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Indigence is BLACK

class and gender in Cuba and the world

Augusto César San Martín Albistur
Journalist
Havana, Cuba

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ccording to the 2012 census, 35.9% of
Cuba’s inhabitants are Afro-descendants: 9.3% are black and 26.6% mestizo.
Despite the fact that the statistics present the
Afro-descendant population as a minority, the reality exposes this group as the most affected by
the system’s indefinite economic crisis, thus making blacks a majority among the mass of indigents
and homeless people whose income is below the
level required for meeting one’s basic necessities.

Progressive Arc Party spokesperson Manuel
Cuesta Morúa thinks that indigence in Cuba has a
color: “It is racial; it is almost ethnic indigence…
One cannot say that all indigents are black, but
their race predominates in this group.”
There are many reasons that explain why Afrodescendants are at the bottom of the socio-economic scale. The primary one is their very limited
employment in the economic sector most affected
by foreign capital and the very few who receive
family remittances from abroad.

Another important factor in their frustrated social
growth is due to the Cuban economic system’s
lack of opportunities for them to progress. This
situation worsens racial prejudice.
Juan Antonio Madrazo, the Cuban Committee for
Racial Integration’s National Coordinator, asserts: “The poor in Cuba are not only in poverty,
but also have no way to escape it. The majority of
people in this economic group are black.”

Most indigents support themselves by selling second hand things they find in the trash. Others
gather trash in opulent neighborhoods that they
call “zonas congeladas” [frozen zones]. A twentyeight year old Afro-descendant sells second hand
items collected from the trash. His greatest hope is
“hitting the winning bolita number,” which is an illegal lottery of sorts. He adds that he stopped looking
for work because “positions were being given to others, even when they didn’t have the required qualifications.” When he worked as a private construction
worker, this Afro-descendant felt the watchful eye of
those who hired him all the time: “It was as if I had
gone there not to work, but to steal.”