“There Are No Beggars in Cuba,” says Labor Minister

By Marleidy Muñoz and Raul Medina Orama (El Toque)

HAVANA TIMES – Marta Elena Feito Cabrera, head of Cuba’s Ministry of Labor and Social Security, stated on July 14, 2025, during a session of the National Assembly, that “there are no beggars” in the country. According to her, begging and precarious or street work are either made-up phenomena or a “lazy way of life” adopted by some people to avoid formal employment or paying taxes. However, these absolute statements contradict not only the country’s official statistics but also the visible reality on the island’s streets and statements from other senior government officials.

During a presentation in the National Assembly the official declared: “These people are disguised as beggars. They’re not beggars. There are no beggars in Cuba. They’ve found an easy way to make money without working (…) under proper formalities. There’s also talk of ‘divers’ (…) Those people rummaging through garbage bins, throwing trash on the ground, digging through waste, looking for cans, some say they’re looking for food, that’s also not true. (…) Those people are collecting raw materials and are illegal self-employed workers. What they’re doing is tax evasion.”

Feito’s  statements are misleading and contradict others made by her own ministry in June 2024 during a Council of Ministers meeting, where it was acknowledged that more than 3,700 “patients” are housed in “Social Protection Centers” due to their alleged “wandering behavior.” This official euphemism, which includes begging, is used to describe individuals with “a way of life characterized by instability and insecurity of residence, lack of self-care, and no economic autonomy.”

The actual numbers may be even higher, but independent experts cannot verify them.

Begging is a known and acknowledged reality by the Cuban government, despite official propaganda. Several public statements demonstrate this.

In April 2025, during an official visit to Granma Province, President Miguel Diaz-Canel admitted the existence of beggars and called for preventing an increase: “We cannot allow that, during this stage of economic crisis, this proliferates — the destitute, the beggars, panhandlers, child labor, and harassment of tourists.”

Also, in March this year, an article in the Communist Party’s Granma newspaper headlined “Begging is Not Compatible with the Cuban Social Project” introduced a piece by Isabel Acosta Sanchez, a magistrate of the Supreme Court, which included a veiled threat against those involved in such acts.

The article was a version of an earlier one published on the Supreme Court’s official website, where Acosta acknowledged: “Begging is a social phenomenon linked to issues such as inequality and poverty, and it represents a challenge for the State, families, and society in general.”

The high-ranking judicial official also stated that “in Cuba, complex economic conditions (…) have a greater impact on some segments of the population, at times placing them in vulnerable situations, which unscrupulous individuals take advantage of to lead them into begging (…)”

The republication of this article in the country’s highest-circulation newspaper caused controversy and backlash. Cuban professor, essayist, and historian Alina Barbara Lopez wrote on social media: “The ruling elite is bothered by the ‘bad publicity’ created by beggars and hungry people swarming our streets. Yet they are the main culprits of this situation. They designed the disaster. At least have the courage to acknowledge it.”

Experts and the Public Refute the Minister of Labor and Social Security’s Claim

Sociologist Elaine Acosta Gonzalez, Ph.D. in International and Intercultural Studies and research associate at Florida International University’s Cuban Research Institute, told El Toque in response to the minister’s remarks: “Continuing to ignore, downplay, or cover up the growing impoverishment of the population makes the Cuban government doubly responsible for the current deterioration in quality of life and the increase in homelessness. [They are] responsible for causing it and also for hiding it and not seeking possible solutions.”

Acosta, who also heads the Observatory on Aging, Care and Rights Cuido60, has no doubt about “the increase in people living on the street or relying on public generosity for basic survival. Official figures acknowledged — after a decade without data — that the number of homeless people has more than doubled.”

Several experts have warned that the rise in poverty and begging on the island reflects the ongoing economic crisis, exacerbated by limited access to basic resources.

References to “people with wandering behavior” by other Cuban officials and in various state media reports contrast sharply with Feito’s claim that there are no beggars in Cuba. This official recognition also confirms that Cuban authorities are aware of the existence of people who, for various economic and social reasons, lack access to basic resources and resort to precarious means of survival, including panhandling or scavenging.

