Waste piles up in Cuba as US-imposed fuel blockade halts collection trucks

Cubans suffer under a US fuel blockade as President Donald Trump calls the Caribbean country a ‘failed nation’.

The United States-imposed fuel crisis in Cuba is also turning into a waste and health crisis, as many collection trucks have been left with empty fuel tanks, causing refuse to pile up on the streets of the capital, Havana, and other cities and towns.

Only 44 of Havana’s 106 rubbish trucks have been able to keep operating due to the fuel shortages, slowing rubbish collection, as waste piles up on Havana’s street corners, the Reuters news agency reported on Monday, citing state-run news outlet Cubadebate.

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Other towns are also seeing rubbish pile up, and residents have taken to social media to raise the alarm over the risk to public health, according to Reuters, citing Cuban media.

“It’s all over the city,” said Jose Ramon Cruz, a resident of Havana.

“It’s been ‌more than 10 days since a garbage truck came,” Cruz told Reuters.

The mounting rubbish crisis has added to the suffering on the tiny island-state, which US President Donald Trump described on Monday as a “failed nation”.

“Cuba is now a failed nation. They don’t even have jet fuels to get their aeroplanes to take off, they’re plugging up their runway,” Trump said.

“We’re talking to Cuba right now, and Marco Rubio is talking to Cuba right now, and they should absolutely make a deal. Because it’s really a humanitarian threat,” he said.

Cuba’s severe fuel crisis is a result of the US cutting off crucial oil supplies once imported from Venezuela. Washington’s move followed the bloody US military raid on Caracas and the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in early January.

US ‘violations of peace, security and international law’

Trump has been threatening Cuba and its leadership for months, and increased his choke-hold on the Cuban economy by recently passing an executive order that allows the US to impose crippling sanctions on any country that supplies oil to Cuba.

Asked if the US intended to remove the Cuban government, akin to Washington’s abduction of Maduro in Venezuela, Trump said: “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

Last month, Trump warned Cuban leaders to “make a deal, before it is too late”, without specifying the consequences of not meeting his demand.

Amid the crisis, Mexico sent two navy ships carrying 800 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Cuba last week, and on Monday, Spain said it would use the Spanish Agency for International Development and the United Nations to channel aid to Havana.

The announcement was made as Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Jose Manuel Albares met with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, in Madrid on Monday, where the pair “addressed the current situation in Cuba following the tightening of the embargo”.

In a post on X, Rodriguez criticised “the violations of peace, security and international law and the increasing hostility of the United States against Cuba”.

The Cuban foreign minister’s stop in Madrid followed visits to China and Vietnam, where he has sought support amid the US’s de facto blockade.

Russian tourists scramble to board a return flight to Russia at Jose Marti airport in Havana on Monday, as the fuel crisis forced several foreign airlines to suspend their flights, leaving many visitors stranded [Yamil Lage/AFP]