Una cronaca del primo maggio a Cuba da parte di una compagna dell'answer, Gloria La Riva. Milioni di persone in piazza. Il discorso di Castro che afferma che ogni intimidazione sarà respinta e conclude con l'ultimo saluto del Che" Hasta la Victoreia siempre!!"

A Cuba il fronte di massa è diretto dal partito proletario, non da quello borghese. sarà molto più duro vincere per gli Usa nonostante gli aiuti che gli vengono dalla socialdemocrazia.

Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 15, 2003
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

IN RESPONSE TO U.S. THREATS: MILLIONS PLEDGE
TO DEFEND CUBA'S SOVEREIGNTY

By Gloria La Riva
Havana, Cuba

More than 1 million Cubans gathered in Havana's Revolution Square on May
1 for International Workers' Day and proclaimed this year's theme: "The
First for Socialism."

As early as midnight, a proud and militant people left from their
residences all over Havana province to assemble in the city. Half of
Havana's 2 million were there. Across the country, almost 6 million more
marched in all 14 provinces and the Isle of Youth.

As the people entered Revolution Square, small Cuban flags were
distributed to all present. This has become a tradition in recent years.
A sea of flags rises in the air as people show support for speakers'
remarks.

In the aftermath of the Iraq war, and faced with increasing threats by
the U.S., the Cuban people show a deep awareness of the need to mobilize
in their defense.

That's why the mass rally was not just a day to honor workers and their
accomplishments. Along with beautiful cultural performances, the
speakers denounced U.S. imperialism's designs on the world, and pledged
that Cuba is not alone.

Pedro Ross, general secretary of the 3-million-strong Cuban Workers
Federation (CTC), opened the rally. He mentioned the actions taken by
Cuba to defeat counter-revolutionary forces directed by the U.S., as
well as to stop U.S.-backed hijackings.

"I want to put a vote to you. Are you in agreement with the measures
that the government adopted to defend the integrity and sovereignty of
the nation, and those that may be necessary to defend the lives of
citizens and of socialism? Raise your flags if you agree."

The giant gathering turned red, white and blue with the paper Cuban
flags as the people proclaimed a resounding yes.

U.S. INCITES COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES

At the same time that the U.S. was preparing its attack on Iraq, James
Cason, the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, was inciting counter-
revolutionary activity inside Cuba, personally handing out materials and
money to nurture an opposition. The U.S. government was also encouraging
hijackings by refusing to return to Cuba the criminals and property they
had stolen. This crisis came to a head just as the bombs started falling
on Baghdad.

In this dangerous situation, Cuba arrested and tried 75 people on
charges of collaborating with U.S. officials against the revolution.
Then three boat hijackers who had endangered the lives of many
passengers were tried and executed in April.

This led some governments and prominent individuals to attack Cuba, but
in recent weeks they have been answered by statements coming from many
parts of the world.

Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, U.S. professor Noam Chomsky and Port
uguese writer José Saramago were among those who immediately signed on
to a particularly scurrilous statement circulated by the U.S. Campaign
for Peace and Democracy.

This was answered by a declaration from well-known Cuban artists and
writers, called a "Message from Havana for Friends Who are Far Away." It
urged those who had signed the anti-Cuba statements to understand Cuba's
embattled situation and reconsider their position.

The sponsoring Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC) made a
distinction between those who they consider to be friends of Cuba, like
Galeano and Chomsky, from those who have long been hostile to the Cuban
Revolution, like right-winger Mario Vargas Llosa. So far, this
declaration has been signed by 13,352 Cuban artists, including Silvio
Rodríguez, Amaury Perez, Omara Portuondo, Pablo Milanes, Miguel Barnet
and others.

At the May Day rally, speakers stressed the urgency of solidarity with
Cuba, among them Rev. Lucius Walker of Pastors for Peace and German
writer Heinz Dieterich Stefan.

Well-known Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, who has
circulated a declaration in Latin America called "To the Conscience of
the World," available at www.granma.cubaweb.cu, said, "Many statements
on the Cuban situation, although done in good faith, can seem supportive
and yet still magnify issues that the U.S. seeks to justify an invasion
of Cuba.

"That truth obligates all the peoples of the world--including the people
of the United States, whose role in the survival of humanity is and will
be very important--to think in concrete terms, how we can detain the
cowardly offensive against Cuba, which is an offensive against
humanity."

Galeano and Chomsky also signed Gonzalez's defense of Cuba. Several
U.S.
figures joined in, including Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte and Ramsey
Clark.

