Viva la Revolucion!

US – Cuban relations have been worsening lately. The war of words has been escalating. A Cuban terrorist escaped from prison in Venezuela and fled to the US seeking asylum, the US has been turning up pressure on Castro to release the political prisoners he’s holding and Castro is lambasting the US for incarcerating 5 Cuban heroes / spies depending on whose propaganda machine you believe.

But the hyperbole went into overdrive yesterday. Castro came on Cuban TV and announced a national day of protest. The US Intersection (we don’t have an embassy in Cuba, so instead we call our presence an intersection? Don’t ask me, I didn’t think it up) installed a 10 foot tall scrolling red-neon marque broadcasting messages of hope / propaganda (again depending on which perspective you decide to listen to).

Havana shut down for the day, Cubans from all the neighboring regions were brought in to participate in the march, at 5:00 AM the speakers started waking up everyone and calling them out to participate in denouncing this travesty. All this happened with 2 days of notice. I guess these communists are pretty damned organized.

I’d never been to an anti-US rally and I sure wasn’t going to pass on the chance. So Bill and I decided to head out and check out what was going on. I put on my Brazil soccer jersey (thanks Patrick!) and decided not to speak another word for the rest of the day. Hanging out with the 6-foot gringo probably didn’t help, but he’s still getting over his ailments so I knew he wasn’t going to last all day. Within an hour, Bill headed back home, but I trudged onward.

The crowd seemed mainly made up of students and die-hard communists. Plus anyone with a government job was required to attend. The Cuban news announced 1.4 million demonstrators showed up, but I lost count after about 375,000. Most of the Cubans I told afterwards that I went to the march looked at me like I was crazy. I guess they’ve seen enough marches and don’t really get excited by them anymore.

We marched about 5 km down the Malcon, the seawall that protects Havana, to the US Intersection. The crowd was at times lively and chanting, and other times just sitting around and waiting. I think that’s a popular pastime in Cuba. Everyone wanted their picture taken, Cubans sure do love cameras. Fidel made a speech and called George W. Bush a cockroach, even Elian Gonzalez was there (remember him?)

To me the strangest part of the whole thing was the fact that in order to protest the presence of the 10 foot-tall scrolling marque broadcasting messages that offended the Cuban sensibility, Castro decided to march the entire city by the building and show them exactly what he was talking about. The next day the biggest news in the city wasn’t the march, but what the marque at the US Intersection said…and for the days that followed, the propaganda spread like wild-fire.

Quotes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi were the talk of the town. The select parts of the Declaration of Human Rights (of which Cuba is a signatory) were broadcast. I think I’m starting to see the first signs of the crack in the wall, although it’s hard to know what the heck is going on here. But don’t let anyone say the US doesn’t know how to spread propaganda, maybe this whole exporting democracy thing isn’t such a bad idea after all.