The head of the only legal workers’ union in Cuba announced on Tuesday that the communist regime had canceled its most prestigious annual event, the May Day parade in Havana, due to “limitations with securing fuel.”
Communists around the world typically mark May Day, or International Workers’ Day, on May 1, with parades, riots, and other acts of violence. Communism is a totalitarian ideology that has resulted in at least 110 million killings — not counting the 400 million victims of China’s “One-Child Policy” — in the last century. Communists have ruled Cuba since the 1959 coup by late dictator Fidel Castro and typically force the population to partake in May Day celebrations across the country every year.
The cancellation of the Havana May Day parade comes as an embarrassing blow to the communist regime, which had issued a call to arms to the general population as recently as this first day of April to participate in May Day activities. The Communist Party had also launched a campaign to attract “solidarity tourism” by international communists and boasted on Monday that 300 “comrades” had traveled to the country to observe May 1.
Cuban people who do not belong to the communist elite have, for decades, faced extreme shortages of basic goods, such as fuel, food, cleaning supplies, and other items. Under the gross mismanagement of current figurehead “president” Miguel Díaz-Canel, the country has seen a dramatic collapse of its power grid — nationwide blackouts becoming a norm in the past year — and a gasoline and diesel shortage damaging the country’s ability to function. A massive fire at one of the nation’s largest oil depots in northeastern Matanzas last year left Cuba with significantly less storage capacity for fuel, a situation the government has not visibly done anything to resolve.
The Castro regime has only canceled the May Day parade in Havana twice before: in 2020 and 2021, due to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. The Spanish outlet Diario de Cuba confirmed this week that the Castro regime did not cancel the parades during the “Special Period,” as the 1990s post-Soviet period of extreme poverty and decay has come to be known in the country.
Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento, the secretary-general of the Workers Central Union of Cuba (CTC), did not describe the event’s cancelation as such but insisted that the Communist Party decided to “reformulate” the event.
“Limitations with securing fuel have directed us to reformulate the initial conception for the celebration of International Workers’ Day next May 1, maintaining its commemoration but under reasonable and maximum austerity conditions,” Guilarte said. “In the concept of the new design … a national wave of celebrations for Workers’ Day that would allow for the replacement of that great mobilization has been approved.”
The official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, Granma, described the tremendous failure as a tactical reshuffle to make the celebrations more inclusive: “instead of a great workers’ parade, many voices in more places.”
“Given the complex economic situation of the country and, particularly, the limitations in securing fuel, the concept of the May 1 celebrations has been redesigned,” the propaganda outlet claimed, promising many “small parades or mass events” in communities nationwide. The largest event is scheduled to take place at Havana’s malecón, its iconic but deteriorating seawall.
On Monday, Granma boasted that this year’s May Day festivities would include “over 300 friends from 29 countries,” who now have no central parade to attend. The delegation, members of a communist group known as the “International Brigade for Volunteer Work and Solidarity with Cuba,” expressly traveled to the island to participate in May Day festivities, which are planned to last the entire first week of May on a small scale.
Cuba traditionally uses its May Day parade as a red-carpet event with international communists. In 2016, for example, the leadership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) marched alongside Cuban elites during the event.
The event’s prestige had already been in decline, however, as emboldened dissidents encouraged a lack of participation or sabotaged the parade. In a historic moment in 2017, a lone dissident, Daniel Llorente, ran in front of the parade — waving an American flag in protest — and was subsequently gang-beaten on a live international broadcast. Llorente was imprisoned and tortured in a psychiatric facility for a year and subsequently forced to leave the country at gunpoint.
Last year, during the first post-pandemic parade, Cuban dissidents flooded social media with anti-communist messages signed with the acronym “DPEPDPE,” which roughly translates to “this shitty country sucks.” The rejection of the festivities was particularly offensive to the regime, as it was the first parade in the aftermath of the July 11, 2021, national protests and occurred in defiance of the presence of 90-year-old Raúl Castro, who still claimed to be retired at the time, at the parade. Castro “ran” for a seat in the country’s communist, rubber-stamp legislature and “won” uncontested last month.
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