The Cuban government has dismissed Minister of Labour and Social Security, Marta Elena Feito, after a wave of backlash followed her televised comments suggesting that individuals begging on the streets were not genuinely impoverished but were instead fraudulently posing as beggars.
In a brief statement released Tuesday evening, the government announced her removal, citing a failure to demonstrate “objectivity and sensitivity on topics that are currently central to political and governmental policy.”
Her remarks, aired the previous day, triggered widespread public anger, especially on social media, amid the country’s deepening economic crisis.
“We have seen people who appear to be beggars, but when you look at their hands, when you look at the clothes those people wear, they are disguised as beggars … In Cuba, there are no beggars. They have found an easy way of life, to make money and not to work as is appropriate,” Feito had said during the broadcast.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel swiftly rejected her comments in his own address to the committee the next day, criticizing the narrative as detached from reality.
“These people, who we sometimes describe as homeless or linked to begging, are actually concrete expressions of the social inequalities and the accumulated problems we face,” he said. “The vulnerable are not our enemies.”
Feito’s dismissal highlights the political sensitivity surrounding poverty discourse in Cuba, where worsening conditions—characterized by persistent food shortages, inflation above 30 percent, and the plummeting value of the peso—have led to a noticeable rise in street begging since 2020. Independent journalists and civil society groups shared images of emaciated citizens foraging through garbage, sharply contradicting Feito’s assertions and fueling further public outcry.
Observers say the president’s prompt intervention signals growing concern within the Communist Party about rising social tensions and the need to avoid perceptions of government elitism. As the country grapples with its most severe economic crisis since the 1990s, Feito’s remarks have reopened discussions around inequality in a system long built on promises of social equity.
No replacement has been named for the minister’s post. The labor ministry now faces mounting pressure to address rising unemployment and widening gaps in social welfare that have pushed many Cubans into informal, precarious livelihoods.
