About marginalized workers: uses and destinations of the prison population in Havana

Taking Havana city as our framework, this article analyses the forced inclusion of vagrants and criminals to the productive process who developed different works involving services, construction and hygiene of the city. His employment in these activities allowed the authorities to meet the needs of the labour market with a free workforce or at very low cost, economic utility that was justified by the colonial administration with a moralizing discourse that gave a re-educative function to labour.