Supreme Court Judge Sees Crackdown on Begging in Cuba
using both fines and jail
The Penal Code punishes those who incite others to beg, and the penalty increases if they are children or disabled people.
HAVANA TIMES – A Supreme Court judge laid her cards on the table on Wednesday in an article in the State newspaper Granma, on how the government plans to handle a growing phenomenon in Cuba: begging. Without mincing words, the official defines begging as “harmful behavior,” and asserts, right from the title of the article, that it is a practice that “is not compatible with the Cuban social project” or with the Constitution, and that it must be “eradicated.”
Isabel Acosta Sánchez elaborates on the legal dimension of the phenomenon and, specifically, the penalties for anyone who “induces or uses a person under 18 years of age to engage in begging.” In addition to prison, which is aggravated if the minor has parental responsibility – which would mean up to eight years in prison – Article 404 of the Penal Code provides for a fine of 500 to 1,000 ’shares’, or both sanctions.
If the minor is a girl or a disabled person, and the companion “takes advantage” of such condition, the sentence may increase.
Also prosecuted will be those who promote, organize, incite, recruit and shelter people “using threats, violence, deception or bribery, taking advantage of the victim’s vulnerable situation or gender, with the aim of subduing them.” Those involved can be tried for human trafficking and receive sentences of up to 15 years of imprisonment, which with aggravating circumstances can add up to 30 more years, or become life imprisonment.
Acosta reminds the island’s authorities that there is a Penal Code and a Code for Children and Youth that penalizes with jail and fines those “unscrupulous” people who take advantage of minors and “vulnerable” people to profit from what they collect by begging.
Until now, begging in Cuba has been a “tolerated activity,” but it is an example of the existence of “inequality” and “poverty” in society, two inconceivable “scourges,” the judge believes, that the country “has strived to eliminate since the triumph of the revolution, creating opportunities for decent work for all.”
The official ignores the situation of those who cannot work and support themselves, and who receive very limited – or in some cases, no – assistance from the Government. Instead, she limits herself to dealing with it from a criminal point of view: “We see the presence, in public places, of people of different ages, even adults accompanied by minors or people with disabilities, asking for money, food and other goods, images we were not used to, practices that violate established legal norms.”
Although Acosta admits that begging involves “all the institutions of the prevention and social care system,” she places the main responsibility for avoiding these cases in the hands of families. Those who do not comply with “the legal obligation to provide food may give rise to the promotion of lawsuits before the Family Section of the competent Municipal People’s Court,” she concludes.
Only if the family is unable to assume this responsibility, or the vulnerable person has no relatives, does the state step in. However, the authorities themselves have acknowledged their inability to cope with the growing number of homeless people.
According to data provided by Cubadebate at the beginning of last year, between 2014 and September 2023, the authorities identified 3,690 people “with wandering behavior.” Of those still residing in state centers, 60% sold their home and do not have the resources to join society, 86% are men, 30% have some disability – including 25% with psychiatric disorders – 31% “have high alcohol consumption patterns” and 39% are under 60 years of age.
The figures, devastating in every sense, represent only the “privileged” group that has managed to enter nursing homes and institutions that care for vulnerable people.
“The vulnerable population is growing every day and there are few social workers. And caring for these types of people takes a lot of dedication and time, but social problems are increasing and we can no longer cope. We are simple mediators and we do not have the resources to solve problems,” the directors of one of these centers lamented at the time.
The rest of the homeless, if they are lucky, can occasionally be “picked up” for a bath and some food, as happens in Havana. A report in this newspaper, published in 2023, describes the adventures of a Transmetro bus through the capital picking up the needy, who were not always willing to accept the “ride.”
Those who resisted were forced to board by police officers and taken to the Social Protection Center in El Cotorro, known as Las Guásimas, where they were cleaned and given some second-hand clothes. Afterwards, the beggars, most of them elderly, were returned to the streets of the capital.
Translated by Translating Cuba.