``We have never seen so many tricks, so much filth in the Pan American games,'' Castro told tens of thousands of Communist Party faithful and other guests marking the start of the revolution that brought him to power four decades ago.
Castro criticized calls by the local media in Canada for Cuban athletes to defect and ``hostile'' treatment of the Cuban delegation. He also criticized changes in the rules of competition for baseball, ``the most important, the most attractive sport.''
``They want to eliminate the ghost of Cuba. They are scared of our teams,'' Castro said in the open plaza in this coastal city in a speech that began shortly after a huge downpour soaked the thousands of chairs set up for the event, along with the first of the guests to arrive.
``We are competing in enemy territory,'' he said of Canada.
Relations between Cuba and Canada were long friendly but have soured recently as Canada has increasingly taken the communist country to task for its human rights record. A key issue has been Canada's opposition to the sentencing of four government opponents convicted of inciting sedition through words and documents.
Castro also mentioned the lawsuit that Cuban organizations filed against the United States earlier this year, asking for $181 billion in damages for violent attacks on the island that they claimed were responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 people. Several weeks of testimony in the hearings wrapped up last week.
The leader also mentioned another old foe, the Cuban American National Foundation, an influential exile group based in Miami, reiterating his persistent charges of terrorism. Cuba has accused the organization of planning and financing violent attacks against the island, a charge the foundation vigorously denies. It says it opposes force to topple the communist government.
In the audience were 150 members of the Venceremos Brigade, a group of Americans who come to Cuba annually to perform field work or other tasks in support of the communist government.
``When I heard his helicopter land, I almost began crying,'' said Teresa Calderon, 66, a Colombian-born American resident living in New York. When Castro strode in front of the stage in his olive green uniform, she clambered up on a white plastic chair and cried out like a teen-ager at a rock concert.
``He is a hero for the Americas,'' she exclaimed.
Traffic was light on the narrow streets of the provincial capital, built on a wide blue bay, as security measures were put into place. ``No work today,'' read a sign outside one tire repair shop.
Clusters of uniformed police officers gathered along the 160-mile route leading from Havana to Cienfuegos.
The yearly ceremony marks the disastrous July 26, 1953, attack by the Castro brothers and their followers on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago that launched the revolution against the dictatorship of then-President Fulgencio Batista.
Although the attackers were all either killed or jailed, the July 26 movement later regained strength and triumphed on New Year's Day 1959 after Batista fled the country.
The site of the central speech varies every year and is chosen from among provincial capitals for economic performance.
This year, Cienfuegos shares the honor with the central province of Matanzas, where a second Revolution Day speech will be held on Cuba's northern coast Aug. 2.
Cienfuegos, a city of 125,000, is one of Cuba's major industrial centers, boasting one of the world's largest sugar exporting facilities, an oil refinery, a paper mill, a cement plant, a thermal power plant and much of Cuba's shrimp fleet.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press