Miguel Barnet, noted Cuban author and UNEAC vice-president, said,
"Humanity is experiencing moments of crisis and extreme danger for the
survival of the planet. ... Our obligation, as intellectuals and
artists, is to avoid all possible risks for our country. We need to be
conscious that our main priority is to defend our homeland.

"It is a matter now of closing ranks against the dark forces of fascism
that destroy human beings, that oppress and alienate them.

"The world will not permit our people to be massacred, or Havana to go
up in flames some day like Baghdad, or our heritage to be ransacked, our
educational, cultural and scientific works leveled .... That is why to
slander Cuba today, to turn one's back, is an act of injustice and
irresponsible."

Claudia Cambia, Argentinian organizer for the Cuban Five political
prisoners in the U.S., condemned the imperialist media's mercenary role.

"The media campaign launched against Cuba in these last weeks is
indignant, dirty, disgusting ....

"Why don't they inform the public about the terrible violation of human
rights that the five Cuban heroes are constantly subjected to in U.S.
prisons? Why don't they write about the solitary confinement, the
isolation. ... Why not?

"It's simply because one doesn't talk about the untouchable empire. They
can imprison innocent people and torture them, they can massacre
peoples, invade nations, carry out terrorist acts, they can have weapons
of mass destruction with the certainty that they will not be condemned
in the media, nor the United Nations or Organization of American States.

"But be careful, because we the people did condemn them when we came
out
throughout the world to repudiate the genocide and double standard of
the U.S. government. And it will be the people who will put a brake on
the empire and their emperor...."

'NEVER HAS THE WORLD WITNESSED SUCH AN UNEQUAL FIGHT'

As Cuban President Fidel Castro walked from the assembled crowd to the
podium below a contemplative statue of José Martí, the crowd erupted
into cheers and chants for the Cuban leader. His talk began with a vow
that Cuba would never bow to the demands from 90 miles to the north.

"Our heroic people have struggled for 44 years from this small Caribbean
island just a few miles away from the most formidable imperial power
ever known by humankind. In so doing, they have written an unprecedented
chapter in history. Never has the world witnessed such an unequal fight.

"Some may have believed that the rise of the empire to the status of
sole superpower, with a military and technological might that has no
counterweight anywhere in the world, would frighten or dishearten the
Cuban people ....

"On a day like today, this glorious International Workers' Day, which
commemorates the death of the five martyrs of Chicago, I declare, on
behalf of the 1 million Cubans gathered here, that we will face up to
any threats, we will not yield to any pressures, and that we are
prepared to defend our homeland and our revolution with ideas and with
weapons to our last drop of blood."

President Castro reviewed the feats of the revolution and its people,
beginning with the 1959 overthrow of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of
Fulgencio Batista, with its 80,000 soldiers and police. He spoke of the
literacy campaign, the 72-hour defeat of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion,
and the Cuban people's bravery during the precipitous 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis.

He talked of the impressive educational levels Cuba has achieved. "It
has the highest school retention rate-over 99 percent between
kindergarten and ninth grade--of all the nations in the hemisphere. Its
elementary school students rank first worldwide in the knowledge of
their mother language and mathematics."

Saying, "In no other people has the spirit of international solidarity
become so deeply rooted," President Castro gave a sweeping overview of
Cuba's internationalist missions in support of liberation struggles from
Algeria, Republic of Congo, Guinea and Angola to Vietnam and Grenada.

Lastly, he warned that if the U.S. were to attack Cuba, "The aggressors
would not merely be facing an army, but rather thousands of armies that
would constantly reproduce themselves and make the enemy pay such a
high
cost in casualties that it would far exceed the cost in lives of its
sons and daughters that the American people would be willing to pay for
the adventures and ideas of President Bush. Today, he enjoys majority
support, but it is dropping, and tomorrow it could be reduced to zero.

"The American people, the millions of highly cultivated individuals who
reason and think ... will show that you cannot fool all of the people,
and perhaps not even part of the people, all of the time. One day they
will put a straitjacket on those who need it before they manage to
annihilate life on the planet. ...

"We do not want the blood of Cubans and Americans to be shed in a war.
We do not want countless numbers of lives of people who could be friends
to be lost in an armed conflict. But never has a people had such sacred
things to defend, or such profound convictions to fight for, to such a
degree that they would rather be obliterated from the face of the Earth
than abandon the noble and generous work for which so many generations
of Cubans have paid the high cost of the lives of many of their finest
sons and daughters.

"We are sustained by the deepest conviction that ideas are worth more
than weapons, no matter how sophisticated and powerful those weapons
may
be.

"Let us say like Che Guevara when he bid us farewell:

"Hasta la Victoria Siempre!"

- END -