A growing number of Cubans are forced to scavenge through garbage to find something to eat and survive, the independent outlet Cubanet reported on Wednesday.
Cuba is enduring an extremely dire humanitarian crisis stemming from more than six decades of communism under the authoritarian Castro regime. The communist-caused humanitarian crisis and the Castro regime’s gross mismanagement have caused the decline of the country’s population and the worst migrant crisis in Cuba’s history.
Nearly 90 percent of the remaining population now lives in conditions of extreme poverty in addition to other inhumane living conditions fueled by the collapse of Cuba’s infrastructure. Power blackouts and shortages of water, food, medicine, and other supplies are common, and Cubans have no access to adequate healthcare.
The collapse of Cuban infrastructure also affects the country’s garbage and disposal services — now barely functional — leading to an overflowing accumulation of garbage on the streets of the capital city of Havana.
The mounting garbage dumps, extreme poverty conditions, food shortages, and hunger prompted a surge in the popularity of buzos, or “divers”: individuals who desperately rummage through piles of garbage to find something to eat or sell for their sustenance. In a “good” month, divers reportedly earn only $17 at most.
“They throw good things in the garbage. Look, this bread is top-notch,” a Cuban woman said to Cubanet as she scavenged through garbage in the streets of Central Havana. “And so I found a pumpkin, too.”
An elderly Cuban man told the outlet that among the things he found in the garbage were “jeans, a pair of shoes, or a pair of pants” in addition to “food.”
“I find a pizza, I pick it up. I find a bit of spaghetti, I pick it up; a bit of rice, a piece of chicken I pick it up, because that’s what we live on,” the man said.
The elderly man referred to Cuba’s dire situation, worsened by rampant inflation in food and other basic supplies, stressing that he barely survives selling what he finds through the rummaging.
“Now life is very expensive,” he explained. “A loaf of bread with ham alone costs 100 pesos [$4.16]. What money do you have to have to survive? You have to be a potted plant, because here nobody lives on 500 or 600 pesos [$20.82 – $24.99].”
A man who identified himself as a “professional self-employed diver” told Cubanet that the desperate situation is not exclusive to a few, and assured the outlet, “You have to dive, even if you don’t want to.”
“The situation forces you to do things. What you don’t have to do is steal from anyone,” another elderly man told Cubanet as he searched through debris piled up in a corner.
Cubanet stressed in its report that the growing piles of garbage and desperate Cubans searching for food in them is not a situation isolated to Havana. Another report published in February indicated that more than 70 individuals gather daily in a garbage dump located near a Havana highway to search for food.
The group of people, Cubanet explained, have made the dump their “home,” finding objects of some use and many pieces of materials among the refuse that they later sell on the streets.
The growing number of desperate Cuban citizens scavenging through garbage resembles the situation created in Venezuela under the allied socialist regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro, where the same policies forced 15 percent of Venezuela’s impoverished citizens to eat from the garbage to survive.
The number of Venezuelans who had no choice but to eat from the garbage most notably spiked from 2014 to 2017, when the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis caused by the inevitable collapse of socialism in the country was at its most severe.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.