LABOUR-CUBA: A May 1st with Protests, Not Parades

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Apr 29 2000 (IPS) - This May first, International Labour Day, the Cuban government is organising popular demonstrations to demand that the United States return the shipwrecked boy Elián González and to protest the recent United Nations (UN) condemnation of the island’s human rights situation.

“We bet anything that this year is going to beat all records for attendance,” announced the Workers’ Central of Cuba (CTC), the only union legally permitted on the island and the principal organiser of the festivities, which this go-round opted to for public demonstrations instead of the usual Labour Day parades.

The Cuban flag is the only symbol to be carried by demonstrators, who have been called upon to show “genuine unity” and support for president Fidel Castro, who usually heads the May first celebrations, alongside other government leaders, in Havana’s Revolution Plaza.

This vast esplanade – where there stands an enormous monument to José Martí, Cuba’s independence leader in the 1800s – has the capacity to hold approximately one million people. In January 1998 it was the site of a multitudinous mass led by Pope John Paul II.

Official sources say the government hopes this occasion will be “the largest ceremony of all time” and that an “avalanche of people” will invade the capital’s plaza and major avenues.

The celebration is to take place in an international context where Cuba is apparently on the downslide. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights last week approved a resolution, by a vote of 21 to 18, that condemns the island’s human rights record.

The resolution was sponsored by the Czech Republic and Poland, both supporters of Cuba prior to the dissolution of the Eastern Europe socialist bloc in the early 1990s.

According to Havana, this “anti-Cuban” gesture, which was backed by the European Union (EU), is part of the “subversive” campaigns that attempt “in vain” to destabilise and humiliate the country. The United States is the true force behind the UN condemnation, says the Castro government.

Among its expressions of irritation with the decision by “old and cultured Europe,” the Cuban government decided to withdraw its request for membership in the Lomé Convention (an agreement for co-operation between the EU and its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific), in order to avoid “unacceptable demands” being placed upon the island.

And this Monday, the CTC exhorts the Cuban people to flood the streets, parks and plazas of the island to show their rejection of this “cowardly accusation,” to demand an end to the US blockade against Cuba and to repudiate “the so-called internal dissidence,” which the official union characterised as “a creation of imperialism.”

Organisations of the illegal political opposition stated in a joint declaration released this week that the work of the UN commission validated “the prevalent trend among democratic nations to promote (the opening of) spaces for liberty and tolerance using democratic and political means.”

“In no way do we interpret the position of the governments that voted in favour of the resolution as being hostile to the Cuban people,” reads the communique distributed to the foreign press, signed by five political groups considered part of the “moderate opposition.”

The Cuban government flatly rejects any reference to human rights violations, asserting that the island is a “model” in this respect, due to its social policy and the equal access of its citizens to education, health services, employment and social security.

The Labour Day festivities Monday will also celebrate the “happy reunion” of the six-year-old Cuban boy Elián González with his father, Juan Miguel González, which occurred last Saturday.

But other slogans for the May Day celebrations, to be attended by guests from some 20 countries, demand Elián’s return to Cuba. “Justice will not be complete” until the boy is back in his homeland “together with his true family,” said one of the organisers.

Elián and his father are currently staying at a residence belonging to the US government on the Wye River in the state of Maryland, some 100 km from Washington DC, and outside the 40 km limit established for the movement of Cuban diplomatic personnel in the United States.

Cuban officials who wish to visit the boy and his father at Wye River must request authorisation from the US State Department, which on another front has not granted all the visas requested by Havana for a group of Elián’s classmates and experts designated to help with the boy’s repatriation to Cuba.

Castro criticised these limitations Friday, saying they complicate and obstruct the process of the boy’s re-adaptation to his normal life after the trauma he suffered when the boat he was travelling in last November sank, killing his mother, as well as the stresses of living five months with relatives who vehemently fought to keep him in Miami, Florida.

Elián was found floating in the Florida Straits, tied to an inner- tube, last November 25. He was then handed over to his great-uncle Lázaro González, a Miami resident, who later tried to obtain legal custody of the boy, saying he wanted him to grow up “in freedom.”