Millions turn out for May Day parades  

BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND MARTIN KOPPEL
HAVANA, Cuba - Singing, dancing, and chanting, Cubans poured into the streets of the country's capital leading to Revolution Plaza here on May Day. About 1.3 million demonstrated in Havana. Similar marches took place throughout the Caribbean island on this international working-class holiday. Altogether, several million people turned out across the nation, in one of the largest mobilizations here in years.

It was the broadest and most visible rejection of U.S. imperialism's attempts to divide working people from their revolutionary leadership and force the Cuban people to submit to Washington's dictates through economic strangulation.

"Can imperialism - with its blockade, its Helms-Burton law, and aggression of all kinds - take away our independence, our revolution, our socialism?" asked Pedro Ross, general secretary of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC), in a brief speech just before the Havana march began under the hot morning sun.

"No!" tens of thousands boomed.

"Will the exploiters be able to return and take away our land, our homes, our factories, our hospitals, and our schools?" said Ross.

"No!" shouted most in the crowd.

"Will we workers go back to being slaves, under the whip of the capitalist boss, to fill the pockets of a bourgeois minority with the product of our sweat?" the CTC leader asked.

The cry of "No!" resonated through the vast square.

The spirit of this exchange permeated the demonstration.

"For this reason," Ross said, "workers, together with patriotic people, have signed our names to the Declaration of the 20th Century Mambises and to the Law of Dignity and Sovereignty. Both documents emphatically state that here in Cuba there will never be a counterrevolutionary transition, that we voted for socialism during the glorious days of Playa Girón and we continue to do so today."

Over the last two months, millions of workers, peasants, students, and other Cubans - the majority of the country's population of 11 million - have signed the Mambises Declaration. This manifesto was initiated by officers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) rejecting Washington's bribe and reaffirming their determination to defend Cuba's national sovereignty and socialist revolution. The mambises were the 19th century liberation fighters in the Cuban wars for independence from Spanish rule.

The Law of Dignity and Sovereignty Ross referred to was passed by Cuba's National Assembly in December in response to Washington's embargo-tightening Helms-Burton act.

Gathering signatures on these two documents and presenting them publicly has been a feature of recent mass mobilizations, including actions on April 16 celebrating 36 years since the victory by the Cuban people against the U.S.- organized mercenary invasion at Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs).

At the May Day march, hundreds of signs and banners, many of them hand-lettered, condemned Washington's economic war.

"No transition to capitalism, no surrender, no turning back to the past," read a placard carried by Luis Savinge, a member of a volunteer construction brigade in Boyeros. He explained that the slogan was his response to a report by U.S. president William Clinton that has overwhelmingly drawn derision among Cubans. In that January 28 document Clinton offered the Cuban people $4-8 billion in "aid" if they overthrew President Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro, minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and accepted a "transition" to capitalism as outlined in the Helms-Burton law.

"This is an insult by the United States," said Pascual Londres, a construction worker, referring to the demand to get rid of the two most prominent leaders of Cuba's revolutionary government. "It's going to be real hard for them to change our government. Even the children would fight that."

Internationalist commitment
At the head of the march, 4,000 members of the Blas Roca construction workers contingent carried portraits of Ernesto Che Guevara and other guerrilla fighters who fell in combat in Bolivia 30 years ago. The May Day march was dedicated to Che, an Argentine by birth who was one of the central leaders of the Cuban revolution, as part of honoring the 30th anniversary of his death.

In Bolivia, Guevara was leading a guerrilla front that set out to build a movement of workers and peasants that could extend the socialist revolution throughout South America. He was captured by Bolivian army forces on Oct. 8, 1967, and murdered the next day with U.S. complicity.

"Cuban internationalists have shed their blood all over the world," said José Mayans, 60, a parking lot attendant at the discotheque of the hotel Copacabana. He was part of a group of 200 workers and family members near the front of the demonstration who carried a bright red banner reading "100% Cuban." Mayans mentioned an eagerly sought new book recently published here, titled Secrets of the Generals. It consists of interviews with top FAR officials, who among other things describe internationalist missions they participated in - from Angola to Ethiopia, Syria, Bolivia, Argentina, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Vietnam - joining national liberation struggles and other fights against imperialism and reaction.

Mayans, a veteran of the Rebel Army, which led the revolutionary war in Cuba that toppled the U.S.-backed tyranny of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, took part in such missions in Angola and Nicaragua.

Midway during the parade, a group of hundreds of veterans of Playa Girón marched carrying placards with photos of Che and other guerrilla fighters in Bolivia. Those in the front row held the portraits of Bolivian, Peruvian, and Argentine fighters, followed by the photos of Cuban internationalists who fell in battle.

Ariel Marino volunteered and fought in Angola twice against the invading armies of South Africa. He also participated in a mission in Ethiopia in 1977 and is now a retired colonel from the FAR. "I am of African origin," he said. "I had to fight with my brothers against apartheid and reaction."