Numerous images shared on social media by citizens and recent reports by non-state-controlled press outlets also show a growing presence of beggars on the island.

Activist Maria Lopez, a resident of the Centro Habana municipality, told Radio Martí: “It’s a very harsh situation in every case, but when you see young people asking for food on the streets, the gravity of the problem becomes more evident. The situation has gotten so bad that on every corner, you can see seven or eight of them.”

Another Havana resident, Dunia Medina, told Radio Martí: “Begging has increased due to inflation. It’s incomprehensible that after working over 40 years, many people have to live in such miserable conditions (…). And it’s not just adults — there are also children. On busy streets like Monte in Old Havana or Galiano, you see large numbers of beggars every day, including many elderly people.”

Commenting on Labor Minister Feito’s recent remarks in Parliament, sociologist Elaine Acosta added in her statements to El Toque: “Most people collecting cans to sell (many of them over 60 years old) cannot meet their basic needs with the meager pensions they receive. We’re talking about survival activities, so criminalizing them by labeling them as tax evaders or immoral is a failure to understand the basic needs not being met by the State or any other institution in Cuba.”

Many retirees in Cuba receive the equivalent of less than $5 USD per month as their monthly pension.

According to Acosta, “With these repeated statements, the Cuban government continues to criminalize poverty instead of seeking alternatives to offset the impacts of all the austerity policies it has implemented.”

On the topic of begging, Acosta previously told Martí Verifica: “In the Cuban case, the complex structural and systemic crisis largely explains the rise in homelessness, due — among other reasons — to the declining role of the State in social protection.”

A 2024 study by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), conducted across all provinces, revealed that extreme poverty affects at least 89% of the surveyed population.

“In Cuba, not only are civil and political rights violated, but also — among others — social rights. That’s why we always say that the Cuban regime not only represses, it also impoverishes,” said attorney Yaxys Cires, the Cuban Human Rights Observatory Director of Strategy.

Following the minister’s recent comments, the NGO condemned “the criminalization of people without resources” and criticized the authorities for “asking citizens to ‘fight and report’ beggars via a hotline, in addition to deporting people from eastern provinces out of Havana after ‘profiling’ them.”

Economist Pedro Monreal has clarified: “In Cuba, poverty and vulnerability (…) are not misfortunes due to age, illness, or family circumstances, but the result of a completely dysfunctional labor market and pension system.”

Nearly half of Cuban retirees are in “vulnerable situations,” with monthly incomes at or below the minimum of 1,528 CUP ($4 USD), according to official data.

Monreal has also stated on social media, regarding the official narrative: “The issue is not claiming that begging is ‘incompatible’ with something they call the ‘Cuban social project,’ but rather the failure to recognize its internal causes or institutional failure in addressing it (…)”

According to the economist, “Begging is a specific outcome of the ‘normalization’ of mass impoverishment driven by the 2021 ‘ordenamiento’ reforms, and the solution should not involve a reductionist, punitive legal approach to aspects of begging.”

Regarding Feito’s recent denial of the existence of beggars in the country, Monreal called her remarks “reactionary” and responded on social media: “It seems the ‘minister’ doesn’t care about the poor — only that they be invisible. She labels them drunks, fakers, and illegal. Madam, the fight is against poverty, not the poor. Stop this nonsense and propose decent wages and pensions.”

According to a study by the 4Métrica foundation, “For decades, the Cuban State has boasted internationally that social rights are fully realized in Cuba. However, the country’s reality is quite different: the vast majority of Cubans live in extreme poverty — a situation evidenced by the dilapidated state of most homes and their low purchasing power, the severe and prolonged food crisis, the deterioration of the healthcare system, the housing problem, and poor public services like electricity, water, and transportation, among other concrete factors.”

Experts agree that begging is not a matter of individual morality but the direct result of a collapsed economic system. The lack of decent employment, the breakdown of public services, and the absence of social protections that have driven many people to survive in extreme conditions. However, this remains a recurring subject of misinformation by Cuban authorities.

First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.