Vagabonds in Cuba
A society can be measured by how it treats its least
Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Cuban government has provided Cuban citizens with free health care, free education, subsidized utilities, subsidized public transportation, and a monthly food basket at subsidized prices. The food basket provides only some basic items, with the expectation that additional food items would be purchased via family income from work or pensions.
With respect to housing, the urban reform of the early 1960s converted house and apartment renters into homeowners through modest monthly payments for a determined period. The reform included the provision that houses and apartments acquired as property through the program could not be sold, although they could be swapped for another residence of equal value. This restriction was in place for the protection of the people, inasmuch as free trading of properties tends to generate inequality in ownership. As a result of the urban reform, more than 90% of housing units were owned by the people residing in them, although in many cases there were multi-generational and extended family living arrangements, with some tendency toward overcrowding.
During the “special period” of the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Eastern European socialist bloc, a decline in Cuban incomes led to deterioration in home maintenance and furnishings. But the people had housing, if sometimes overcrowded and inadequate. Certain ambulant behaviors became visible in the streets of downtown Havana, such as hustling tourists and begging. True vagabonds, people without a place to live, were very limited in number, and they were a consequence of a combination of psychiatric disorders, alcoholism, and the disintegration of family ties.
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the material expectations of the people had risen, largely as a result of a frame of reference provided by international tourism and relatives living abroad, which had accelerated during the special period. One dimension of the phenomenon of rising expectations was the desire among the people for the “liberty” to sell and buy houses, which was being expressed covertly through the complicated swapping of housing that included the hidden payment of money. In the context of such deterioration in practice of the process of acquiring new housing, the government legalized the selling of housing units.
The legalization of the sale of housing units led to a phenomenon of people without housing. Some people sold their houses without buying another, for various reasons. Divorce and alcoholism were important factors. So was emigration, as people would sell housing units to finance emigration, leaving elderly or dependent family members in Cuba without housing. Or some would fail in the attempt to emigrate and would end up without housing.
Of course, the story must be seen in the context of the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba since the early 1960s. Without a shadow of doubt, Cuban economic development from the early 1960s to the twenty-first century would have been far greater if it had not been for the restrictions imposed by the blockade. In addition, the unconventional war and the intensification of the blockade since 2014, in combination with the impact of COVID-19, led to the economic crisis of 2020 to 2024, which has stimulated an increase in emigration and its negative impact on ownership of housing units.
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On February 24 and April 26, 2024, Cubadebate published a two-part article, “Errantes en su propia tierra: Miradas al fenómeno de los deambulantes en Cuba” [Vagabonds in their own land: A look at the phenomenon of ambulant persons in Cuba]. The article was written by Oscar Figueredo Reinaldo, Yunier Javier Sifonte Díaz, Lisandra Fariñas Acosta, Edilberto Carmona Tamayo, and Abel Padrón Padilla. Cubadebate is the principal digital news site in Cuba. It is the voice of the Circle of Cuban Journalists Against Terrorism, “an organization created to bring together journalists residing on the island, with the purpose of denouncing the actions organized and financed by the U.S. government against Cuba for more than 50 years and that have caused the death of more than 3000 innocent people.”
The article reports on an interview with Yurisdaisy Bustamante Pérez, Director of the Center for Attention to Ambulant Persons of Havana, located in the peripheral municipality of Cotorro in the Province of the City of Havana. She notes that in recent months, in the context of the intensification of the U.S. blockade against Cuba and the consequent economic crisis, the quantity of persons exhibiting “ambulant behaviors” has increased.
It should be noted that “ambulant persons” is closer in meaning to “vagabonds” or “wondering persons” than to the “homeless.” In Cuban Spanish, homeless persons in the USA are generally referred to as persons “without roofs.”
In Cuba, ambulant behavior includes sleeping in parks or other public places, selling some article in the street, rummaging in garbage containers for food, and begging. Ambulant behavior is identified as a type of social conduct, but it is not a crime. Therefore, when ambulant persons are brought to the Center for Attention to Ambulant Persons, they are free to leave. Those staying at the Center for Attention to Ambulant Persons do so voluntarily.
Bustamante noted that the great majority of ambulant persons are men over the age of sixty. She explained that the majority of persons at the Center for longer periods of time have problems with alcoholism or have some intellectual disability. Her observations are confirmed by a recent study of the patients in the nine centers of attention to ambulant persons in the country, which found that 86% are men, 61% are over the age of sixty, 30% have a physical or intellectual incapacity, 25% have a psychiatric disorder, and 31% have an elevated pattern of consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Many of the Center’s patients have families that sold their homes in order to leave the country, leaving them without a place to live. Social worker Yaimel León Benítez observed that “many people abandon their parents or grandparents because they know that in Cuba no one is left helpless, even in the midst of all the economic problems we have.” Bustamente notes that often the ambulant persons themselves sold their homes in order to emigrate, and not having success in the objective, were left without a housing unit.