Maria del los Angeles González, who took part in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola in 1987-88, which dealt the decisive blow to the apartheid army, made a comment that drew smiles and nods from many around her in the contingent of internationalists. "We'll do it again," she said, "anywhere in the world that is possible."

Behind them was a group of hospital workers. "Today we're showing the enemy that we're not afraid," said Cristo Valina, 32, a nurse at the Ramón González Coro hospital in Havana. "They can't defeat us with all the laws they impose. We're not going to betray our martyrs," he stated, pointing to the portraits of Che and other guerrilla fighters.

Resisting Washington's economic war
The determination to resist Washington's economic war through efforts to improve efficiency and productivity in industry and agriculture, drawing on the creativity of workers and farmers, was evident throughout the march.

Public transportation workers carried a sign depicting a camello (camel) - the popular name for a special type of bus that symbolizes the many ways Cubans have found to confront the crisis, known here as the "special period." This crisis was sparked in the early 1990s when aid and favorable trade relations with Soviet bloc countries abruptly ended, triggering shortages in fuel, spare parts, and a sharp drop in production of food and industrial goods. The hardships have been exacerbated by Washington's escalating economic offensive.

The camellos, which have helped ease the severe transportation crunch, are put together by welding the bodies of two buses rendered inoperable from the lack of spare parts, and are drawn by a truck cab purchased or donated from the used market abroad. The weld produces a hump in the middle of the long vehicle -the origin of the humorous term.

You often hear complaints here that camellos are uncomfortable and crowded -they carry up to 300 people and lack good ventilation. But many workers are proud they came up with a solution, even if partial and imperfect, that has cut down substantially the long hours they had to wait to go to work or school.

Among the most boisterous contingents was the one of hundreds of whistle-blowing amarillos - special traffic inspectors, called the "ones in yellow" because of their uniforms. Their job is to stop cars with state license plates and fill them up with passengers who need a ride in the same direction the driver is going. They are popular in Cuba among working people and their contingent drew applause from others in the crowd. They are one of the best examples of the proletarian spirit that has prevailed in Cuba throughout the special period.

One of the most sizable contingents was made up of 6,000 steelworkers from Antillana de Acero, the largest steel mill in Havana, and their relatives and friends.

"We have achieved a small but steady pickup in production over the last two years," said Angel Sosa, 39, a machine operator at Antillana. "This year we are trying to produce 25,000 tons of steel, compared to 20,000 last year. We are well on our way to doing that. This is our answer to Helms- Burton."

Rejecting what capitalism has to offer
"What is on the agenda today in the world of neoliberal capitalism is economic instability," Ross said in his remarks opening the May Day march, "unemployment, and cutbacks in the miserable benefits that workers were previously able to wrest from capital through titanic, prolonged battles."

"This will result, sooner rather than later, in protest actions, steps toward unity in struggle, and class battles.

"We Cubans, through our resistance and tenacious defense of socialism, are making a modest contribution to the workers of the entire world. The struggles of the proletariat and of all the oppressed, wherever they may take place, are our battles, too, and they help strengthen our morale and our principles."

More than 600 representatives of trade unions from 40 countries observed the march from the reviewing stand at Revolution Plaza, along with 2,000 Cuban vanguard workers.

A number of workers interviewed at the demonstration commented on the devastation capitalism is bringing to working people around the world. "You don't see thousands of children sleeping in the streets here, as you do in the rest of Latin America," said Reynaldo Baroso, 57, a garment worker from Guanabacoa, who was part of a contingent of several thousand organized by the National Union of Light Industry Workers. "It's true, we have problems in Cuba, there are many shortages. But we're not exploited like wage slaves. And we're not under the boot of imperialism. Look at Mexico, a much bigger country with oil, more industrialized than Cuba. The poverty faced by workers and peasants there, especially since 1994, is unspeakable."

Baroso was referring to the collapse of the Mexican peso in December 1994 and the subsequent "bailout" by Washington, which loaned the Mexican government billions at exorbitant interest rates. The resulting austerity policies by the administration of Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, dictated by U.S. imperialism, pushed the number of those living in extreme poverty to 22 million last year - a 30 percent jump over 1995 in a nation of 92 million, increased unemployment, and accelerated land evictions of peasants.

"Clinton and [U.S. vice president Albert] Gore would like to do here what they did in Mexico," Baroso said. "But we won't let them."

Similar marches and rallies took place throughout Cuba on May Day. They included demonstrations of 300,000 in Santiago de Cuba, the country's second-largest city; 250,000 in Camaguey; 200,000 in Holguín; 150,000 in Guantánamo; and about 100,000 each in Cienfuegos, Ciego de Avila, Granma, Pinar del Río, Sancti Spíritus, and Santa Clara.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home