Cubans March in ‘Plebiscite for Socialism’

HAVANA —  More than half a million Cubans joined a huge May Day march Friday to assert Cuba’s identity as one of the last remaining orthodox Communist states in the world.

Havana’s colorful, carefully orchestrated rally, hailed by the authorities as a “plebiscite for socialism,” was one of the biggest held by any nation on the celebrated workers’ day.

Smaller marches were held across the Caribbean island.

Authorities organized the marches to underline Cuba’s continuing commitment to one-party communism at a time when former socialist allies across the world are turning to multi-party politics and capitalism.

“We have what we ought to have: real socialism and not some caricature that can collapse at any moment,” Pedro Ross, head of Cuba’s official Workers’ Union, said in a speech opening the rally in Havana’s Revolution Square.

Ross heaped scorn on those he called “the gravediggers of socialism,” who engineered the end of communism in Cuba’s former allies in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union.

He also attacked moves by President Bush to tighten economic and political pressure on Cuba and warned him, “The most dangerous Cuban is a cornered Cuban.”

Cuban President Fidel Castro, dressed in his traditional olive-green uniform, watched from a reviewing stand with binoculars as hundreds of thousands of workers and their families, many waving flags and banners, trooped past.

Revolution Square was filled with the trill of bicycle bells as a solid phalanx of 50,000 cyclists, some carrying friends, relatives or children perched on their backs, rode by. Units of Cuba’s armed forces in full combat gear also paraded on bicycles in flawless formation.

The tens of thousands of bicycles were an innovation at this year’s march. They were chosen to symbolize Cuba’s efforts to save oil.