Just a few years ago, in September 2023, Miguel Díaz-Canel took to the podium at the United Nations and solemnly declared that Cuba was embracing the 2030 Agenda with “responsibility and seriousness” and the commitment to “leave no one behind”.
In his speech, the leader appointed by General (r) Raúl Castro emphasized that the island was working towards equitable economic development, capable of improving the quality of life for its population.
"What is urgently needed is the political will to ensure that truly 'no one is left behind' and to overcome one of the most complex crises humanity has faced in modern history. That would be our greatest contribution to the common future we need to build together," said Díaz-Canel.
Today, following the revelation that the military conglomerate GAESA has accumulated more than 18 billion dollars in liquid assets, that promise is nothing more than cruel sarcasm: the Cuban regime has not only abandoned the majority of its citizens but has also normalized poverty as a structural part of its model.
The Mirage of the Official Discourse
Castrism has perfected a dual narrative approach. On one hand, it employs grandiloquent language in international forums: commitments to equity, defense of social rights, and a willingness to "protect the vulnerable."
On the other hand, internally, it uses euphemisms that mask the misery: beggars are not beggars, but "people with wandering behavior"; the homeless elderly and those rummaging through garbage are not victims of abandonment, but people "dressed up" as indigents, as the former Minister of Labor, Marta Elena Feitó, once claimed.
That semantic manipulation seeks to conceal an undeniable reality: extreme poverty affects 89% of Cuban families, according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights.
In the streets of Havana and Santiago, many elderly people wander among garbage bins, while the government devotes its propaganda to describing supposed community reintegration protocols that barely reach a few hundred individuals.
The contrast between the rhetoric and the reality becomes even more glaring with the leak of GAESA's financial statements: billions of dollars under military control while hospitals lack sutures and pensions are barely enough to buy a pound of rice in the informal market.
Poverty as a common landscape
The decline in the standard of living in Cuba has been so sustained that poverty has become a common sight.
Inflation, the collapse of the Cuban peso, and the partial dollarization of the economy have pushed millions into exclusion. Salaries and pensions have become irrelevant against skyrocketing prices; access to basic medicines depends on the arrival of remittances; and families must choose between eating once a day or covering other expenses.
Begging, which was once exceptional, has multiplied in cities. The government itself admitted this year that there are more than 1,200 communities living in extreme poverty. However, instead of acknowledging the magnitude of the problem, the authorities criminalize those who ask for alms or search for food in garbage bins, accusing them of living a “life of ease”.
Meanwhile, the regime continues to insist that Cuban socialism operates under the “inviolable principle of leaving no one behind.” This phrase, which could serve as a slogan in an international United Nations campaign, today sounds like a bad joke coming from those who allow misery to spread while safeguarding the coffers of GAESA.
The investment scandal: Hotels vs. health and food
The economic model of "continuity" reveals another telling fact: investments in tourism once again far exceed those allocated to health and food.
According to official figures from the ONEI, in 2024 the regime allocated nearly 40% of its investments to tourism, while agriculture received only 2.5% and health and social assistance just 2.7%. In relative terms, 14 times more was invested in hotels and restaurants than in agriculture, and almost 20 times more than in hospitals and assistance programs.
The absurdity is immense: hotel occupancy barely reaches 23-28%, yet luxury resorts continue to be built and remain empty. Meanwhile, the food crisis is the worst in decades, and the public health system, once a source of official pride, is collapsing due to shortages.
The economist Pedro Monreal summarized it bluntly: it is a “very distorted” investment model, revealing priorities disconnected from the needs of citizens and subordinated to the military elite that controls tourism through GAESA.
The image circulating on social media —a beggar sitting in front of a newly opened hotel— captures better than any statistic the gap between real Cuba and official Cuba. That photograph encapsulates in a single frame the radical inequality that has taken root on the island: poverty for the masses, hard currency and luxuries for the military elite.
An institutionalized inequality
What the GAESA case reveals is not just the financial opacity of a conglomerate. It is, above all, the institutionalization of inequality as a state policy.
Resources are concentrated in the hands of a military elite that is not accountable to either the parliament or the citizenry. The 2022 Oversight Law further entrenched this impunity by abolishing the requirement to audit military companies and limiting oversight to an annual communication to the President of the Republic.
Thus, while underfunded ministries must account to the National Assembly for their contributions to the budget, GAESA manages billions without the slightest public oversight. The formula is clear: sacrifices are socialized, benefits are privatized within the military circle.
The cynicism of "continuity"
The revelation of the 18 billion in the hands of GAESA should be a turning point: it demonstrates that Cuban poverty is not solely the result of external sanctions or "temporary distortions," but rather of a deliberate model of extraction and concentration of wealth.
The regime has made misery a tolerated norm while proclaiming at international forums that it is fighting for sustainable development.
"Leaving no one behind" has become the cynical slogan of the leadership of a regime that accumulates fortunes amassed with the nation's resources while millions of Cubans are literally left by the wayside.
In that dual Cuba, the elderly rummage through the trash while hotels that nobody occupies are inaugurated. And the inevitable question is: how long will these injustices and inequalities continue to be normalized as if they were the inevitable fate of a country?
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Opinion article: Las declaraciones y opiniones expresadas en este artículo son de exclusiva responsabilidad de su autor y no representan necesariamente el punto de vista de CiberCuba.