The ‘chain of favors’ that keeps Cubans afloat in the face of state abandonment

The ‘chain of favors’ that keeps Cubans afloat in the face of state abandonment Tired of waiting for a government that has turned its back on them, millions of people suffering from hunger, homelessness and a lack of medicine in Cuba are relying on solidarity to survive Vicente Borrero has sunburned skin and wears a hole-ridden tuxedo, a dirty old cap and faded shorts. His eyes appear to always be looking away, always on the verge of tears. Vicente looks like the last survivor from the village of Jicotea, in Santiago de Cuba, a post-war man who saw it all and lived it all.

In his house, built with a zinc roof and plank walls, through which any torrential rain can penetrate, Vicente has been waiting for someone for a long time. The day that Yasser Sosa traveled more than 90 miles to find him, Vicente couldn’t believe it. He looked at the visitor and told him that he was probably just like all the others, who had passed by the village for years, promising to help him.



Vicente doesn’t know it yet, but, in a few days, he’ll have a new home. He will leave the space where he’s lived for 77 years and move to a cement house that’s not far away. It has a garden and a front porch.

Vicente doesn’t walk like other people. Due to a congenital defect, he’s learned to move nimbly, using the strength of his arms and feet to traverse rocky paths on a daily basis. A few days ago, someone saw him crawling through a local park and notified Guillermo Rodríguez, a 34-year-old journalist from Ciego de Ávila.

For at least three years, Guillermo has been raising money from Cubans on and off the island to buy houses for the homeless. The country currently has a deficit of 862,000 properties , according to data from the National Statistics Office (ONEI). However, unofficial figures suggest that there are some 1.

2 million homeless Cubans, while thousands more reside in overcrowded or almost-marginal conditions. Rodríguez asked Sosa, his right-hand man in Santiago de Cuba, to locate Vicente immediately. After finding him, he turned to his Facebook followers and told them who Vicente was: a disabled, unmarried man with no children, who had been in a wheelchair for more than 10 years.

Vicente’s parents — his only support system — died a long time ago. He lives on a monthly pension of 1,500 Cuban pesos (a little over $5) from the state, enough to eat just once every two days. It took three days to raise 210,000 Cuban pesos ($583).

Rodríguez subsequently allocated 180,000 pesos ($500) to purchase the house. With the rest of the funds, he’ll furnish it with appliances that Vicente has never had. Rodríguez did the same thing over a month ago for Benito, a single father living in the center of the island, in a house made of planks with a dirt floor, and his 10-month-old baby.

With 1.6 million pesos (more than $4,400), the volunteers acquired a two-story home and everything the father needed to start over. There are days when Rodríguez searches for medicine for a mother, who is frightened by her daughter’s scabies.

Sometimes he tries to get a wheelchair for a sick person, or a rice cooker for a housewife. He and his team are the ones who show up with a bar of soap or a package of spaghetti to give away, or they offer to carry a donated mattress for an elderly man who has nowhere to sleep. It’s a silent solidarity movement.

“A chain of favors,” Rodríguez notes. “Yesterday, two people went to pick up donated nebulizers for their children with asthma: they arrived with medicines to give to someone else, in case they needed them. The number of vulnerable, abandoned people is numerous.

In Cuba, a network of support and empathy has been created [...

] in a country so devastated , people cling to that. In Cuba, only neighbors can help each other out.” For several years now, Cubans haven’t waited around for their government.

The state has left them orphaned, deprived of everything. Some say they feel betrayed, as if the authorities have turned their backs on them. Those who receive remittances from abroad are freed from depending on the increasingly scarce rationed food that the government barely guarantees.

Those who manage to get into business are navigating shortages of all kinds, in a country with a collapsed, dependent economy that ended 2024 with an inflation rate of 24.88%. Tourism is increasingly depressed due to the lack of travel, while the private sector is impeded from growing.

Today, in Cuba, according to studies, around 89% of families live in extreme poverty . In many cases, activists or civil society organizations fill the gaps in the ever-increasing space left by the government. And, after stepping in, almost all of them end up targeted by the political police, or are forced to abandon their work.

“I need Clonazepam for my daughter,” says a desperate mother, in a WhatsApp group named Manos a la Obra (“Let’s get to work”). Soon, someone offers to share theirs. Groups of this type are increasingly popping up on social media.

In these online forums, Cubans often share, distribute and exchange medicines. On the island — as the government itself has acknowledged — more than 460 medications are in short supply in the state pharmacies. Some people, faced with the possibility of death due to lack of treatment or surgery, launch GoFundMe campaigns to request humanitarian visas, or financial donations to cover a patient’s transfer to a hospital beyond the island.

Art historian and activist Yamilka Lafita — who has helped launch some of the most visible campaigns in recent years — asserts that, without knowing how or since when, it’s Cuban civil society that has united to survive. “In Cuba today, there are no supplies, treatments, reagents..

