Photo: Daimy Peña Guillén

The water flows, but indifference remains in the rivers

The images repeat themselves with an alarming persistence. The rainy season arrives, and with it, the usual anxiety of hundreds of Holguin residents who watch the rising water levels of the Marañón, Jigüe, Miradero, and Milagrito rivers.

Certainly, faced with the intensity of extreme hydrometeorological events, increasingly frequent due to climate change. There is little we can do to stop the force of nature. However, there is a trigger for flooding that doesn’t fall from the sky, but from our own hands: garbage.

It’s no secret that the accumulation of solid waste on the banks and in the channels of our urban watersheds has become an internal, environmental, and public health problem. Every plastic bottle, every bag of rubble, or piece of junk irresponsibly thrown into a ravine doesn’t magically disappear. It travels with the current until it finds a bridge, a culvert, or a drain. There, the dams of indifference are erected.

We all pay the price for these makeshift micro-dumps, but they hit the most vulnerable communities the hardest. We’re talking about sudden overflows that flood homes, destroy property, damage crops in suburban agriculture. And immediately complicate the epidemiological landscape with the proliferation of disease vectors.

Faced with this reality, the solution cannot simply be to wait for the logical and necessary state investments in municipal or hydraulic resources for cleaning the canals. True transformation begins with social discipline and collective action.

To change this situation, urgent actions are needed, actions that originate from the very heart of the community. This requires, first and foremost, genuine civic responsibility that eradicates once and for all the disastrous practice of using rivers as private dumps.

However, individual awareness is not enough. It is also necessary to reactivate collective vigilance through community mechanisms and mass organizations to firmly denounce illegal dumping. Understanding that impunity only fuels the risk. This effort must be consolidated through integrated community work. Promoting the active participation of residents in ongoing clean-up and maintenance campaigns of riverine environments.

Saving the city of Holguin from the floods we ourselves cause is not a utopia, it is a necessity for survival. Caring for our rivers, keeping them clean, and respecting their natural flow is, ultimately, the most effective way to protect ourselves, our families, and our environment. Rain is inevitable; the complicity of garbage is not.

By: Daimy Peña Guillén

Radio Angulo
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