Havana Today

Note.  I haven’t been to Cuba.  The three main sources for the information here comes from Reuters, The New York Times, and the Miami Herald.  Any mistakes are solely mine.

People often ask what living conditions in Havana are like today.  The answer is that Havana remains a functioning capital city—one with electricity, water, food markets, buses, taxis, apartment buildings, schools, and all of the normal civic furniture one expects to find in a metropolis.  The trick is that many of these things operate on something closer to a suggestion than a guarantee.  In modern Havana, daily life tends to be organized less by the clock than by the moment: when the power happens to be on, when the water happens to be flowing, when the bus happens to appear, or when the bread truck happens to arrive.

This is not to say that Havana has descended into some cinematic wasteland where residents barter shotgun shells for canned beans.  The city still hums along.  People go to work, children go to school, and tourists still sip mojitos while admiring pastel facades and 1950s Chevrolets.  But behind that postcard image lies a city where infrastructure is aging, supplies are inconsistent, and the art of improvisation has become the chief civic virtue.

One quick note on tourism.  Yes, Cuba is still getting visitor (mostly Canadians and Europeans), proving once again that human optimism can survive almost anything—including airline schedules, food shortages, and municipal plumbing.  But the trade is running on four bald tires.  Tourist numbers are down roughly 60 percent from the pre-pandemic days and are off about 20 percent from last year alone, which is less a slump than a trapdoor.

Part of the problem is the broader economic collapse, which tends to put a damper on the whole “tropical getaway” pitch.  Part of it may also be the result of the Havana sewage system’s coming apart like a Soviet tractor during harvest.  The city is dumping some 48,000 cubic meters of raw sewage into the bay every day, with some of that cheerful brew making its way onto the beaches.  Add in the fact that over half of Havana is no longer properly connected to the sewer system, and suddenly, the tourism brochure’s promises of sun, surf, and Old World charm begin to sound less like a vacation and more like a gastrointestinal dare.

Let us begin the day.

Morning in Havana starts with a game of utilities roulette.  Residents wake up and check the two most important questions of the day: Is the electricity on? Is there water? These are not rhetorical questions because, although  city does have electrical and water systems, both operate with a degree of reliability that would make an American utility executive wake up screaming in the night.

If the power stayed on overnight, the refrigerator is still cold and the phone still has a charge.  If not, breakfast planning becomes an exercise in improvisation.  Electricity outages have become common enough that many households instinctively keep candles, battery lights, and portable chargers ready.  Fans stopping in a tropical climate is not a trivial inconvenience.

Closely related to electricity is the equally thrilling question: Is there water? Havana does have a municipal water system with pipes, pumps, and reservoirs.  The challenge is that pumping water requires electricity and fuel, both of which have been in short supply.  As a result, water sometimes arrives on a schedule best described as “when circumstances permit.” Experienced residents respond by keeping containers, buckets, and tanks ready.  When water appears in the pipes, it is greeted the way desert travelers greet an oasis—fill everything you own before it disappears again.

Breakfast in Havana is less about culinary inspiration and more about logistics.  Food exists in the city, and markets sell it, but acquiring it often involves patience, creativity, and a willingness to stand in line long enough to form friendships.  Bread lines are a common morning sight.  Prices have risen sharply, and certain items appear sporadically.  The result is that breakfast tends to be whatever combination of bread, fruit, eggs, or coffee happens to be obtainable that week.

Then comes the next great adventure: transportation.

Havana possesses buses, taxis, shared cars, bicycles, and the occasional heroic Soviet-era vehicle that refuses to retire.  In theory, these form a transportation network.  In practice, fuel shortages have turned movement around the city into something resembling an improvisational sport.  Bus routes run but may be crowded or delayed.  Taxi rides cost more than they once did.  And bicycles—long neglected relics of earlier decades—have returned to fashion not so much as recreation as a necessity. 

If a Havana resident once drove to work, he may now ride a bicycle.  If he once rode a bus, he may now share a taxi with strangers.  And if all else fails, he walks, because Havana is still a city where many destinations are reachable on foot—assuming the sidewalks cooperate.

The workday proceeds under similar conditions.  Offices open, shops operate, and the city continues to produce and sell goods.  But everything functions with a background awareness that the electricity might vanish, supplies might run out, and transportation might falter.

A shopkeeper may spend part of the day selling merchandise and the rest trying to locate more of it.  A mechanic might devote equal time to repairing engines and hunting spare parts.  The rhythm of work is therefore less about efficiency and more about adaptability.

Meanwhile, the city’s sanitation system is conducting its own experiment in endurance.  Havana still collects garbage, but fuel shortages have reduced the number of operating garbage trucks from over 200 to fewer than 50.  When fewer trucks run, trash piles accumulate in corners and along sidewalks.  It is not exactly the glamorous Havana of tourist posters.

