Hundreds of thousands of Cubans left on Sunday, summoned by the government and wearing masks, to parade for Labor Day to fill the streets and squares of the main cities, when the Caribbean island faces serious problems of scarcity and high prices.
After two years of confinement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, andThe government called the workers to the parade, facilitating in the capital buses to transport them to the vicinity of the capital’s Plaza de Revolución.
“Cuba Lives and Works” read in a great extended ribbon along the avenue that crosses the squarein the heart of Havana, at the beginning of the event to which workers and students were summoned from dawn.
With flags, banners and giant paper vials that simulated the “Soberana” and “Abdala” vaccines, developed by Cuban scientists against Covid-19, health sector workers opened the parade.
“Cuba does not stop” despite a “complex and challenging” international context where “hostility is growing and the US embargo is intensifying,” said the general secretary of the Cuban Workers’ Confederation, Ulises Guilarte, the only speaker on the day. .
Last week, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez accused the US administration of Democrat Joe Biden of wanting to exclude the island from the Summit of the Americas, to be held in June in Los Angeles, California.
Before the presence of President Miguel Díaz-Canel and the nonagenarian leader revolutionary Raul Castrowho stood firm in his olive green uniform, Guilarte saluted the presence of more than 1,050 visitors on behalf of foreign organizations.
State television broadcast live scenes of the parade in provincial capitals.
The mobilization of the machinery of the ruling Communist Party, occurs after a peak year in which the historic demonstrations of July 11, 2021 were recorded to the cry of “Freedom” and “We are hungry”, which left one dead, dozens of wounded and 1,395 detainees, of which 728 are still imprisoned, according to the latest count by the Miami-based NGO, Cubalex.
The NGO denounced this week that Independent journalists and activists were warned not to leave their homes on May 1.
“We denounce the harassment of several Cuban activists and journalists in recent days. State security has threatened them not to go out on the streets on May 1. This is how the island lives on workers’ day with previous days of repression,” he said. the organization on Twitter.