On May 1st, Cuban squares will become platforms where the people of this archipelago, with proletarian strength, will defend their right to a free, independent, sovereign, and peaceful land.
Accompanied by hundreds of friends from around the world who came to the island to experience firsthand the daily resistance of a country that overcomes all the difficulties imposed upon it to suffocate it, the working masses will take to the streets with the same conviction they have demonstrated by signing in support of the homeland in recent days. Friends of solidarity have seen this, and they have spoken out.
It is "the most supportive people on the planet," said Alejandra Chavira, from Mexico; "the example that a world different from one of imposition and bombs is possible," opined the Italian Roberto Forte. Both are part of a group of 70 who, just a few hours ago, were walking through the hills and villages of the country’s eastern region, immersed in "the wellspring that is the Cuban Revolution," in the words of Michelle Curto of the Italian Agency for Cultural and Economic Exchange with Cuba.
Curto himself called it “the island where we must grow and become ourselves,” and for that reason he brought together, to get to know it, activists from Italy, Venezuela, Mexico, the United States, France, Switzerland, and Cubans living abroad who, as part of the second May Day solidarity convoy, visited communities in Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo.
Meanwhile, in Havana, others are experiencing and marveling at the reality firsthand. This is what happened this Monday at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), with representatives from the 19th International Brigade of Voluntary Work and Solidarity with Cuba "May Day" and the Che Guevara Contingent.
Josefina Guillo, a representative of the Cuba-France Association, stated that, for both her and the organization, it is very important to be present on the eve of the celebrations for International Workers’ Day and the centennial of the birth of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz.
"We admire the strenMay 1st, workers, USA, blockade, solidarityf the Cuban people, their capacity for resilience despite the difficulties,” she emphasized; and Ian Müller, a member of the student delegation from the Socialist Party of Germany, joined her in gratitude: “The strongest weapon the Cuban people have is international solidarity and friendship with other peoples."
Alongside the good people of Cuba, in the country’s squares, they will be there. The causes Cuba defends are the causes of the peoples of the world. It is a lesson from José Martí that runs in their blood: "Homeland is humanity"
