May Day Or Mayday?

By KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 2, 2007

HAVANA - Ovy Ortiz, a construction worker, stood with her co-workers early Tuesday waiting for the annual Labor Day march to begin.

But first, workers, foreign visitors and hundreds of journalists shifted their gaze toward the podium in front of an immense statue of Cuban independence hero Jose Marti in Havana's Plaza of the Revolution. All searched for a bearded man whom no one had seen in public for nine months.

"Not Fidel? Why not Fidel?" she said as Fidel Castro's brother, Raul - provisional president since the Cuban leader's intestinal surgery July 31 - arrived to launch the marchers' two-hour parade in the plaza below. "We all hoped to see him."

Fidel never showed, except in posters held by marchers and spectators - a crowd of a half-million by the government's estimate.

Despite rumors of Castro's potential appearance that preceded the event, it had little to do with the sidelined 80-year-old leader. It was even less about labor.

Instead, Cuban workers served as messengers for a point that the nation has tried to hammer into the international psyche for the past few weeks: The United States and the Bush administration are soft on terrorism.

The most recent proof: The U.S. government, particularly an appeals court judge, released Luis Posada Carriles on bail last month. The aging ex-CIA operative long has been accused of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people. Some of the surviving family members attended Tuesday's ceremonies in Havana.

Posada has denied involvement.

'Go Back Where You Belong'

The message was everywhere at the parade. The great bulk of the signs held by the workers in the parade condemned the decision to release Posada to his wife's home in Miami while he awaits trial on immigration charges.

There were mass-produced color posters and handmade messages scrawled on cardboard. One marcher held up a wooden jail cell with a grotesque figure inside and a message calling Posada a derogatory name and telling him to "go back where you belong."

Another featured caricatures of Bush and Posada and a fictional dialogue between the two in Anglo-accented Spanish: "Luis, you can't talk. I beg you, please," Bush says. Posada's reply invokes the oft-repeated explanation by Cuban officials that he was released on bail because he knows too many U.S. secrets from his time with the CIA: "Mister, if I land in prison, I'll tell all, all, all."

'Monster Released,' Castro Says

The government had its own caricatures. On one side of the plaza, a billboard portrayed the Statue of Liberty, her hands on either side of her mouth, wide open with horror: "What Barbarians! They've Freed a Terrorist!" she exclaims.

The workers and banners also demanded the release of five Cuban men serving long sentences on espionage-related charges after a 2001 verdict in Miami. The Cuban government has said the men, accused of infiltrating Cuban exile groups, were trying to fight terrorism by learning of the groups' plans to commit violent acts and prevent them.

Even Castro, in absentia, promoted Tuesday's parade as an antiterrorist rally. He wrote a letter published Tuesday in the daily newspaper Granma and partly read aloud at the rally. He called the event a good venue to protest "the release of a monster of terrorism."

Despite their faithful pressing of the antiterrorism message, the reason most people across Cuba's capital woke up long before dawn Tuesday was in expectation that their ailing leader - who has seemed more robust and active in recent photographs - would attend the march.

"There's tremendous anticipation in the city," said Pamela Ann Martin, an Ambler, Pa.-based consultant wrapping up a trip to arrange sales of medical equipment to Cuba from Clearwater-based Mercury Medical. "That's the big talk: 'Will he come out or won't he?'"

Disappointed Workers

Cuban nationals seemed more skeptical, despite their hopes to see Castro in person. Still, they hoped.

Ana Silvia Legra, 44, was so moved by the possibility that she came to the plaza at 11 p.m. Monday - nine hours before the parade began - after working a full day as a mosquito control inspector.

"I was hoping to see my comandante," Legra said.

Instead, after the initial disappointment when Castro didn't show, she marched. And marched. And marched. She kept catching up to the end of the parade to make another pass by the Marti monument. She wanted to help send a message.

"I want my countrymen to come home," she said of the five Cuban men imprisoned in the United States, her feet weary, her 2-liter water bottle empty. "They haven't done anything wrong. They don't deserve that."

Reporter Karen Branch-Brioso can be reached at (813) 259-7815 or kbranch-brioso@tampatrib .com.