POLITICS-CUBA: Anti-US March to Take Place amid Economic Worries

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jul 24 2001 (IPS) - The Cuban government plans to turn this year’s national Jul 26 holiday, anniversary of the Fidel Castro- led 1953 rebellion, into a massive protest march against the United States, but the event comes at moment of great economic uncertainty.

President Castro announced the march Monday evening, altering the format of the traditional ceremonies of National Rebellion Day for the second year in a row.

Instead of a rally and a speech in a province chosen based on its economic, social and political achievements, this year – like last year – there will be a march outside the offices of the United States Interests Section in Havana.

“The next three days will be days of combat, of patriotic exaltation, of a call to fight, and the 26th an historic day in the battle of ideas,” said Castro as he outlined yet another chapter in his “ideological campaign” against Washington.

Every year, there are festivals, political ceremonies and the inauguration of public works on the day that, 48 years ago, marked the beginning of the six-year struggle that ultimately led to the victory of Castro’s revolution on Jan 1, 1959.

The “combative” spirit expressed by the state-run media and by government supporters, however, coincides with a climate of uncertainty that originated in the recent announcement of the results of this year’s sugarcane harvest.

Though sugar no longer represents what it used to for the Cuban economy, most people seem to maintain the deep-seated belief that “without sugar there is no country.” Concern deepens every time there is a new decline in production in this strategic sector.

After a prolonged silence, government officials acknowledged in June that the 2000-2001 harvest ended in May with a total output of 3.5 million tons of sugar, a million tons less than in the previous harvest.

Another factor feeding public concern about the economic is that the government’s promise of a summer without power outages has not been kept in Havana or in other cities of the island’s interior. However, the blackouts have been blamed on equipment failure, not on a lack of fuel for the energy plants as has occurred in the past.

Rumours about a halt in oil-well digging by the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras have dissipated hopes for the quick discovery of an important petroleum deposit that would reduce Cuba’s dependence on foreign fuel.

In contrast to the economic problems of other sectors, the Ministry of Tourism reported that more than a million tourists have visited the island since the beginning of the year. Officials calculate the year’s total will reach two million by the end of December, or 15 percent more than in 2000.

Economic studies indicate, however, that despite the reactivation of most sectors, there are many that have not recuperated the levels reached in 1989, the year prior to the economic crisis that persisted throughout the 1990s.

The effects of the economic reactivation have failed also to significantly improve the standard of living of Cuba’s more than 11.1 million inhabitants, who still face high food prices and an urban transport crisis.

On the foreign front, the United States Border Patrol reports that 1,757 Cubans reached that country’s coast illegally during the period of Oct 1, 2000 and Jul 12, 2001.

Cuban emigrants, who usually cite economic as well as political reasons when they request asylum in the United States, are also known to reach the that country by air, travelling through third countries and using false documents.

“Wages are not enough to get by, not enough for food, for clothing, much less for maintaining a home and everything that involves. One has to constantly be inventing ways to obtain dollars,” Guillermo Rojas, teacher and craftsman, told IPS.

Rojas works at a primary school by day, and at night he makes woodcarvings, an activity he says “is what guarantees the family’s sustenance.”

Opinion polls have shown that a majority of Cubans are most frustrated by the fact that many items of basic necessity can only be purchased with freely circulating US dollars, not with Cuban pesos.

And, according to a study by the governmental Territorial Office of Statistics, in Havana, more than 77 percent of the capital’s households say their “income does not cover family expenses.”

“I will be at the Jul 26 march like most Havana residents,” Rojas said, though he admitted he is “concerned by all the money the country spends on these demonstrations, especially when the economic situations remains so difficult.”

‘Granma’ newspaper, mouthpiece of the governing Communist Party, said in an editorial Tuesday that the demonstration on Rebellion Day, with attendance forecast to reach 1.2 million people, will be “the most gigantic protest march against the aggressions and crimes of (US) imperialism committed against Cuba.”

Havana accuses the United State for causing losses upwards of 70 billion dollars as a result of the economic sanctions in place since 1960, and which the Helms-Burton Act tightened in 1996.

The US legislation, whose official name is the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, stipulates sanctions for third countries whose companies conduct business involving US property expropriated by the Castro revolution of 1959. To date, the United States has not enforced the law.

The Cuban government also blames the United States for the deaths of 3,478 people and the physical incapacity of 2,099 more, victims of alleged terrorist acts organised in the United States by anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

Furthermore, says the ‘Granma’ editorial, “the new government of the United States (under President George W. Bush) has proven to be more egoistic, more insatiable and less cooperative than ever with the rest of the world.”