Speaking of the city, itself, we must address the matter of buildings.

Havana’s architecture is beautiful—faded colonial mansions, art deco apartments, and ornate balconies that look like something from a film set.  Unfortunately, beauty does not guarantee structural stability.  Much of the housing stock is old and poorly maintained.  Cracked plaster, leaking roofs, moldy walls, and sagging staircases are not unusual.  The homes of Havana are a metaphor for life in Cuba:  beautiful façades hiding decay and corruption.

Every so often, a building collapses.  Sometimes it is a partial collapse, sometimes a total one.  Due to poor maintenance, the lack of building materials and amateur construction efforts to create new apartments by putting doorways through load bearing walls, building collapses happen often enough that residents view them with grim familiarity.  Living in certain older structures requires keeping a skeptical eye on the ceiling during heavy rainstorms.

Housing anxiety is, therefore, a quiet but constant part of life in some neighborhoods.  People patch walls, reinforce beams, and hope the next rainy season will be gentle.

Afternoons bring more of the same juggling act.  A Havana resident might spend the midday hours running errands—buying food if it appears, repairing a bicycle, or checking whether a store has received new supplies.  Lines form quickly whenever scarce goods arrive, and joining a line without quite knowing what is being sold is a time-honored tradition.

The economic landscape has shifted noticeably in recent years.  Private businesses and informal markets have become increasingly important sources of food and household goods.  Items may be easier to find in these markets, but they often come with higher prices.  In short, goods exist—but they sometimes require more money than many households would prefer to spend.

The city’s digital life adds another layer of complexity.

Yes, Havana has cell phone service.  People carry smartphones and use them regularly.  The entire system runs through the state telecommunications company, which provides voice service, text messaging, and mobile data.

Internet access also exists and is widely used.  People message friends, read news, and scroll social media like everyone else in the modern world.  The difference lies in cost and speed.  Mobile data plans can be expensive relative to average Cuban wages, and connectivity is sometimes slow or disrupted by the same infrastructure problems affecting electricity.

So, Havana residents do have internet—but they tend to use it carefully, stretching their data allowances the way previous generations stretched ration coupons.  Users also have to remember that both the internet and cell phones are run by the state and are both monitored and censored.

Television is simpler.  The city receives a modest lineup of state-run channels—roughly eight major ones.  These include national channels like Cubavisión and Tele Rebelde, educational channels, a news channel, and a local Havana station.  It is not exactly the American universe of hundreds of cable channels, but it provides official government news, sports, educational programming, and entertainment.

Then comes evening.

Dinner preparation again depends on the electrical grid.  If the lights remain on, families cook normally.  If the power disappears, dinner becomes an exercise in candlelight and creative cuisine.  Refrigerators warm, fans stop spinning, and people drift outside to balconies and sidewalks to escape the heat.

Oddly enough, blackouts sometimes produce the most social moments of the day.  Without televisions or internet, neighbors gather outdoors and talk.  Rumors about the electrical grid circulate like weather forecasts.  Someone inevitably predicts that power will return “in twenty minutes,” a statement delivered with absolute confidence and very little supporting evidence.

Night in Havana often reveals another contrast.  Tourist hotels and certain central districts sometimes run generators during blackouts.  Their windows glow while surrounding neighborhoods sit in darkness.  Visitors continue drinking cocktails under electric lights while residents a few blocks away wait for the grid to recover.

Finally the electricity returns, at least most days, sometimes late at night.  Phones charge, refrigerators hum back to life, and fans resume their gentle rotation.

And tomorrow morning, the cycle begins again: check the lights, check the water, check the market, check the bus schedule.

Havana today is not a city without utilities, food, or transportation.  All those things exist.  The difference is that they operate intermittently and unpredictably.  But, every week, the services seem to decline just a little, forcing people to adapt just a little more, compromise again, with the certain knowledge that circumstances are unlikely to improve.

The result is a culture built on patience, ingenuity, and humor.  People repair appliances that would be thrown away elsewhere, ride bicycles through streets lined with vintage cars, and keep spare buckets ready for the next water interruption.

In short, Havana remains very much alive—colorful, chaotic, and stubbornly resilient.  The city is neither the tropical paradise sometimes imagined by tourists nor the apocalyptic ruin sometimes portrayed by critics.  It is something more complicated: a capital where infrastructure creaks, shortages appear and vanish, and ordinary citizens navigate daily life with a mixture of patience, ingenuity, and dark humor.  Somehow.

And tomorrow morning, when the alarm clock doesn’t ring (the electricity never came back on overnight) the whole adventure begins again.