CUBA: May Day Celebrations Stress Unity, Firmness and Victory

[magbana]

Cuba: May Day Celebrations Stress Unity, Firmness and Victory

Cuba: May Day Celebrations Stress Unity, Firmness and Victory
By Luis Chirino

HAVANA, Cuba, April 30 (acn) Cubans mark May Day on Thursday with
huge celebrations and parades throughout the island under the Slogan
“Unity, Firmness and Victory,” which underscores the full support by
the Cuban people to their Socialist Revolution and its leadership,
Fidel Castro and Raul Castro.

Havana’s Jose Marti Revolution Square is ready for central
celebrations in the capital city with the participation of half a
million people, who will stage a march organized by labor
organizations, work centers and municipalities.

Leading the march will be the workers and students from the
Havana-based Information Technologies University, followed by over
20, 000 construction workers, plus many other labor entities and
enterprises, as well as neighbors of different Havana municipalities;
the march will be closed by 40, 000 youths who are currently involved
in the most recent social programs implemented by the Cuban
Revolution.

In recent statements to reporters, the General Secretary of the Cuban
Workers Federation, Salvador Valdes Mesa, called on workers to
participate in the celebrations along with their families at the
Revolution Square, which is ready to welcome the huge representation
of the Cuban people.

May Day celebrations will run parallel in all Cuban provinces, where
the people have been gearing up to the historic date for the past
weeks. Enthusiasm about what has been achieved by Cubans over the
past 50 years of Revolution and about the prospects ahead mark
preparations for rallies and marches throughout the country.

After the triumph of the Revolution, Cuban workers celebrated May Day
in 1959 for the first time. Major scenarios of that celebration were
the cities of Camaguey, Santiago de Cuba and Havana, where the people
were addressed by Revolution commanders Camilo Cienfuegos, Ernesto
Che Guevara and Raul Castro.

Some May Day-related events in Cuba

In 1890, Cuba joined May Day celebrations in homage to the Chicago
Martyrs and in meeting an accord reached by the Congress of the
Socialist International, held 1889 in Paris. The Havana Workers Guild
organized a march, with some 3,000 participants, on the city’s major
streets.

In 1919, during a rally at the Havana-based Payret cinema, Cuban
workers expressed their solidarity with the October Revolution and
with the struggle waged by European workers.

In 1925, Over 4,000 Cuban workers, bearing red flags, marched along
the members of the Havana Communist Organization. Cuban leader Julio
Antonio Mella gave a speech in which he termed then Cuban president
and dictator Gerardo Machado, as “tropical Mussolini.”

In 1961, Cuba inaugurated the international short-wave radio station
Radio Havana Cuba, in an effort to counter the information blockade
against the Revolution. The radio station has broadcast in seven
languages all these years in an effort to take the Cuban message and
solidarity with different peoples of the world.

In 1964, Fidel spoke at the main rally at the Jose Marti Revolution
Square where he stressed: “we will defend this flag, this sky, this
land at any price.”

In 1980, an impressing people’s demonstration took place at the
Revolution Square, where local and Latin American personalities gave
speeches. Fidel Castro closed the rally by reaffirming the position
of the Cuban people against the US economic blockade of Cuba, against
the American naval base in the Cuban territory of Guantanamo and
against US spy flights over national territory. That same May Day,
the Cuban media informed about a mobilization of Cuban troops in the
face of military exercises by the United States.

In the 1990´s, May Day celebrations took place amidst a very complex
economic and political situation marked by the stiffening of the US
economic blockade and the disappearance of the Socialist Camp and the
Soviet Union.

Representatives of other nations join Cuban May Day Celebrations

Over 1, 100 unionists, parliamentarians, politicians and member of
social and progressive movements from all continents confirmed their
participation in May Day Celebrations in Cuba. Most of the visitors
come from Europe and the Americas and they bring a message of support
to the Cuban Revolution.

Unionists from Panama, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and
Colombia, who will be present at the celebrations, recently visited
the Cuban Workers Federation building where they expressed their
gratefulness to the Cuban people for their resistance against the
cruel US economic blockade and for having preserved the example of
Socialism in the world.

While workers and their unions take to the streets in other countries
to claim for better working conditions and to protest capitalist and
neo-liberal policies, Cuban workers celebrate as they openly voice
their support of their Socialist Revolution, the only social and
political project that has guaranteed the workers´ legitimate rights.

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[Mika]

1. Viva Cuba!

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