May 3, 1999
By Anita Snow, .c The Associated Press
May
1
HAVANA (AP) -- With trumpets, conga drums and fluttering Cuban flags, hundreds of thousands of workers answered the communist leadership's call to march Saturday in the annual May Day parade and show a united front to opponents of President Fidel Castro.
Castro, dressed in his customary olive green uniform, waved at the river of people that poured past the reviewing stand in the broad Plaza of the Revolution.
``Fidel! Fidel!'' shouted some groups of marchers as they passed by, hoisting banners that identified their workplaces, their neighborhoods -- and their opinions on the U.S. trade embargo against their country and American military involvement in Yugoslavia.
``Blockade, No,'' said one sign written in Spanish and held high for foreign television cameras covering the parade. ``USA Hands Off Yugoslavia,'' read another in English.
Castro said in a brief interview with government television that he was pleased with the turnout and to have ``completed 40 years of revolution.''
The yearly celebration comes shortly after Cuba was bruised by a U.N. Human Rights Commission vote in Geneva that condemned the island nation's human rights record. Cuba has accused the United States of manipulating the vote, which was 21 votes in favor, 20 against and 12 abstentions.
The march also follows international criticism of Cuba's handling of the case of four well-known political opponents who were sentenced at closed-door proceedings to prison.
Shortly after that trial, two Salvadorans were tried and sentenced to death on terrorism charges for planting bombs in tourist locales in an attempt to harm the communist government's growing tourism industry.
``The traditional and always huge parade by Cubans for the International Day of the Worker this year is special because it comes at a moment when our country is the target of a fierce campaign of slander and manipulations by the foreign press and in political forums dominated by imperialism,'' the Communist Party daily Granma declared last week.
Castro, who normally does not speak during the May Day parade, did not address the crowd, instead watching the waves of workers flowing below.
Among those marching were the 87 members of the Philadelphia Boys Choir, in Cuba for a nine-day tour. Also spotted amid the waves of people was Michael Kozak, chief of mission for the U.S. Interests Section and other mission employees.
Kozak's presence among the marchers surprised -- and ultimately amused -- Cuban Foreign Ministry officials, who said they have never seen a head of the U.S. mission march in the May Day event. Most other foreign diplomats sat on a separate reviewing stand to the left of Castro's.
AP-NY-05-01-99 1505EDT
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press
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