Havana – Fidel Castro on Monday took advantage of the massive May Day celebration here to emphasize the economic achievements of the Cuban Revolution, announce increased growth of the island’s gross domestic product and verbally attack the United States.
The Cuban leader spoke before a crowd of thousands gathered in the Plaza de la Revolution, the same venue where on Saturday the main ceremony was held at the tri-nation summit attended by Bolivian President Evo Morales and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
There, the three men sealed their “anti-imperialist” alliance and consolidated their own regional integration model as an alternative to that proposed by Washington.
Castro on Monday mentioned once again the advantages of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas that Cuba had signed with Venezuela and which Bolivia has just joined.
The accords with Caracas, he said, are “a big step on the road to unity and to true integration among the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
He said that trade with Caracas exceeded $3.67 billion last year and in this year’s first quarter had already amounted to more than $1.2 billion.
During his three-and-a-half-hour address, Castro spoke of the Cuban economy’s growth, saying that it was exceeding the 11.8 percent growth rate achieved in 2005, and he added that the island’s Communist Revolution had entered a “new phase of rearrangement … against waste and vices.”
“The economy grew in the first quarter of 2006 by more than the 11.8 percent (annual rate) achieved in 2005, and its current rate is more than 12.5 percent,” he said.
Cuban authorities, since 2004, have been using their own particular method for calculating the country’s GDP which includes a determination of the value added received by the public in sectors such as education, health, culture and sports.
Castro charged that the United States was conducting naval maneuvers in the Caribbean Sea to “intimidate” Cuba and Venezuela, along with the rest of Latin America.
“It’s time they stopped that garbage,” he said.
The Cuban leader characterized as “cynical and shameful” what he said was the U.S. attitude of accusing Havana and Caracas of fostering terrorism – as in the State Department’s annual report on terrorism released on Friday – at the same time that it is reviewing whether to give citizenship to Luis Posada Carriles, whom Cuba and Venezuela both accuse of deadly terrorist activities.
“While these days thousands of illegal immigrants are persecuted, jailed and returned to their countries amid the largest political mobilization of Latinos in recent decades, why is (Posada) receiving an almost six-hour hearing to handle his naturalization in the U.S.?” he asked rhetorically, referring to the huge pro-immigrant demonstrations being staged on May Day in the United States.
Castro also returned to another of his regular themes by denouncing Washington’s more than four-decade-old embargo on Cuba, which he said had failed to achieve its objective of breaking the communist island’s economy.
