Anti-Bureaucracy Slogans in Havana Parade

Dmitri Prieto

HAVANA TIMES, May 2 – A group of activists of the Critical Observatory Solidarity Network participated in the International Workers Day march in Revolution Square in the Cuban capital.

The activists carried several improvised posters with slogans against the bureaucracy and in support of the workers.  The content of the signs was agreed to by group consensus on the eve of the activity.

One of the posters displayed a large “@” symbol, alluding to the need for digital connection to articulate the struggles for greater freedom and to communicate the messages of diverse movements committed to addressing the social problems in Cuba and around the planet.  Another representative banner specified “Socialism is Democracy – Dump the Bureaucracy!”

Along the route, groups of youth, workers, students and athletes taking part in the march joined with the activists of Critical Observatory, who also entered into fraternal dialogue with other participants in the march.  The group livened up the crowd with a conga line in which mottos consistent with the ideas of the Observatory were chanted.

For this network of groups and cultural initiatives that defends the rights of human beings and the planet, it is essential to promote critical commitment in the defense of the Cuban Revolution – a revolution that we seek to free of all its conformist ballast and that we understand as the self-organization of society “from below.”

The recovery of the popular content of the Cuban revolutionary process and the construction of a culture allowing the emancipation of creative work against all forms of capitalist and bureaucratic control constitutes the main objective of the Critical Observatory.  Those elements were the ethical foundation of the group’s active participation in this year’s Havana May Day march.