EDITORIAL – What Is the Cuban State For? Everything Comes From Abroad Except Repression

EDITORIAL | A woman in Marianao is asking people abroad for money to buy water purification tablets. One day earlier, the Cuban state acknowledged that 2.68 million people are affected by problems with piped water supply. Nearly 68 years after 1959, everything that keeps a Cuban family going comes from abroad — except prison.

Facts and figures as of November 5, 2026.

On November 5, Cubanos por el Mundo published the story of Gisselle Ordóñez Milián, a resident of the Zamora neighborhood in Marianao who is asking for donations via Zelle, Bizum and PayPal to buy filters, ozonizers and water purification tablets for families who, she says, have gone more than six months without drinking water. This outlet has not been able to independently verify the campaign or where the funds go, but the scene speaks for itself: this is not a ministry, it is a neighbor asking abroad for what the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INRH) does not deliver.

Twenty-four hours earlier, Miguel Díaz-Canel had admitted on the radio that the water problem «is real, it is serious and it is complex» and that «we are not going to solve the problem with water trucks».

This is the position of Cubanos por el Mundo: after nearly seven decades, the Cuban state has handed over to the diaspora and to foreign governments every one of the functions it calls «conquests», and has kept only two for itself: repression and censorship. What follows are the facts, with their dates, on which that reading rests. Most of them were stated by the regime itself.

In this editorial

• What the Constitution promises and what the regime admits it does not deliver
• Water: a Marianao resident asks abroad for what the INRH does not provide
• Health: the mother buys the cast, the exile pays for the surgery
• Housing: 805,583 homes missing and 5,493 built in a year
• Who pays the bill: remittances, Chinese rice, Russian oil and dollars from Washington
• The only guarantee: repression and censorship
• Our position: what is the Cuban state for?

What the Constitution promises and what the regime admits it does not deliver

The Constitution proclaimed on April 10, 2019, leaves no room for interpretation. Article 71: «The right of all persons to adequate housing and a safe and healthy habitat is recognized». Article 72: «Public health is a right of all persons and it is the responsibility of the State to guarantee access». Article 76: «All persons have the right to water». Article 77: «All persons have the right to healthy and adequate food». It does not say the right is guaranteed by a cousin in Hialeah. It says the State guarantees it. (Quotations from the Constitution are translated by Cubanos por el Mundo.)

In the past week, that same State has put numbers on its own failure. Not the opposition, not the independent press: Díaz-Canel, the Minister of Public Health and the head of the INRH did, at official events and in front of official microphones. And some numbers need no admission because everyone can see them: in February 2026, public transportation in Havana fell to critical levels because of fuel rationing, and the power grid has collapsed completely eight times so far this year, most recently on September 18.

Constitutional right	What the regime admits	Who said it and when
Water (art. 76)	2,681,770 people affected in piped water supply; 536,000 in Havana	Antonio Rodríguez, president of the INRH, Radio Rebelde, November 4, 2026
Health (art. 72)	More than 90,000 people waiting for surgery; tens of thousands with radiotherapy, chemotherapy and dialysis affected; more than 34,000 pregnant women without all their treatments	Miguel Díaz-Canel, closing of the Party visit to the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap), October 29, 2026
Health (art. 72)	«Significant» shortage of essential medicines, consumables, reagents and equipment; «acute» problems with elevators, boilers, generators, laundries, water and medical transport	José Ángel Portal Miranda, Minister of Public Health, same meeting
Housing (art. 71)	Deficit of 805,583 homes: 407,219 to be built and 398,364 to be rehabilitated; 94,421 damaged by hurricanes and earthquakes still unrepaired	Ministry of Construction before the National Assembly, July 14, 2025
Electricity	Eight total collapses of the power grid in 2026; 66% of water outages are due to lack of electricity	Unión Eléctrica and INRH, 2026

Water: a Marianao resident asks abroad for what the INRH does not provide

On November 4, in the fourth broadcast of the radio program Criterio Compartido, the head of the INRH reported that at dawn the previous day 2,681,770 residents were affected in piped water supply: 66% because of electricity and 25% because of pumping equipment. Nine out of ten Cubans without water are without it because there is no power or because a pump has failed. Díaz-Canel called it an institutional failure that a woman in Mantilla went more than six months without an answer over a valve problem whose technical fix, he said, could have been done in hours, and he acknowledged: «Six months of silence cannot be justified by any technical complexity».

