Mr. Fernández, 79, returns to his home in Central Havana, only to find more garbage. An accumulation of litter — plastic bottles, corn husks and other junk attracting hordes

 José Fernández Zaldívar makes about $9 a month sweeping San Rafael Boulevard, a busy pedestrian walkway in Havana where he pushes a cart filled with the trash that he picks up.

Mr. Fernández, 79, returns to his home in Central Havana, only to find more garbage. An accumulation of litter — plastic bottles, corn husks and other junk attracting hordes of flies — blocks his front gate.

“Sometimes the garbage overflows so much that it covers the entrance to my house, and I can’t get out,” he said. “I have to clear a path through.”

Mounting heaps of trash have become one of the most visible signs of crisis in Cuba as the government says its oil reserves have run dry. With little gasoline to run garbage trucks, piles of rubbish — some four feet high and half a block long — have increasingly become part of the landscape in Havana, the Cuban capital.

There is too much