Cuba May Day rally defends embattled Latin American left

Cuba May Day rally defends embattled Latin American left
AFP
May 1, 2016

Havana (AFP) - Hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched Sunday in the
country's annual May Day rally, which condemned a campaign to
"destabilize" leftist governments around Latin America.

The communist island traditionally holds enormous, festive
demonstrations to mark International Workers' Day, which this year comes
at a turbulent time for the left-leaning governments that have dominated
the Latin American political scene for more than a decade.

"This May 1 is also a day to condemn the maneuvers aimed at... reversing
the gains achieved in social policy in our America and destabilizing the
leftist and progressive governments in power," keynote speaker Ulises
Guilarte, the secretary general of the Workers' Central Union of Cuba,
told a massive crowd on Revolution Square in Havana.

As examples, he cited Brazil, where President Dilma Rousseff is facing
impeachment proceedings she condemns as a "coup"; Bolivia, where
President Evo Morales recently lost a referendum to allow him a fourth
term amid a scandal over whether he fathered a love child; and
Venezuela, where President Nicolas Maduro's opponents are seeking to
oust him in a recall referendum.

The leftist parties that have governed most of Latin America since the
2000s have stumbled lately as the region's economies have slowed.

The left recently suffered election defeats in Argentina, where
conservative President Mauricio Macri won office in November, and
Venezuela -- Cuba's key regional ally -- where the ruling Socialists
lost the legislature by a landslide in December.

Cuban President Raul Castro presided over the rally on the capital's
iconic square, which state media said drew 600,000 people.

Guilarte also repeated Castro's call for the United States to lift its
more than half-century embargo on Cuba and return the "illegally
occupied territory" of the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, major
sticking points in the old Cold War foes' rapprochement.


Source: Cuba May Day rally defends embattled Latin American left -
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cuba-may-day-rally-defends-embattled-latin-american-155121583.html?ref=gs