Cuban Labor Minister Resigns After Dismissive Comments on Poverty Spark Outrage
HAVANA — Cuba’s Minister of Labor and Social Security, Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera, resigned Tuesday after a wave of public backlash following controversial comments she made about the visible increase in poverty and begging across the island.
In a statement released on X (formerly Twitter), Cuba’s presidency confirmed the resignation, stating that Feitó had “acknowledged her errors and submitted her resignation.” But the fallout from her remarks reveals something far deeper than one misstep—it’s a reflection of the tone-deaf governance that flourishes in authoritarian systems where censorship and control take precedence over compassion and accountability.
Feitó’s comments were delivered Monday during a National Assembly committee session. She boldly stated that “there are no beggars in Cuba, only people disguised as such.” The statement, which went viral, sparked widespread condemnation and calls for her dismissal. The public, already strained by years of economic crisis, inflation, and food shortages, saw her words as both offensive and detached from reality.
Even President Miguel Díaz-Canel offered a veiled rebuke. Without naming Feitó directly, he posted on X, “The lack of sensitivity in addressing vulnerability is highly questionable. The revolution cannot leave anyone behind; that is our motto, our militant responsibility.”
But Feitó didn’t stop there. She accused Cubans who wash windshields at intersections of spending their earnings on alcohol and labeled those scavenging through garbage as tax evaders. These comments weren’t just misguided—they were a chilling reminder of how authoritarian regimes distort hardship into criminality to deflect responsibility.
In any healthy society, such remarks would be political suicide. But in Cuba, where open debate is stifled, these statements echo a deeper issue: the government’s obsession with image over substance, and ideology over empathy.
Feitó’s remarks also reveal how disconnected Cuban leadership has become from the everyday struggles of its people. In a country where the average retiree’s pension is just 2,000 Cuban pesos per month—equivalent to roughly $5 on the informal market—basic necessities like a carton of eggs are unaffordable for many. Without remittances from relatives abroad, many elderly citizens are left to fend for themselves, often resorting to begging or scavenging just to survive.
Self-employed Cuban Enrique Guillén put it plainly: “These are elderly people relying on a pension that doesn’t stretch far enough. They can’t even afford basic food items. That is the reality we are living in Cuba.”
The idea that people desperately trying to survive—cleaning windshields, collecting recyclables, or asking for spare change—are doing so in disguise, as if part of some elaborate scam, is not just absurd. It is dehumanizing. It criminalizes poverty and deflects blame away from the very system responsible for creating it.
To understand this mindset, one must understand how centralized power warps perception. In a system where open dissent is punished and independent business is strangled by bureaucracy, the government views any attempt at survival outside its control as a threat. Feitó’s suggestion that scavengers were dodging taxes speaks volumes—not about Cubans breaking the law, but about a regime that sees economic desperation as criminal behavior.
Communist regimes often pride themselves on moral superiority, but moral arrogance without economic reform or democratic legitimacy quickly devolves into cruelty. The Cuban Revolution promised to uplift the poor, yet decades later, many of those same people are now being shamed for trying to survive.
Yes, the U.S. embargo plays a role in Cuba’s hardships—but it is not solely to blame. Other countries with communist governments have implemented market reforms while maintaining state control. Cuba’s leadership, however, has done everything possible to suppress market forces, private enterprise, and economic freedom—thereby suffocating the very mechanisms that could alleviate the crisis.
The latest economic figures confirm the deepening collapse. On Monday, authorities reported a 1.1% contraction in Cuba’s GDP for 2024, totaling an 11% economic decline over the last five years.
Feitó’s resignation, while necessary, does little to resolve the underlying crisis. The real issue is a government more interested in protecting its narrative than addressing its citizens’ suffering. As long as Cuba remains trapped in a system where criticism is silenced, markets are stifled, and leaders are detached from the daily lives of ordinary people, progress will remain out of reach.
The Cuban people are not tax cheats. They are not imposters. They are survivors—trapped in a system that refuses to evolve.
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