14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, November 24, 2023 — The residents of Luyanó could not believe their eyes this Friday morning: the mammoth garbage dumps that had been accumulating for weeks in various corners of the Havana – and that only a day ago has been reported by 14ymedio reported – had disappeared as if by magic.
The four containers on the corner of Melones and the Luyanó road, sunk this Thursday in a sea of waste, are now lined up and clean. With the plague at an acceptable level – although the stench of several weeks does not go away overnight – the worker at the Cuban Post Office kiosk could afford to come to work without closing the window tightly.
The “royal garbage dump” of Luyanó, at Rodríguez and Reforma, was reduced to a minor category: where there was once a powerful landfill, now there is a humble garbage dump, although the leones [lions] – employees recruited by Communal Services for their garbage trucks – left the containers battered and lying on the sidewalk.
“How afraid they are of the internet,” says a neighbor, alluding to the warning that circulated days ago on a Facebook group of residents in the Havana neighborhood
But not everything is coming up roses in Luyanó, “Cuba’s garbage capital,” as its neighbors described it, resignedly. On Thursday, the corner of Luyanó and Luco was full of papers, cans and puddles of waste, and now what was hidden under several layers of filth has been revealed. “Look how the garbage ate up the sidewalk,” say those who can see the foundations of the house, after Community Services “scraped” the street.
“How afraid they are of the internet,” says a neighbor, alluding to the warning that circulated days ago in a Facebook group of residents in the Havana neighborhood. “Luyanó is going to become a giant bonfire,” they warned, if the Government did not collect the garbage soon.
But there is no rest. This Friday, Luyanó woke up face to face with a new unpleasantness: a penetrating smell of gas that runs along the road, moves through the alleys and knocks on the neighbors’ doors. The first complaints are already on the networks, and in the mouths of Havana residents: “When it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
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