14ymedio, Juan Matos, Manzanillo (Granma Province), 31 December 2023 — It has been so many days since no one has collected the garbage on the streets of Manzanillo that the mountains of waste already have a uniform, ocher color. Due to the effect of the salt air and the indifference of the Community Services, the stench is ubiquitous in this coastal municipality in the province of Granma. The trucks that should clean the town are paralyzed due to lack of fuel or lie in a kind of scrap metal cemetery, while the landfills have become a den for countless vermin. The situation, resident agree, has reached an intolerable point.
“The trucks piled up in a Communal Services parking lot give the measure of how serious this is,” Niurka, a manzanillera, tells 14ymedio in front of her house where guano, cans and cardboard boxes accumulate. She’s right. The rusty chassis of buses and the trash collection vehicles are reminiscent of large insects, lined up with martial rigor. In front of this scrapyard is a sign: “I will be another soldier with the people. Fidel.”
The logic of the dump, analyzes Niurka, is simple: “without fuel the trucks will not start, and without trucks, the wave of garbage threatens to become a tsunami that covers everything.” Currently, only one vehicle works to collect waste from the second most important city in Granma.
Manzanillo, a town that has always been green and rural, sees the crushing effects of dirt
