outrage over a problem that affects every aspect of their lives, from cooking food and maintaining personal hygiene to caring for small children and the elderly.
Shortly after the protest began, a tanker truck arrived so that residents could fill their containers, an arrival that helped disperse the demonstration and allowed vehicle traffic to resume on the street.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.