CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

May Day: Cubans once again to take to the plazas

CUBA, April 29, 2010. Cubans are once again preparing to return to plazas throughout the country in celebration of International Workers Day and with renewed enthusiasm this year.

As has been the case throughout the 50 years since January 1959, working men and women will participate in this event with mass parades, displaying the defense of the Revolution as a political process and the social guarantor of their achievements as their principal slogan.

For these men and women, as their labor union leaders have stated, the times when marches and public demonstrations were interrupted or prevented by force under the leadership of governments which ignored the demands and calls of the working people have been left in the past.

In those days, marches were about demanding better working conditions, the end to exploitation by large national and foreign businesses, and access to services like healthcare and education, to cite only a few examples that were out of reach back then.

Those demands ended with the revolutionary measures taken and the metamorphosis that began on that date. The banner of the proletariat was transformed into an expression of support for official action in alignment with workers’ interests.

This year, Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución and plazas throughout the island are destined to once again receive countless waves of Cuban men and women, whose fundamental motivation is to back the country in the face of the current anti-Cuban media campaign.

According to workers’ groups, it is to be the second major demonstration of its kind in less than a week, taking into account the approximately 8.2 million voters who went to the polls for the municipal elections on April 25.

But for this May Day, Cubans are also called on to demonstrate, with massive popular participation in all the provinces, their majority conviction as to the kind of democracy and rights that the people want and are defending.

(Cubaminrex- Granma International )

<< Back