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Díaz-Canel calls six months without water in a Havana neighborhood an institutional failure
On November 4 the Cuban president devoted the radio programme Criterio Compartido to the water supply and addressed the case of a resident of Mantilla, in Arroyo Naranjo, who had gone more than six months without service, saying institutional silence cannot be justified. The water authority put the number of people with disrupted piped supply at 2,681,770.
The fourth edition of Criterio Compartido, broadcast on November 4 by Radio Rebelde with the participation of Communist Party first secretary and president Miguel Díaz-Canel, was devoted to the water supply. He acknowledged that the problem “is real, it is serious and it is complex” and said: “They are exercising their right to complain and we have the duty to listen to them with humility and to answer them with deeds and not with rhetoric,” in remarks translated by Yamacoa.
One of the cases discussed was that of a resident of Mantilla, in Arroyo Naranjo, who described more than six months without the service she used to have and without an answer from the offices she turned to. Díaz-Canel said the inquiry found problems with the valves and that a technical fix could have been carried out within hours. He called those six months of silence an institutional failure: “There may be technical complexity, but the silence cannot be justified.”
On the same programme, the president of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INRH), Antonio Rodríguez, said that at dawn the previous day 2,681,770 inhabitants had disruptions in piped supply. Some 66% of those disruptions were linked to electricity and 25% to pumping equipment. In Havana the reported figure was 536,000 people.
Among the causes, Díaz-Canel pointed to ageing networks, investment and maintenance that could not be carried out on the needed scale, “the consequences of the blockade” and the lack of fuel and power to keep pumping stations running. He added that those external causes will not serve as an excuse: “Nor are we going to stop at external causes to justify the lack of an institutional response.” On water trucks he said: “With tanker trucks we are not going to solve the problem, the truck helps us ease it.”
Two days earlier, on November 2, women in Old Havana, some with their children, blocked a street to demand the service be restored after more than 30 days without regular supply, according to Infobae. After the blockade the authorities sent a tanker truck, but residents still have no stable solution and do not know when piped water will return.
Those complaints are made under surveillance. At a regional hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held on October 27, the director of Justicia 11J, Camila Rodríguez, warned of short-term detentions, administrative proceedings and criminal cases against women who took part in protests, and cautioned that cases are underreported because families' fear keeps them from reaching independent organisations. At that hearing, Justicia 11J said it had recorded more than 880 public protests in Cuba during 2026.
Sources: Cubadebate · Infobae · Serie Yamacoa: Población efectiva de Cuba (ONEI) · Cubadebate
Data updated: 2026-11-04T16:15:00.000Z