Havana/A week after the children who slept in the basement of the hotel Great Muthu Havanain Miramar, were interviewed by 14ymedio –after their images spread on social networks–, official television dedicated an extensive report to them this Thursday. In it, an official from Havana, Yadelis Valencia, director of the Paseo Marítimo on 1st and 70th, assures that they had been observing the situation since the beginning of the summer and that she called “several authorities looking for some support.” The response “took a while,” he said, measured at first, to continue, in unusual statements: “It delayed to the point that when it came out on the networks, action was taken.”
The authorities of the capital affirm that they came to “the care of these children in risk situations,” which numbered nine. After visiting their homes and schools, “measures were adopted with the relatives who failed to comply with the duty to protect the minor and with the institutions where the events occurred.”
When this newspaper interviewed the minors who slept on the ground floor of the luxurious establishment, they assured that they do not have parents or other adults to take care of them. However, in the television report, the Deputy Attorney General of the Republic, Alina Montesinos Lee, explained that “criminal proceedings” were opened against the parents of these minors for a “serious breach of parental responsibility,” which is regulated both in the Family Code and in Article 86 of the Constitution. The official did not detail how many parents were accused or if they are all.
When this newspaper interviewed the minors, they stated that they do not have parents or other adults who take care of them.
A mother, said the First Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Security, Yaniris Hernández Vento, went to the authorities several times to request support with her son, who was “difficult to handle.” “He has found help, but in our opinion it has not been totally systematic and comprehensive,” the official acknowledged.
Likewise, Hernández Vento asserted that the children “identified in this situation come from dysfunctional families” and that “they have had inappropriate behavior, not only at school but also in the community and at home.”
The report insists that the case is “a specific event that has been highly visible,” but at the same time recognizes that “it is a more worrying problem”: “children and adolescents who, during school hours and until late at night, hang around tourist centers, restaurants and public spaces in activities inappropriate for their normal development.”
Looking at a possible solution, Rolando Ginarte, delegate of the Belén Popular Council, in Old Havana, one of those points where minors can be seen on the street, vaguely stated that “work is being done but there is still a lot to do,” and conceded that “there are many children besieging tourism.”
That they bother foreign visitors seems to be a central issue, and other interviewees comment on it. They ask for “one peso, one dollar to eat,” says a restaurant waiter. “They are besieging tourism, it looks pretty ugly,” says the custodian of an institution.
Social workers, a total of 14,000 throughout the country, cannot cope with the problem. “Unfortunately, not all positions are filled,” said the first vice minister about the reduced workforce of the capital’s institutions.
“It is the responsibility of the school to diagnose the behavior of the students,” says journalist Lázaro Manuel Alonso in the report, who adds the but: “when these children are absent from class, the alerts to the organizations that have the mission of responding to this sensitive issue do not always work.”
Likewise, he says that there is a “gap” when it comes to identifying cases and providing a solution, but, at the same time, that “given the complex economic situation that many families in the country are experiencing today, content with identifying and characterizing minors who are abandoned or homeless is not enough.”
