Cuban Figurehead ‘President’ Wears Palestinian Flag, Keffiyeh for Communist May Day

Cuban “president” Miguel Díaz-Canel, who is subordinate to nonagenarian dictator Raúl Castro, celebrated the international communist holiday May Day on Thursday sporting a scarf featuring Palestinians flags and a keffiyeh pattern.

May Day, or International Workers’ Day, is typically marked on May 1 by communists to celebrate the historical “achievements” of Marxism, which include the indiscriminate killing of upwards of 100 million people, the wholesale elimination of many thriving economies, and pervasive cultural, psychological, and environmental destruction around the globe.

Cuba is among those once-thriving economies – previously the wealthiest country in Latin America – to be crushed by communism. The Castro dynasty typically uses May 1 to mandate that impoverished Cubans march carrying images of late dictator Fidel Castro and chant slogans exalting the regime. The mandatory rallies also require captive participants to express solidarity for unrelated causes that the Castro regime has adopted as its own, such as support for the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas against the nation of Israel.

After canceling the May Day parade in 2023 due to a lack of gasoline and holding a modest event in 2024, the Castro regime organized some of the largest mandatory communist gatherings in recent years on Thursday. According to Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, the main rally in Havana attracted over 600,000 people, while celebrations across the island saw 5.3 million Cubans [forced] to participate. The Communist Party estimates Cuba’s population to be around 9.7 million people, a significant decline in the past decade due to young Cubans fleeing the country in droves.

Díaz-Canel published photos alongside his partner and other high-ranking officials prominently featuring the flag of the Palestinian movement. The rallies in Havana began before dawn on Thursday.

The Cuban communist regime has for decades opposed the peaceful existence of Israel and has been among the most vocal supporters of the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas since October 7, 2023, when jihadists crossed into Israel from Gaza and engaged in a murder, rape, and abduction spree against civilians, often attacking them in their own homes. The Cuban Communist Party has never condemned the Hamas attack. On the contrary, in November 2023, Díaz-Canel appeared at a concert “for peace in Palestine” in Havana and lit up the Plaza of the Revolution in the colors of the Palestinian flag.

“Everyone in Cuba is a child of Palestine,” Díaz-Canel declared to the Hezbollah-linked outlet Al Mayadeen in March 2024, accusing Israel of acting with a “deviance and criminality … [that] can only be compatible with the philosophy and intellect of a corrupt society and a corrupt empire like the United States empire.”

Granma detailed that, in addition to celebrating communism, “Cubans march also to demand the end of the genocidal blockade imposed by the U.S. government on the island and an end to the massacre that has robbed the lives of thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of innocent children.”

The “genocidal blockade” is a term the communist government uses for America’s policy of not doing trade with Cuba in response to its decades of outrageous human rights abuses against its own people. The policy, in America commonly referred to as the “embargo,” does not prevent American companies from sending food, medicine, or humanitarian aid to Cuba; Cuba’s own “embargo” policies on its citizens impose much more stringent restrictions on what shipments Cubans can accept from America and often result in the regime looting shipments of necessary goods intended for families living in squalor.

The independent Cuban outlet 14 y Medio described a dire scene in Havana of apathetic, overheated, and exhausted Cubans being forced to congregate to celebrate their own demise.

“In a city submerged in garbage, like Havana, one can march over all types of things this May Day. Under the feet are papers, shells, cans, and even little Cuban flags. They are the best symbols of a parade where reluctance is as habitual as slogans,” the outlet’s journalists detailed, painting an exhausting scene of workers obligated to worship the “decrepit” Raúl Castro in a situation that required humanitarian groups to prepare emergency medical areas in the expectation that many would faint or experience heat stroke to avoid the consequences of defying the government.”

“Given the many people who come without having breakfast, fainting is the order of the day,” an anonymous Red Cross worker is quoted as saying.

Labor leaders in Cuba often face extreme repression if they do not parrot the talking points of the Communist Party. Speaking to the U.S.-based outlet Martí Noticias, one such independent union leader, Juan Alberto de la Nuez Ramírez, lamented that there was “nothing to celebrate” on Thursday.”

“The salaries are insufficient to cover basic needs of a home … they [workers] don’t have a union to represent them,” de la Nuez complained. “They have nothing to celebrate because the salary is not being paid on time and in the right manner. And they have nothing to celebrate because the majority of Cuban workers have lost their source of employment; almost all is in the hands of [regime-aligned] entrepreneurs.”

While Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro made appearances at the Havana rally, the keynote speech was offered by Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento, the secretary-general of the Workers’ Central of Cuba, a government-controlled labor group. Guilarte emphasized in his remarks Cuba’s opposition to Israel, again referring to Israel’s war to protect its citizenry from Hamas as “genocidal.”

“We ratify the most absolute rejection of the genocidal war that the government of Israel is waging against the sons of Palestinian land,” Guilarte declared. “We raise our flags in solidarity with the international union movement and the workers of the world who suffer in exploitation due to the multidimensional crisis of the capitalist system and its neoliberal politics.”

While condemning worker “exploitation,” the Havana rally reportedly counted among its esteemed guests the Chinese ambassador to Havana, Hua Xin, who published photos alongside Díaz-Canel and other high-ranking officials.

China is home to the world’s largest known system of state-sponsored slavery, part of a larger campaign of genocide against the indigenous Uyghur people of occupied East Turkistan.

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