Havana, May 1st.- What a paradox, despite power outages, difficulties with water, transportation, and high inflation prices, this capital woke up today full of people in the streets defending peace and rejecting a possible military aggression against Cuba.
The celebration here of International Workers' Day, an obsolete date in many parts of the world, was the ideal space to denounce the criminal blockade, increasingly tighter from the United States towards the island, and the constant threats of invasion and war coming from the North.
Once again, streets and squares throughout the Antillean nation were taken over by Cuban men and women, perhaps not as in other times, some will criticize, but full of people, conscious of the need to defend their Revolution.
That the Cuban population has aged is no secret, nor that many sons and daughters of this country emigrated for the most diverse reasons; it is perceived, seen, and hurts. But these are also other reasons to fight for a prosperous country, that grows and develops in tranquility.
Much of Cuba went out into the streets this May 1st at dawn, and without saying it, with their firm step or to the rhythm of drums, repeated the same rebellious message that has been transmitting in blood to their offspring since they fought for their independence, almost two centuries ago.
"Love, mother, to the homeland, is not the ridiculous love to the earth, nor to the grass that our feet tread. It is the invincible hatred to whoever oppresses it, the eternal resentment to whoever attacks it…," wrote the Cuban National Hero José Martí, at just 15 years old, in his poem Abdala.
And that feeling walked today to the Havana Malecón hand in hand with the worker, the family, the young couple, the adults dressed as militiamen, the grandfather with his Playa Girón medals, the Brazilian trade unionist and the American activist who traveled to Havana to deliver friendly donations to a hospital and parade here, alongside the Cubans, this day.
There may be exhaustion, even hopelessness, many years of Yankee harassment and crisis, but even so, Cuba returned to the streets this Friday to reaffirm its vote of confidence with the project of social justice that is being tried to save from the imperial boot, to defend a future of peace for its children and to scream to the US government and its acolytes that an aggression against this country will prove very costly.
