May 1: Half a million, according to the Government; disinterest, according to the street

Havana/“Practically half of the people had already left when that started,” says an attendee at the May Day parade in Havana. The José Martí Anti-imperialist Tribune, in front of the United States Embassy, ​​was again this year the stage chosen by those in power to represent a unanimity that is increasingly difficult to sustain.

The change of venue, traditionally in the Plaza de la Revolución, was justified by the authorities with the energy crisis. But the new location also offers the advantage of being more manageable for the cameras, less risky in the face of a low turnout and easier to convert, through close shots and enthusiastic narration, into a postcard of mass support.

The event revolved around two obsessions: the fear of American intervention and the desperate need to display popular support. Under the motto “The country defends itself,” repeated ad nauseam, and with the celebration of the centenary of Fidel Castro’s birth as a backdrop, thousands of workers were mobilized at dawn towards Havana’s Malecón. The parade was presented by the official press as a combative, patriotic and voluntary march. On the street, however, the scene was more about obligation and a logistical operation than citizen fervor.

The call had been organized from four points in Havana to the Tribune. One of the attendees, who left the rally on Infanta Street around 6:30 in the morning, describes to this newspaper how he experienced it: “What there was most were congas. I counted about five. Typical. Many pullovers from state centers, and a lot of soldiers.” According to what was heard among the participants, many people had been summoned since two or three in the morning.

When the main event began, at 8:15 am, many of those summoned had already left. “At the time it all started and after listening to Silvio Rodríguez’s entire discography, with the sun already beating down, half of it was easily gone,” says the assistant. During the speeches, he adds, the participants kept leaving the place. “When the groups came down and gathered at the Grandstand, they stood still for almost an hour. And the people were already exhausted.”

Despite this, the official media announced the presence, in the capital, of 500,000 workers. The images, however, do not support that figure. The density visible in photos and videos, the gaps in the crowd, the width of the lateral areas and the composition of the place itself do not correspond to half a million people concentrated in that area, unless they spread out in a much more massive way along adjacent avenues.

“The Government needed half a million. The images show much less,” summarizes one observer. And, above all, they show something more damaging to the official story, because the crowd no longer seems convinced to even stay until the end.

Buses, labor summonses, union guidelines and administrative pressure are part of a choreography known in every political event of this magnitude. The ability to move people continues to be one of the few organizational competencies that the state apparatus retains, even in the midst of the energy crisis and when daily public transportation continues to be a nightmare for millions of Cubans.

“Many people drinking alcohol, without paying attention to the activity,” says the source. In some sections, the horns seemed to try to replace with noise what was missing in enthusiasm. “The empty avenue, with the horns blaring,” summarizes the assistant.

The central moment of the event was the symbolic delivery to Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel of the signatures collected in the “My Signature for the Homeland” campaign, which according to the state registry amount to 6,230,973 signatures “for peace and sovereignty.” The figure was celebrated as proof of national unity. But, according to the testimonies collected, this adhesion was not as voluntary as the propaganda proclaimed. “My neighbors and I have been practically harassed this entire week for the signing. It happened three times in the last three days,” complains a resident in Diez de Octubre.

State television repeated again and again that the rally was the real Cuba, in contrast to the discontent visible on Facebook, independent media, civic protests and recent polls. “On social networks they are attacking the Revolution, but that is not the reality, the reality is this,” said an announcer from Canal Caribe, while anticipating that criticism would later appear saying that the attendees had been forced to go.

The official discourse unintentionally recognized the crack. “Everyone here has a hard time: there is no transportation, sometimes there is no bread, but people continue to resist,” said one of the commentators. The phrase was intended to exalt resistance, but ended up describing failure. In a country with prolonged blackouts, inflation, pulverized salaries, precarious transportation, impoverished retirees and massive emigration that empties neighborhoods and families, calling on workers to celebrate their day is somewhat mocking.

The day was also marked by the police siege against critical voices. The editorial office of this newspaper in Havana was surrounded with a police operation, since dawn, to prevent journalists Yoani Sánchez and Reinaldo Escobar from going out on the streets this May 1. The measure confirms that, while the Government tried to display an image of popular support in the Anti-Imperialist Tribune, it kept independent journalists and uncomfortable citizens under surveillance and control.

The biggest contradiction was in the language. The white of the t-shirts was presented as a symbol of peace, and the signatures as support for dialogue and sovereignty. But this pacifist invocation coexisted with a warmongering rhetoric of “war of all the people”, sacrifice, blood and rifles. “They talked about peace, dialogue, and at the same time, if the people are willing to die, if they give me my rifle, if they will collect blood. The speech was quite incoherent,” concludes the assistant.