There is an established procedure, Bustamante explained, for those who have recently arrived at the Center. First, there is a health examination and bath, and the providing of clean clothes, food, and a place to sleep. Following the initial attention at the Center, the residents are attended by a multidisciplinary team that includes geriatricians, podiatrists, psychiatrists, and ophthalmologists, which arrives every Friday to care for each patient's needs. She noted that it is very difficult to find persons to work at the Center on a full-time basis, but the weekly attendance by the multidisciplinary team functions to sustain quality care.
In addition, social workers initiate a process of seeking to understand the stories of the ambulant persons. The Center’s Assistant Director of Social Assistance, Yurisal Pico, declared that many of their stories are sad. There are ambulant persons, she said, with significant achievements in their lives, but they ultimately arrived at places like the Center as a result of a bad decision. She laments that society views them like the plague, and she feels satisfaction when one of them says, “at least you treat us like persons.”
Pico explained that the objective of the Center is not to maintain the patients for a long period of time. The goal is to reincorporate them into the society, but it is not always possible to do so. Generally, the patients are at the Center for a period of three to six months, and during that period the municipal government looks for a family member, inasmuch as family law establishes the family as responsible for all persons in need of assistance. However, even though many of the ambulant persons have children, affective ties often have not been maintained. If it is determined that the patient does not have a definite place to go, they remain at the Center for a longer period of time.
The Center has found a mutually advantageous resolution to such situations. Thirty-four of the seventy-four workers at the Center are recuperated patients that do not have any place to go. They live at the Center, and they are contracted as social assistants, cleaning aids, laundry workers, or kitchen workers. Their work is a useful alternative in the face of a situation of a lack of personnel.
Returning the persons to life in society is not a simple question. For those who do not have family and are more than sixty years of age, a workable option is a nursing home, which in Cuba is funded by the state. But for persons between forty and fifty-nine years of age, reinsertion in society requires some place to live. “More than sixty percent of the persons here [at the Center] have sold their houses and they today do not have resources to rent,” Pico said. Sometimes they are placed in a refuge for people with houses damaged by hurricanes, but often the simplest option is to let them stay at the Center, even though the institution is not designed for long term residence.
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Belkis Delgado Cáceres, Director of Social Prevention of the Ministry of Work and Social Security, explained to Cubadebate that Cuba developed a policy of attention to persons with ambulant conduct in 2014. The program counts upon the contributions of public health, attorneys general, and the police.
The program has nine centers of attention to ambulant persons in different provinces, like the one in Cotorro, with a tenth scheduled for opening this year. They receive attention to their immediate needs upon their arrival, and an investigation of their origins is undertaken. Once registered as patients, they receive a bed, food, television, and water as well as the attention of a nurse or doctor. They are free to come and go as they desire, and some leave to wonder and return in the evening to eat and sleep. The provincial governments assume the costs for food, medicines, and clothes.
Delgado Cáceres informed Cubadebate that from 2014 to September 2023 some 3,690 cases have been identified, and 2798 have been given some type of solution, which constitutes 75% of the cases. She noted that although these figures are low in comparison to other countries, it nonetheless is taken as a very serious situation that there are persons in the street.
For Delgado Cáceres, the principal cause is lack of appropriate attention by the family, and a solution can only be attained by attending to the cause. Of the 2798 cases resolved, 1983 involved return to the family, in which preventive work was undertaken, so that the family accepts and attends the person, who generally has some disorder. In addition, 599 were placed in nursing homes, while others went to psychiatric hospitals for temporary treatment.
Delgado Cáceres also noted that 63 persons were granted new housing. In the majority of these cases, they had a residence to which to return, and in some cases, they were the proprietors. However, due to their conditions of health and age, they were denied their right to live in the residence by the nuclear family. For this reason, the participation of the attorney general is important, to defend the rights of persons that do not have the capacity to defend themselves.
The Director of Social Prevention stressed that the Centers should not be considered a solution. “We have to insist on the social reinsertion of these persons as full citizens.”
The Director of Social Prevention also observes that the problem has not been sufficiently diffused through the media of communication. There ought to be developed a mechanism for popular participation, so that persons who want to help would know where to call.
Fidel once said that if the Catholic Church were to develop a state that were to conduct itself in accordance with her teachings, it would do exactly what the Cuban Revolutionary Government has done.
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