Havana – Hundreds of Cubans with black armbands kept vigil in silence all night beneath the brand new, message-blocking “forest of flags” in front of the United States Interests Section in Havana.
Workers’ collectives along with state and educational institutions took turns Monday night brandishing 138 large-scale photographs of people who have died in terrorist acts against Cuba, as part of a 24-hour vigil which began Monday evening.
The flagstaffs went up in late January, apparently intended to support banners that would obstruct the line of sight from the “anti-imperialist” forum, which Cuba put up in 2000 as a venue for anti-U.S. rallies, to the Interests Section which recently began scrolling pro-democracy messages and news items across an electronic billboard.
The screen, located on the building’s fifth floor, lit up again Monday during the vigil organized by the Cuban government.
Dozens of youths, relatives of victims of terrorism against Cuba and the families of the five Cuban agents serving long prison terms in the United States for spying, attended the ceremony dressed in black shirts and carrying photographs of the dead, among them pictures of the 73 persons killed in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976.
Cuba blames the jetliner attack on anti-Castro activist Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born Venezuelan citizen and ex-CIA operative, who is in detention in the United States for having entered the country illegally.
Those protesting terrorist acts against the island that are blamed directly or indirectly on Washington gathered beneath scores of large black flags with a white star in the middle, raised on tall flagpoles a few meters (yards) from the main entrance to the American diplomatic mission.
Vigil organizers told EFE Tuesday that the protesters change places every 15 minutes, and by the end of the demonstration some 7,000 people will have passed in front of the American offices.
Tuesday night, coinciding with the beginning of the ceremony honoring Cuban victims of terrorism, the U.S. Interests Section began to project messages such as: “The only thing we want to provoke with our little sign is the free flow of ideas and opinions.”
The International Book Fair which began last weekend in Havana also came in for a comment. “If they don’t let you read our sign, imagine how many books are missing at the Fair,” said one of the messages projected by the U.S. office, followed by a short list of titles not available at the cultural event.
