Only when popular rejection became massive did the regime decide to interpret the episode as a political problem
14ymedio, Havana, December 27, 2025 [delayed translation] — For years, Marta Elena Feitó embodied the ideal profile of a reliable figure within the Cuban system. She appeared disciplined, understated, effective at repeating the official line, and carefully avoiding any gesture that could be interpreted as dissent. From the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, one of the most sensitive portfolios in a country impoverished to the extreme, she defended statistics and slogans that increasingly clashed with the realities of Cuban life. In 2025, this disconnect between rhetoric and the realities on the ground made her one of the most significant figures of the year.
The breaking point came during a public address in which Feitó referred to the people wandering the streets as “in disguise,” implying that it wasn’t real poverty, but rather a staged performance designed to live “effortlessly” and discredit the Revolution. The phrase was a blatant summary of the official narrative that insists on denying the obvious. In a country where begging—officially “eradicated” for decades—has brutally flooded parks, doorways, and streets, those words sounded like the height of the ruling class’s delusion.
Images of elderly people scavenging in garbage, people with disabilities begging for alms, and adults and children sleeping on the streets are now an undeniable part of the urban landscape. Faced with this reality, the minister’s statement was not only insensitive but also politically clumsy. Denying poverty from a position specifically tasked with managing it exposed, without any filter, the disconnect between the government and the citizens it claims to represent.
None of those present contradicted her, corrected her, or expressed any objections. On the contrary, her words were met with agreement and applause.
During that speech, Marta Elena Feitó was not a lone voice in the chamber. None of those present contradicted her, corrected her, or expressed any objections. On the contrary, her words were met with agreement and applause. Among them was Deputy Yusuam Palacios, a figure constantly promoted by the regime as a young intellectual, a reliable heir to the revolutionary discourse, and a renewed face of the cultural establishment. Palacios not only applauded but also endorsed a denial that was not foreign to him.
That immediate support made it clear that Feitó’s statements were not a personal error, but part of a political consensus. Only when popular rejection became massive—when social media, the independent press, testimonies, and public outrage transformed the phrase into a symbol of institutional contempt for the most vulnerable—did the regime decide to interpret the episode as a political problem.
The reaction was late and defensive. For days, outrage built up without any official body issuing a redress. Then came the dismissal, wrapped in the usual language: “the lack of objectivity and sensitivity with which he addressed issues that are central to current political and governmental management, focused on addressing real and never-desired phenomena in our society.” Feitó disappeared from the media scene without his name being mentioned again in the pro-government press.
Her departure was clearly a damage control operation. The minister ceased to be useful when her discourse, until then functional, began to generate political costs. Poverty, now a collective experience, could no longer be treated as a mere facade.
Nothing changed afterward. Begging continues to grow, wages remain insufficient, and social assistance—the direct responsibility of her ministry—proved incapable of responding to the magnitude of the collapse. The policies remained intact. They sacrificed one official, but not the structure. Feitó will be remembered for a long time as the civil servant “disguised as a minister.”
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