Cuba’s Minister of Labor and Social Security resigned on Tuesday after affirming that there were no “beggars” on the island. But only people “disguised as beggars”, when the country is going through a deep economic crisis. According to official media, the request for resignation “was analyzed by the highest authorities of the Communist Party and the Government” who “agreed to free it” from its post. Due to “its lack of objectivity and sensitivity”.
On Monday, during a presentation before a parliamentary committee, Marta Elena Feito had denied that people searching the trash in the street did it to seek food. She had also criticized street windshields, accusing them of looking for an “easy life”. “We see people who seem to be beggars, but when we look at their hands, when we look at their clothes, we realize that they are disguised as beggars, they are not beggars. There are no beggars in Cuba, “said the minister.
“The concrete expressions of social inequalities”
These remarks, made during a parliamentary session broadcast on national television, caused an uproar, especially on social networks, when the Cuban population is faced with galloping inflation. Cuba president Miguel Diaz-Canel attempted the scandal on Tuesday. “None of us can act with arrogance, with sufficiency, disconnected from the realities that we live,” he insisted. “These people, whom we sometimes describe as beggars or begging, are in reality the concrete expressions of social inequalities and problems” with which Cuba is confronted.
The level of poverty has increased in recent years on the island in the grip of a deep economic crisis, fueled by low local production and the strengthening of American embargo by Donald Trump. In 2024, 189,000 families and 350,000 people considered vulnerable benefited from social assistance programs on the island of 9.7 million inhabitants, according to the government.
