Poverty is growing in Cuba and many families depend on their children’s work for their daily sustenance.
14ymedio, Pablo Padilla Cruz, Matanzas, 11 August 2025 — In the parking lot of the La Salsa nightclub in Matanzas, a teenager sleeps next to a sack half-full of cans. He’s waiting for the party to end before continuing his collecting work. His name is Yankiel and he’s 13 years old. His mother died a long time ago. “I remember her, but not enough,” he confesses.
Recent statements by the former Minister of Labor and Social Security, downplaying the extreme poverty suffered by thousands of Cubans, sparked a debate that many consider overdue. Even in the official press, cracks are beginning to appear. The Girón newspaper, the provincial newspaper of Matanzas and a smaller sister newspaper of Granma, published a two-part photo report on the plight of street begging.
In the images, the deterioration and precariousness can no longer be hidden. However, the editorial treatment maintained the usual script. Alongside each testimony of hardship, the government’s “efforts” to provide shelter for those without a place to live are emphasized—in bold and insistently—even if that shelter is 100 kilometers from their original place of residence or is a former school building converted into a damp and corroded shell.
Beyond what the photos showed, it was striking that there were no children in the report.
Beyond what the photos showed, it was striking that there were no children in the report. The selection of images conveyed the idea that children in Cuba were safe, as if José Martí’s phrase, “Children are born to be happy,” had been strictly adhered to. Stories like Yankiel’s, however, contradict this sugary portrait.
His father does heavy labor: masonry, clearing land, collecting animal feed scraps, and, above all, the nighttime harvesting of raw materials. This task is a family business. To cover more ground, father and son split up. One walks through the city center and Narváez Street; the other goes from the El Tenis neighborhood to the Reinol García neighborhood, known as Pastorita. Together, they fill their sacks with bottles, plastic containers, and cans, which they then sell.
During school holidays, Yankiel takes advantage of the opportunity to harvest for longer hours. “I don’t have to get up early to go to school,” he says. But when the school year starts, the routine becomes exhausting. He combines classes with street work, a kind of childhood moonlighting, one he undertakes without fully realizing it. This year, he will enter eighth grade, although his priorities seem driven by a different logic: survival.
When asked what he wants to do when he comes of age, he hesitates for a few seconds. Then, with the sincerity of someone unaccustomed to embellishing words, he replies: “I want to work in something that makes money.” His straightforward answer reveals an urgent concern for the outcome, not the path to achieving it. When the goal is solely “making money,” the alternatives can be uncertain or dangerous.
In the park, someone gives him a cola. He drinks it slowly, with a mixture of shyness and relief. The empty container goes directly into the bag, along with the other collected cans. Yankiel’s case is one among many. Neither he nor other children in similar situations have ever appeared in the reports on Girón or in the speeches of ministers. They don’t fit the narrative of a protected and happy childhood. Childhood marginalization is rendered invisible, not only by media censorship, but also by political indifference.
The images in the official photo report showed adult faces, makeshift beds in doorways and vacant lots, stoves without fuel, and peeling walls. But the omission of children was not accidental. Showing a child sleeping on the street or carrying a sack of garbage would be an admission that the State has failed in one of its propaganda pillars: the care of childhood.
In Cuba, minors working in raw material collection, street vending, or animal care are not isolated cases. It is a widespread reality, especially in cities and the less developed surrounding areas. The economic crisis, inflation, the decline in purchasing power, and the inadequacy of social programs have forced many families to rely on their children’s labor to supplement their daily livelihoods.
The language used to define places softens the edges and dilutes the State’s responsibility
Extreme poverty is no longer an issue that can be hidden behind euphemisms. What was once denied or attributed to “isolated cases” now appears in the streets in broad daylight. The fact that a media outlet like Girón, controlled by the Communist Party, publishes a report on beggars in Matanzas indicates that even the official press has had to acknowledge that poverty exists and is growing.
But recognition is partial and conditional. Each complaint is juxtaposed with a justification: the promise of a transfer, a home repair, or the delivery of mattresses. The language used to define places softens the sharp edges and dilutes the responsibility of a State that, for decades, has presented itself as the absolute guarantor of social welfare.
Yankiel will continue walking the streets, his bag slung over his shoulder, while attending eighth grade. His father will continue working the toughest jobs, combining the hours of daylight with the early morning hours. Neither of them expects a sudden change. Poverty, for them, is not a temporary circumstance but a permanent context. And what is not published in Girón, nor mentioned in speeches, is what most defines today’s Cuba.
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