The solution he offered has a date: ten solar parks with 200 megawatts for three of Havana’s water sources, scheduled for completion in August 2027. Until then, water trucks. And Díaz-Canel himself admitted the limit: «We are not going to solve the problem with water trucks; the truck helps us mitigate». In the comments on the official transcript, a person from Holguín explained what «mitigate» means in their neighborhood, without piped water since April 4, 2025: buying private water trucks for more than 8,000 pesos on a salary of 5,000. Two days before the program, women in Old Havana blocked a street after more than 30 days without service.

While the State promises solar panels for 2027, Gisselle Ordóñez is asking for Zelle transfers to buy purification tablets today. And she is not the exception: in September, Deputy Health Minister Carilda Peña linked the rise in diarrhea and hepatitis to limitations in environmental sanitation. On September 4, the U.S. Embassy issued a health alert over a significant increase in diarrheal illness across Cuba, which it linked to the deterioration of water and energy infrastructure. The water a State does not purify, the family purifies — with money from abroad.

Health: the mother buys the cast, the exile pays for the surgery

On October 29, closing the Central Committee’s visit to the Ministry of Public Health, Díaz-Canel said that «more than 90,000 people are waiting for surgical operations, tens of thousands have had their radiotherapy, chemotherapy and dialysis treatments affected, and more than 34,000 pregnant women are not receiving all the treatments they need». Minister Portal Miranda acknowledged the population’s «justified dissatisfaction» and listed what is missing: essential medicines, consumables, reagents, high-tech equipment, elevators, boilers, generators, laundries, cold rooms and medical transport. His only consolation was that «no institution has been closed».

A hospital that is open but has no plaster, no reagents and no elevator is not a hospital: it is a building.

What those figures mean for a family was seen in the case of Yusimí, a mother from Cárdenas, reported on social media: on October 18 her son fractured both bones in one arm; at the hospital in Matanzas she was told there was no plaster for a cast and that she had to buy it «on the street». Days later, the false ceiling of the orthopedics ward at that same hospital came down between the beds; hospital management blames the wind and rain of October 30, while the person who reported it says the problem had been there for weeks.

Every glove, every syringe, every cast that a patient has to bring to the hospital is something Article 72 obliges the State to guarantee — and it is often paid for by a relative abroad.

When the illness is bigger than what fits in a package, the exile pays for the plane. Damir Ortiz Ramírez was 10 years old and had a tumor that Cuban specialists declared inoperable. His mother asked for help in January 2025; the community raised more than $45,000 in less than 24 hours; the boy arrived in Miami on March 12, 2025, on a humanitarian visa and died at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital on April 5. There was no ministry on that trip. There were Cubans abroad.

The paradox is that the same State that has no plaster exports doctors. Minister Portal Miranda acknowledged as much on October 29 with unintended frankness: in the same breath in which he complained about sanctions on the entities that export medical services, he admitted that the «drastic decrease in income» «has had a severe impact» on the availability of medicines and supplies. Put plainly: Cubans’ medicines depend on renting out their doctors abroad.

According to the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report published on October 8, 2026, Cuban workers deployed abroad fell from about 24,000 at the start of 2025 to between 15,000 and 18,000 in 2026, three quarters of them health personnel, and the regime keeps between 50% and 95% of their wages. That is the business model of the «achievement of the Revolution».

Housing: 805,583 homes missing and 5,493 built in a year

On July 14, 2025, the Ministry of Construction told the National Assembly’s Committee on Industry, Construction and Energy that the housing deficit stood at 805,583 homes: 407,219 to be built and 398,364 to be rehabilitated. By that date, 2,728 had been completed nationwide; of the state plan of 10,795, 2,382 had been met, 22%. By the end of 2025, the total was 5,493 homes, 26% fewer than in 2024, according to the ministry itself. At that pace, closing the deficit would take more than 140 years. Of the 4,092,827 homes the State recognizes, 1,445,222 (35%) are in fair or poor condition.

