¿How many beggars wander today on the streets of Montevideo asking for food or money, or in San José (Costa Rica), or in Santiago de Chile? AND how many in the streets of Havana?
Nobody knows the numbers, but yes Havana In the 50s it was more famous for its beauty, modernity and development than the other three cities mentioned, and today that city (in Hollywood they called it “the Paris of Latin America”) It is flooded with beggars asking for food or money to buy something to put in your stomach.
What catastrophe caused so much poverty in Havana and throughout Cuba? To answer, let’s look at the “revolutionary” roots of that disaster.
“In Cuba no one will be left unprotected”
Four years ago, on February 17, 2020, when beggars were already proliferating on the Cuban streets, the newspaper Granma published an article titled “In Cuba no one will be left unprotected”, an old Fidelista phrase.
That article admitted that there were some “wanders” (never the word beggar) in the streets of Havanabut that there were state centers to care for and feed them, since Fidel always insisted that no one would ever be left helpless, and that the decorum of the human being had to be “satisfied,” quoting the dictator verbatim.
And if it is about Fidelist phrases, I quote another even more hypocritical one: “For this revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble, we are willing to give our lives.” This is what the leader shouted on April 16, 1961, on the Havana corner of 23 and 12, when he declared the communist nature of the dictatorship, one day before the fighting in Playa Girón.
With that beautiful paper Castro I finished wrapping the myth of the “Cuban revolution” that he sold to the world, that because Cuba had a nationalized economy it had a social security system far superior to that of the rest of the capitalist world, to protect and care for all citizens, especially the poorest and the elderly.
Since then, “revolutionary” social securityalong with free Public Health and Education, constituted the backbone of Castro’s transnational propaganda, to this day, no matter how ridiculous it may be at this point.
Bullshit, it was the Soviet Union and not the unproductive Cuban state economy that made possible for about 30 years the existence of a social security system that, although it did not reach the level of those in force in Argentina, Costa Rica, or Uruguay, at the same time the less he avoided today’s massive begging.
In those three decades, Moscow easily gifted the Castro dictatorship some 120 billion dollars, with which it also financed Public Health, Education, and absolutely everything in Cuba. In other words, the commander in chief took credit for the honors, but it was the Kremlin that paid the bills for all social expenses.
By the way, those expenses were too high for the size of the Cuban economy which, precisely because it was nationalized (in 1960-1961), collapsed in the first three years of the “revolution.” And he would not have been able to survive in any way without the money given by the Soviet uncle Boris until he died, a natural death, in 1991.
Starving children and mothers carrying children ask for food
Lately, reports sent from the Island by the independent press give details of the alarming increase in beggars and needy people wandering the streets throughout the country. Men, women, children and the elderly, dirty and wearing rags, look for leftover food in garbage cans, or ask for it from passers-by, or ask for money to buy something to eat.
From Holguín, reporter Julio César Álvarez reported that in the center of that eastern city there are “women with small children in their arms asking for something to eat”. In Central Havana, María López revealed, alarmed, that she even sees young people and children asking for alms. “On every corner there may be seven or eight young people asking for food,” she said.
Opponent Silverio Portal took a video showing a boy about 11 years old, very thin and shirtless, sleeping soundly in a doorway in Central Havana, next to a basket in which there are some coins.
In general, elderly people, retired or not, young men, women and children, visibly distressed, depressed and very emaciated due to hunger, They look for food in garbage cans and they beg for alms everywhere.
And what does the Government do? It is passed with a token. The Ministry of Labor and Social Security of Cuba limits itself to offering old and highly manipulated data. He reported that between 2014 and 2023, 3,690 beggars were registered on the island. That ministry has no idea How many hungry beggars are there in Cuba?he doesn’t care, nor would he publish it if he knew.
There has never been so much poverty in the West due to a Government
And there is a double “tricky” question: How many beggars were there in Cuba in the 50s during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and how many are there now? in that of his godson Raulito (witnesses assured that Batista was the godfather at Castro II’s baptism in the 1930s)?
The amount is not known, but those of us who are old enough remember that the begging in Cuba At the end of the 1950s it was moderate, not alarming, lower than that of almost all Latin American countries.
And something extremely important, if now In Cuba there is infinitely more begging than 66 years ago That is the direct and unavoidable responsibility of dictator Raúl Castro, who doesn’t give a damn about the hunger and misery that plagues Cuba and refuses to release the productive forces of the nation. The autocrat Batista did not cause hunger in Cuba, but with his capitalist drive he reached levels of development that brought it closer to the First World.
Begging for Castroism is a scourge derived from capitalist exploitation. Fidel promised a thousand times that the “revolution” would end begging and eradicate misery, and the shacks in unhealthy neighborhoods, since homes were going to be built and jobs created everywhere.
Fake. Unhealthy slums multiplied exponentially. There are dozens of them in Havana alone. And I mention four well-known ones: Los Sitios, with 32,700 inhabitants in 2022; Cocosolo (31,484); Los Pocitos (28,102); and El Fanguito, with no one knows how many residents, but with a hundred blocks with unhealthy shacks.
More than 88% of Cubans live in extreme povertyaccording to the World Bank, with a personal income that does not reach 2.15 dollars a day today, equivalent to 0.21 cents in 1958.
I simplify it like this: Before 1959 Cuba was not another Haiti like today, but another Uruguay. Cubans had a per capita income equal to that of Italy and higher than that of several European countries.
The national crisis has already reached such a point that many Cubans go hungry one day and the next too. Those are the ones beggarsthose who to survive have no choice but to beg on the streets, including desperate mothers without any food for their babies and young children.
Never has any government in the West led its own people to such a miserable life as the dramatic characters of Victor Hugo in The Miserables.
And yet Miguel Díaz-Canel has the lack of decency to talk about the “achievements of the revolution”of its “continuity”. AND calls on Cubans to “beautify” their food and not calmly wait for what they are going to give you in the “notebook.” His handle is buzzing!
Finally, we are faced with another great crime of Raúl “el Cruel” and his main accomplicesembezzlers, henchmen and abusers, who in their million-dollar mansions far from the masses eat lavishly of everything and enjoy the good life to the fullest.
