Cuban minister denies beggars, and an economist responds emphatically

The appearance this Monday of the Minister of Labor and Social Security, Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera, before a committee of the Parliament, where she stated, without scruple or remorse, that there is no begging in Cuba but rather "people disguised as beggars," received a strong response from the economist Pedro Monreal: “It must be that there are also people disguised as ‘ministers’.”

In his turn at the microphone before members of the Cuban legislative body, Feitó cynically denied the existence of beggars in the country and unabashedly criminalized individuals who search for food in the trash, beg for alms, or sleep in the streets, statements that have sparked angry reactions and fierce criticism from Cubans on social media.

One of the voices that has recently come out to refute the misstatements of the Cuban official is Monreal, an analyst and systematic critic of the policies and decisions of the ruling elite on the island, who deemed Feitó's words as reactionary.

"The 'minister' of miserable salaries and pensions has made the most brazenly reactionary speech of 'continuity',” said the economist.

He says that in Cuba there are no beggars, only people disguised as beggars. It must be that there are also people disguised as ‘ministers,’” he mocked in a thread on the social media platform X, where he challenged the high-ranking official of the regime who, with an iron fist, manages labor issues and social assistance programs in the country.

It seems that the 'minister' does not care about the poor, but rather about appearances. She labels them as drunks, pretenders, and illegal. Monreal emphasized.

"Madam, the fight is against poverty, not against the poor," he warned her, urging her to "stop those wild ideas and propose decent salaries and pensions," given the limited purchasing power of Cuban workers and retirees in the face of rampant inflation and the worsening economic crisis in Cuba.

Feitó dared to say this Monday before the National Assembly that those living on the streets of the country pretend to be beggars, but they are not. “We have seen people who seem to be beggars; when you look at their hands, when you look at the clothes those people wear, they are disguised as beggars. They are not beggars, there are no beggars in Cuba,” he stated, accusing them of finding “an easy way of life to make money without working according to the proper formalities.”

The leader labeled the citizens whom the regime calls "vagrants" as drunks and seekers of an "easy life," without addressing the structural causes of the phenomenon or acknowledging the ineffectiveness of the measures promoted by the ministry she heads to eradicate it.

In light of the serious problem that has worsened in recent years in direct proportion to the deepening economic crisis, Feitó saw fit to downplay it and distort the underlying social phenomenon: “Normally, we refer to any behavior as wandering behavior. For example, when there’s a person on the street washing windshields (...), that is not a wanderer; that is a person who has found an easy way to make a living, at a traffic light washing windshields, and likely with that money, they are just going to buy alcohol around the corner.”

In her denial of a reality that is evident to anyone walking through the streets of Cuba, the official did not hesitate to mock those who search for food in the waste containers.

“The divers are in the water. Those people who are in the dumpsters, throwing trash on the ground, rummaging through the garbage, looking for cans… those people, as some say: ‘No, they are searching for food in the dumpsters,’ that’s not true either. Those are stereotypes that they try to impose on us, which are not accurate,” he stated.

He then struck out against "those individuals who are reclaiming raw materials" and accused them of being "illegal self-employed workers (...) who are violating tax laws because they are engaging in an economic activity without generating any income."

Feitó intensified his rhetorical speech against vulnerable people living on the streets, as if he were facing an enemy army: “We must call things by their name and we must combat all those negative behaviors.”

The minister's report contrasts with the reality of the country, where 89% of families suffer from extreme poverty, according to data from the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH).

Even so, his words this Monday contradict previous statements. Last February, in the presence of President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Feitó acknowledged that in Cuba there were, up to that point, 1,236 communities living in misery.

Moreover, he assured that 96% of the problems related to extreme poverty in the country were "in the process of comprehensive transformation," just as Cuba is experiencing one of the worst economic crises in its history.

Frequently asked questions about the denial of begging in Cuba and public reactions