Hurricane Melissa, in late October 2025, damaged more than 90,000 homes, some 600 health facilities and more than 2,000 schools in eastern Cuba, according to United Nations estimates and preliminary official reports compiled by EFE. The most publicized state response to the deficit, announced in December 2025 for Havana, has been converting more than 3,500 shipping containers into houses. The roof tiles, cement and sheeting that do not arrive that way come, for many families, out of the pocket of a relative abroad. Article 71 says the State makes the right to housing effective «through construction, rehabilitation and conservation programs». In Cuba, the rehabilitation program is called a remittance.

Who pays the bill: remittances, Chinese rice, Russian oil and dollars from Washington

If the State does not provide the water, the medicine or the roof, someone does. The list is long and it has nationalities.

• The diaspora. The Inter-American Dialogue estimated in March 2024 that remittances to Cuba totaled somewhat less than $4 billion in 2023, with an average of $2,800 per sender per year, and that more than half arrived through «mulas» (informal couriers). It is one of the country’s largest sources of hard currency, and much of it ends up in GAESA’s stores.
• China. In January 2026, Xi Jinping approved $80 million in financial assistance and 60,000 tons of rice; the first 15,000 tons arrived at the port of Havana on May 23, after an earlier donation of 30,000 tons completed in March. In January 2023, Beijing had already delivered $100 million promised in November 2022.
• Russia. The tanker Anatoly Kolodkin docked in Matanzas on March 31, 2026, with 100,000 tons of crude: about seven days of consumption. As of May, it was the only Russian cargo to have arrived this year.
• The United States, the «enemy». Three million dollars in food, hygiene products and household goods for 8,800 families hit by Melissa, distributed by Cáritas since January 2026; another six million announced in February; a formal offer of $100 million in food and medicine made public in May 2026; and $876 million in exports to Cuba between January and August, according to Ambassador Mike Waltz at the UN, who maintains that Washington is now the largest fuel supplier to the island’s private sector.
• The United Nations. A $74.2 million response plan for one million people affected by Melissa.

And the Cuban state — what does it contribute? Figures from its own National Office of Statistics and Information answer that. Between January and September 2024, of 64.973 billion pesos invested, 26.6% went to «business services, real estate and rental activities», the category where hotels are counted: 17.311 billion. Public health received 1.205 billion; education, 671 million; agriculture, 1.829 billion. That category received 14 times what health got and 26 times what education got, while hotels reported occupancy below 25% in 2023-2024 according to the Ministry of Tourism itself, as this outlet documented in May.

The 2026 budget, approved in December 2025, was born with a deficit of 74.5 billion pesos. Díaz-Canel boasts that health receives 24% of spending, more than 76 billion pesos. At the informal exchange rate of 900 pesos per dollar on November 2, that is about $84 million to care for 9.4 million people: roughly nine dollars per Cuban per year. Remittances, according to the latest estimate cited (2023), come to about $400.

The only guarantee: repression and censorship

There are two public services that have never been in short supply in Cuba and have never depended on donations. Cubalex’s verified compilation, with data as of November 2, 2026, records 682 people deprived of their liberty for political reasons, with the warning that the list «is not a complete census». Prisoners Defenders, which includes other forms of restriction of liberty, counted 1,351 at the end of September. On the morning of November 2, police detained in Santos Suárez the independent communicator Adelth Bonne Gamboa. The next day, journalist Camila Acosta spent hours detained at a Havana police station.

On January 28, State Security had prevented Yoani Sánchez from attending an event with the U.S. chargé d’affaires.

Article 54 of the Constitution says the State «recognizes, respects and guarantees» freedom of expression; Article 56, the rights of assembly and demonstration. They are the only two articles in the chapter on rights whose violation the State carries out efficiently: for that there is fuel — while, as Waltz recalled at the UN on October 27, there is never enough for ambulances — and for that there are officials who arrive on time. A State that cannot find a valve in six months finds a journalist in an hour.

