For more than two weeks now, the pump that serves several apartment blocks and that extracts water from the cistern and pumps it into the tanks stopped working.
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 17 June 2025 — At Los Olivos 3, in Sancti Spíritus, the days begin and end with the same sound: the dull thud of buckets, the murmur of complaints, and the squeak of wheelbarrows. In buildings numbered 14 through 24, daily life has become an endurance race since the pump that draws water from the cistern and pumps it into the tanks stopped working more than two weeks ago.
The story is as old as the state’s lack of interest. “We went to the Aqueduct, to the Physical Planning Department, and then to the government,” says a resident who asked not to be identified, fearing retaliation. “At every office, every time, they gave us the same response: evasive answers, excuses, that they don’t have parts, that there’s no turbine.”
“At every office, they gave us the same response: evasive answers, excuses, that they don’t have parts, that there’s no turbine.”
The institutional apathy is evident in the proposal they finally received from the Party: that the residents meet and pay a private individual to repair the pump. “At the moment, they have no way to solve the problem,” they said. And so, with a terse phrase, they placed the weight of public responsibility on the weary shoulders of a community barely able to cope.
Multi-family buildings like those at Los Olivos were a testament to socialist urban planning: identical concrete blocks that promised dignity and community. But over time, like so many other pillars of the Cuban model, these buildings have crumbled not only physically but also in terms of institutional support. Pipes collapse, roofs leak, and water pumps break without anyone noticing.
The State is increasingly neglecting its affairs and responsibilities. On the one hand, they maintain control, prohibiting everything from the unauthorized installation of railings in hallways to the establishment of private businesses in common areas, but they no longer fulfill their obligations to public infrastructure: facades, water pumps, electrical outlets, elevators (the few that exist), and so on.
The Los Olivos case is not unique. It is repeated in different parts of the country, where residents must raise money, seek informal solutions, and hire makeshift mechanics to maintain what should be part of the basic functioning of a model that calls itself “socialist,” only for what suits it. The de facto privatization of public services in the hands of those affected has become the rule rather than the exception.
In Cuba, leftist solutions have been institutionalized under the shadow of an apparatus that claims to own the system but refuses to take responsibility for its failures. Residents organize, collect, and arrange for repairs, while officials manage rhetoric and excuses.
“What happens in homes where there are people who are bedridden, have limited mobility, or who depend on a neighbor to bring up a bucket of water for them?”
The water crisis also affects hygiene, nutrition, and health. “What happens to homes where there are people who are bedridden, have limited mobility, or depend on a neighbor to bring up a bucket of water for them?” another resident asks. And this, day after day, adds to the other problems: long lines, power outages, limited transportation, high prices, lack of medicine, as well as the increase in violence and drug use.
Others are still debating how to organize the collections, as not everyone can contribute. If there are people who don’t even have enough bread, how can you ask them for money for a pump that the state should be fixing? The photos show what the official reports don’t. They show a desperate community: men and women dragging buckets, clashes that create sparks between neighbors, children playing in stagnant puddles as if they don’t yet understand that what they’re experiencing isn’t normal, even though it has already become routine.
This is also the story of resignation disguised as “creative resistance,” of how the population has been educated to “figure things out,” to “fend for themselves,” to accept as natural what would otherwise lead to resignation.
Meanwhile, the residents of Los Olivos 3 continue to gather, buckets in hand, hoping that this time there will be pressure, even if only in the pipes. Because the other pressure, the social pressure, has long since dissipated among the broken hallways of the forgotten buildings.
____________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
