International Workers Day 2025 in Holguin
HAVANA TIMES – May 1st has always been a holiday. This year, though, they gave workers time off from Thursday the first, right through Monday the 5th. I told myself: I’m going to go for a tour around the city center, then write a piece about how people spent this day in 2025, in one part of the Northeast of Socialist Cuba, with both the ideology and the country nearly extinct. But then another part of myself answered: you don’t have to go anywhere – you can share your impressions from your own house.
Those impressions could be summed up: desolate.
Let me explain. The day before, I’d gone to the center to accompany my mother on an errand. We didn’t see anywhere the colored paper chains they used to hang on the roofs of the workplaces, as well as in the shops and companies. Or those that used to adorn the fences around the houses, be they in the center of the city or in the outer neighborhoods. Nor did we see those palm fronds tied to all the utility poles lining the street, waiting for May Day. Nor any of the patriotic symbols that were put up on festive days, like this one that celebrates the Workers.
On my street, I couldn’t hear the televisions that the people too old or too sick to attend the parade used to turn on to watch it. Instead, a sepulchral silence reigned. A feeling of, “if anyone asks, we’re not home;” or, “if they ask, we’re at the parade,” even though no one cares about that anymore.
My TV is broken. I would have turned it on, just to contemplate with my own eyes that snaking line of people that years back was a dragon with a never-ending tail. With every passing year, it becomes thinner. It’s clear – times have changed, and it can’t be the same anymore. In the house where my aunt and my mother live, the television works, but they didn’t turn it on either. As if our concern about the arrival of the bread rolls, and how to get sugar, was much stronger than everything else. And it is – for many people, it is.
Those times my aunt tells me about – when the workplaces began in March to collect the names of the workers who were going to attend, and how many other people they would be bringing to the activity – it’s like they’ve disappeared. The hot topic now is the deported, who has just arrived; likewise, who is at the brink of leaving.
Because of this, I think the issue of who I recognized on the TV screen, or whether I greeted so-and-so or such-and such during the march is no longer relevant. We’re enduring the long lines, or we’re outside the country or preparing to leave in the best-case scenario; and in the worst case, we disappeared with Covid. There aren’t many other alternatives.
I believe that the topic wasn’t even talked about. The relevant point was the number of days off. And the good news that, just like in the capitalist societies, the private businesses here are paying their workers double for it. And of course, the social networks rained with jokes about the topic. Like those images of a street full of sheep walking fast, and an interview with one. We recalled a very “funny” one from last year, where you saw a lot of people crossing the Rio Grande. Above it read: “See you at the parade this May 1st,” and underneath: “Across the Rio Grande.”
In other places, just another day. I dare to say it was probably like where I was, maybe with just a little more silence. Because it’s been many, many, years since those cars drove around everywhere with a woman yelling through a megaphone: “Long live International Workers’ Day!” “Everyone to the parades for our Revolution!” and “Long live May Day!” plus other slogans I don’t remember right this moment.
On Sunday, May 4, I left the house to go visit a friend. The streets nearly empty, without little Cuban flags scattered on the ground here and there, like in that past that feels so remote. Without the posters, neither the small nor the large ones. And I don’t believe it’s because three days had passed since the event. Years before, the atmosphere remained in the air for a long time.
Anyway, in terms of showing up that day, what it means to show up, I didn’t. But apart from everything else. I’m sure that in the place where I almost always go to sell my books, all my fellow venders are there at their stalls. Since early morning, because there’ve always been those who get up early, and those who stay until very late in the day, because that buyer could turn up at any possible moment. Cuba has changed and continues doing so. There’s no way to deny it.