The 2,269 hectares granted are for the cultivation of tobacco, coffee, cane and for livestock.
14ymedio, Havana, October 9, 2025 — The need to increase the labor force on the island, affected by mass emigration and disenchantment with State jobs, has led the government of Granma province to give land in usufruct to 300 young men just out of compulsory military service. Another 96, who are not yet released, have signed up to receive land when they are “demobilized” by the armed forces.
La Demajagua, the official press, did not make it clear whether the imminent farmers were offered benefits, but it is certain that they are not talking about greater freedom when working their land. Spread over the 13 municipalities of the province, the boys have already registered the 2,269 hectares [5,600 acres or 8.7 square miles] granted in total to various endeavors: “52 in agricultural enterprises, another 54 in basic units of cooperative production, 142 in credit and service cooperatives, and 18 in agricultural production cooperatives,” said La Demajagua, adding that this “link” to the State gives the farmers “the possibility of obtaining bank loans, contracting and marketing their products, and purchasing supplies.”
The land handed over also has predetermined purposes. The crops to be cultivated are coffee and tobacco, products normally dedicated to export and currency collection, as well as sugar cane — a crop in critical debacle — and for raising small and large livestock, whose products have also disappeared from national markets.
Finally, said La Demajagua, the initiative will also include 132 young people from the “job insertion plan of June, for those who go to the municipal registry and are offered the delivery of available land.” According to the media, a similar measure began in 2011 to put young service graduates to work, and Granma was the first province to carry out this process.
Spread over the 13 municipalities of the province, the boys have already registered for the 2,269 hectares granted in total to various institutions
The regime’s allergy to the “bums” and “pariahs,” as it has come to call the unemployed, is something that its leaders have been unable to get rid of for more than six decades. Now, with the Island lacking a labor force, getting young people to work for the State is like solving both issues at once.
“It’s a weapon deployed against unemployment once again in this territory, where 2,203 people, until a week ago disconnected from study and work, have returned to the classrooms,” celebrated Granma this Wednesday, alluding to Guantánamo.
Although some seek to graduate from high school and others enter university, most will “train as technicians in different specialties — 32 in total — which take priority and are needed in upper Granma province,” wrote the Communist Party media.
“From this effort, the Guantánamo health services will receive nurses and anesthesiologists; new transport railways will see the light, as well as inspectors in the electrical branch and linemen who will reinforce the work of Etecsa [the State telecommunications monopoly],” added the media, which did not hide that the main objective is “to inject manpower into strategic sectors in which Guantánamo has a deficit.”
As before, those involved were not entirely free to choose the areas in which they would work. The province, which visited the unemployed “house to house,” made a list of options that respond to specific needs of the territory. “The courses, which are also open to those who have chosen to join the Ministry of the Interior, involve the University of Guantánamo in the training of graduates in Accounting and Finance, Management for Development, as well as in Law, Primary Education and Preschool Education,” it added.
While looking for the labor force it needs, the State has begun, for the umpteenth time, to fill vacancies with university students
While looking for the labor force it needs, the State has begun, for the umpteenth time, to fill vacancies with undergraduates. On Monday, at the University of Medical Sciences in Havana, students were called to form a work contingent of teachers due to the shortage of teachers in the schools. “We have more than a thousand students engaged in this work in several provinces, although we expect the number to increase in those territories where there are the greatest complexities,” Education Minister Naima Ariatne Trujillo Barreto told Juventud Rebelde.
The plan is for university students to fill vacancies at secondary and pre-university levels throughout the island*. For this, said the minister, it is necessary to “encourage and increase the interest of young people who already participate and eliminate certain bureaucratic obstacles that hinder the recruitment of the newly interested.”
The Medical Science students are the same ones who also, year after year, are sent to carry out inspections against disease vectors in the neighborhoods all over the island.
An employment survey published last July by the National Bureau of Statistics and Information stressed that Cuba has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the region (1.7%). However, the numbers in the report themselves reflected a different reality: more than half of Cubans over 15 are not working or looking for work.
Of the 8,433,226 Cubans aged 15 or over in 2024, 4,227,333 persons were not part of the labor force, compared to 4,205,893 who were (50.1% versus 49.9%), and of these, 69,333 were unemployed. This represents an employment rate of just 49 per cent, one of the lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the average last year was 58.9 per cent, according to the International Labor Organization.
*This program is called “Educating for Love”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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