And censorship is not only arrests: it is the narrative. Díaz-Canel opened the October 29 health meeting by celebrating the previous day’s UN «victory» and calling doctors its «protagonists», before admitting the 90,000 pending surgeries. On the same day the State acknowledges it cannot operate, it asks those who operate to celebrate a vote in New York.

The only industry the regime funds without outside help is the excuse industry, and this outlet has long been taking it apart: the blackouts predate Trump and what exists is an embargo, not a blockade. The regime blames everything on the tightening of the «blockade» and the «energy siege», as Díaz-Canel repeated at that same meeting. Washington’s pressure on fuel is real in 2026 and worsens the crisis, but it does not explain six months of silence over a valve — which is what Díaz-Canel himself called a failure.

Our position: what is the Cuban state for?

A State exists to guarantee what a family cannot guarantee on its own: clean water, a hospital that works, a roof, electricity, food, transportation. That is why it collects taxes, and why it is granted the monopoly on force. When that State admits, with its own figures, that 2.68 million people lack water, that 90,000 are waiting for surgery, that 805,583 homes are missing and that the power grid collapsed eight times in one year — and when what does reach those families is paid for by children in Miami, rice from Beijing, a tanker from Moscow and a Cáritas container funded by Washington — the question stops being rhetorical. What is it for?

Cubanos por el Mundo answers: it exists to sustain itself. It controls the channel through which the diaspora’s money enters and collects it in its stores; it rents out its doctors and admits that without that rent there are no medicines; it gives the category that includes its empty hotels 14 times what it gives health; and it reserves its only efficiency, the police kind, for whoever points at it. It is not a failed State in the sense that it cannot do anything. It is a State that has chosen precisely what to do: collect, control and punish. Everything else we do, from abroad, and have for 68 years.

To the regime we say what Díaz-Canel said on November 4 without meaning to: «We are not going to stop at external causes to justify the lack of institutional response». Take your own word for it. And to every Cuban who this month is sending a package with gloves, a Zelle for a water truck or a phone top-up so their mother can call: you are not «helping». You are holding up a country whose government stopped doing it. What have you had to send to Cuba this year that the State should have guaranteed? Tell us in the comments.

Sources consulted

• Constitution of the Republic of Cuba (Official Gazette, April 10, 2019), articles 54, 56, 71, 72, 76 and 77
• Office of the Presidency of Cuba, summary of the Central Committee visit to Minsap (October 31, 2026)
• Transcript of the radio program Criterio Compartido, Radio Rebelde, published by Cubadebate (November 4, 2026)
• Ministry of Construction, report to the National Assembly’s Committee on Industry, Construction and Energy (July 14, 2025, via EFE)
• National Office of Statistics and Information, investment January-September 2024 (via EFE, December 2024) and demographic indicators 2025 (July 2026)
• Opinion on the 2026 State Budget Bill, National Assembly (December 2025)
• Inter-American Dialogue, «Remittances to Cuba and the Marketplace in 2024» (March 2024)
• U.S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report (October 8, 2026) and remarks by Ambassador Mike Waltz at the UN (October 27 and 28, 2026)
• U.S. Embassy in Havana, health alert (September 4, 2026)
• Cuban News Agency on container housing (December 2025)
• Cáritas Cuba and news agencies on U.S. aid after Hurricane Melissa (December 2025 and May 2026)
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and news agencies on rice donations (January-May 2026)
• Cubalex, verified compilation of political prisoners (November 2, 2026)
• Prisoners Defenders (September 2026)
• NBC Miami and Telemundo 51 on the case of Damir Ortiz (March-April 2025)
• Previous coverage by Cubanos por el Mundo (January 2025 to November 2026)

This text is an editorial and expresses the position of Cubanos por el Mundo. The facts cited are attributed to their sources; assessments of the Cuban government’s intentions are editorial interpretation. The per-capita health spending figure in dollars is an estimate by this outlet based on official figures in pesos and the elTOQUE informal exchange rate of November 2, 2026; the comparison with remittances uses the 2023 estimate. Quotations originally in Spanish have been translated by Cubanos por el Mundo. You can read our Editorial Policy. If you spot an error in a fact, figure or quote, write to us; we will review it under our Corrections Policy.