The Cuban Revolution Celebrated Its Agony on May Day    

Tens of thousands of disaffected citizens were herded into a parade in front of Raul Castro and President Diaz-Canel.

By Juan Izquierdo, Juan Diego Rodriguez, & Jose Lassa (14ymedio)

HAVANA TIMES – In ​​a city drowned in garbage, like Havana, you can march on all sorts of things this May Day. Papers, shells, cans, and even Cuban flags scatter beneath your feet. They are the best symbol of a parade where apathy is as common as the slogans, and whose zero coordinate is the giant “abrasion” in Revolution Square.

On the platform, at the feet of JoséMartí, in a Masonic pose—as designed by Batista’s architects—the regime’s top brass also wave small flags. Decrepit, Raúl Castro and José Ramón Machado Ventura escort Miguel Díaz-Canel, in his overly-tight national flag sweater. Manuel Marrero in garish red, generals in a dry olive green, sweaty guayaberas: the colors of Castroism.

A crowd that the official press estimates at “almost a million” also passes by, poses for a photo, and continues walking under the Havana sun. The nearly 30 degrees of steamy heat that plagues the capital today hasn’t stopped a small group of elderly military personnel, displaying a sort of vest covered in medals, from enthusiastically waving their portraits of Fidel.

If May Day is good for anything, it’s for creating picturesque symbolic convergences: a “worker” parades alongside a solemn poster of Fidel, but his shorts feature rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine—a great friend of the Revolution—making an obscene gesture. A clean-shaven man in running shoes rests next to a ragged beggar. Upside down and already forgotten next to the curb, a banner: “Together we create Cuba.”

14ymedio never misses the parade, but not to demand rights—the independent press doesn’t have them in a dictatorship—but to report in great detail on the carnival of reaffirmation of a regime that calls its workers together out of obligation, and that turns May Day into an event of pure pathos.

Early in the morning, Havana even resembles a city with electricity. “There was no blackout last night!” is repeated insistently by the crowd, like another slogan. The avenues leading to the “abrasion” were momentarily spared from the power outage so that drones from the Armed Forces, Cubadebate, and Granma could take photos of the umpteenth “historic occasion.”

The Cuban Television cameras—directed by the voiceover of Froilán Arencibia, the regime’s master of ceremonies—relentlessly focus on the section of the stands where the “friendly” diplomats are sheltering from the sun. Standing out among them are Hua Xin, the Chinese ambassador, and a large group of North Korean soldiers, for whom the atmosphere could not be more familiar.

On the street, the parade is seen in its true form: buses miraculously “appearing” to transport the participants, legs tired from a walk of several kilometers, half-asleep “proletarians” taking a nap on the curb, and garbage that is only a harbinger of the tons of waste that will remain in the streets after the event.

The trucks packed with “unionists” start rolling off, with a picture or banner plastered on their noses. The buses start rolling off with stickers designed and printed by the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department, which recently boasted on television that May Day was its time of plenty. The protocol cars, with tinted windows, start rolling off with the “high-class” leaders inside.

Since Wednesday, the Red Cross and other institutions have deployed medical tents and command posts. “We need to provide a lot of stretchers,” says a staff member. “With the number of people who will be arriving without breakfast, fainting spells will be common.”

This year is special, Cubadebate warns, because 25 years ago, an ailing Fidel Castro pronounced the “concept of Revolution,” an apostolic creed that officials repeat and canonically fail to fulfill: “change what must be changed” in the country of immobility; “full equality and freedom” with hundreds of political prisoners in the cells; “defend values” when those who express a dissenting opinion are imprisoned; “never lie” when corruption, violence, drug addiction, and despair are the order of the day.

Foreigners wait excitedly in the Plaza. They are the Revolution’s groupies, invited by the Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, headed by former spy Fernando González Llort. Americans, Latin Americans, Africans, Europeans… all shout slogans in support of a regime they don’t understand, yet support.

Cubans are also marching—in large numbers, of course—but they know what awaits them when they return home: blackouts and hardships, which won’t be erased no matter how many signs and flags they wave, regardless of whether they’re Cuban, Palestinian, or from any “brother country.” Many wouldn’t know how to find Palestine or Vietnam on a map, but the order to support causes aligned with the regime has been given.<

There’s no shortage of Armed Forces cadets and Interior Ministry agents, cordoned off along the street in case any proletarian gets out of control and shouts the wrong slogan. They, too, are human and spill onto the sidewalk, exhausted even before the march begins. Others gamble, flirt with a female captain, or grab a cigarette from someone lucky enough to have a pack in their jacket.

The march ends, and the soldiers look irritably at the contingent of foreigners. Even they don’t understand the outpouring. “Comrade,” a soldier says to a groupie leader, not sure if he understands, “thank you for your solidarity, but you need to leave.”

Now comes the next parade: that of the street sweepers, who throw their brooms at the holy cards of Díaz-Canel and Fidel that have been left on the ground. They gather the banners, gather the slogans, and mix them with the dust of the Plaza. They are little bundles of the Revolution that belong in the trash.

Translated by Translating Cuba.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.