. there aren’t even doctors to perform operations. And these campaigns are a way to denounce the public health system, which is just another cog in the wheel of this failed state ,” Lafita laments.

She has helped transport children with cancer or in need of transplants to hospitals in Spain or the United States, so that they can receive treatment and surgeries. “Some people tell me: ‘You’re putting Band-Aids on the dictatorship.’ But I’m not putting Band-Aids on it, because my help denounces the system.

Every contribution you make — whether it’s getting a humanitarian visa, or donating two syringes — helps a Cuban survive in poverty.” Some Cubans attest that this is the greatest crisis of all time, even worse than the so-called Special Period (1991-2000), which began following the collapse of the Soviet Union. They base their testimony on the lack of hope people have for immediate change, but mostly on what can be seen on the street: an emigration of almost two million Cubans in about three years ; people dying without medical care; retirees whose pensions are insufficient; or people seen sleeping on the streets, something they say was unheard of in the 1990s.

The Cuban authorities acknowledge some 3,690 people “displaying wandering behavior,” but this is believed to be an undercount. José Daniel Ferrer, a renowned political leader from the eastern part of the island, knows this firsthand. Since his release from prison at the beginning of the year (following negotiations between the Cuban government and the Vatican), he’s been feeding hundreds of people.

Every day, they come to his house, looking for food. With aid that he receives from abroad, Ferrer and his family distribute more than a thousand hot meals each afternoon, handing them out to people who don’t receive state support. The difference, according to the opposition leader, is that Cuba, today, is a place where there’s food for those who have money.

“In the early 1990s, the situation was such that, even if you had money, you couldn’t get much. You couldn’t move from one place to another, because the roads were deserted and there were barely any vehicles moving,” he recalls. “Now, if you have money, you can’t go to bed without eating, because there are products in dollars — very expensive — and there are MSMEs (micro, small and medium-sized private enterprises).

But for those elderly people who live on a thousand-something pesos in retirement, the hunger is as terrible, even worse than what we suffered from during the Special Period. They depend on what arrives at the grocery store..

. and almost nothing ever arrives. So, some people are faring worse.

” In Cuba, there’s also talk of the “new rich.” This is in stark contrast to what the Cuban government denied for years: social classes in a country where everyone was supposedly “equal.” These are people who come and go from the island; they often run businesses.

Many of them can be seen in the increasingly common luxury cars — such as Mercedes-Benzes, Audis, or Chevrolets — that roll through Havana’s streets. However, what nobody is spared from, what affects everyone across the board, are the blackouts, the almost-daily power outages across the country. This electricity crisis is due to the lack of maintenance at the aging thermoelectric plants, as well as the reduction in fuel arriving from allied nations, such as Venezuela.

This is something that Cubans have also tried to take control of: in the absence of a state to resolve the energy crisis that has worsened since last year, some in the diaspora send light generators, small solar panels, candles and flashlights from abroad. But the truth is that these, too, are running out. Life becomes dark for everyone, equally.

In this case, it’s the Cuban government that has sought help from abroad. And, once again, it’s relying on Russia to finally pull the country out of its massive energy crisis. But that, according to economists, won’t be enough, so long as the government persists in its centralized economic model.

“Cubans have remained stuck in the Cold War view of trade relations. They believe that Russia, China and others should help them, because they’re confronting the United States and are an important player for the great powers,” says economist Ricardo Torres, a former researcher at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana and a professor at American University in Washington, D.C.

“I’m not sure the Russians see it that way. Such support would be very important for Cuba, but [the Cuban government] has never been interested in doing what it needs to do with its economic model to become a more reliable counterpart.” More than six decades after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution , it seems clear that it won’t be Russia that saves the country, nor activists who will heal the sick and provide housing for all the homeless Cubans.

According to the Cuban Constitution, the state is responsible for ensuring the well-being of the population. But people believe there’s one thing that the government — which has stopped taking charge of almost everything — does handle perfectly: control. It maintains a heavy level of repression, allocating all kinds of reinforcements to ensure this.

In a country that’s unable to guarantee food, electricity, or medical care, more than 1,000 political prisoners are held in its jails. “In Cuba, if a person suffers from a medical emergency, it’s likely that an ambulance will take hours to come, if it arrives at all,” activist Carolina Barrero sighs. “But, if that same person shouts ‘Down with Raúl Castro!’ in the street, police patrols and state security agents will appear within minutes to detain and interrogate them.

This shows that the regime’s inability to provide basic services isn’t simply due to scarcity, but to a deliberate political will. Castroism has always been in the hands of an extractive elite, who are more interested in maintaining [Cuba’s] international facade than in the well-being of the people.” Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition Tu suscripción se está usando en otro dispositivo ¿Quieres añadir otro usuario a tu suscripción? Si continúas leyendo en este dispositivo, no se podrá leer en el otro.

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