Havana – With Fidel Castro still nowhere to be seen, military reservists, retired officers and decommissioned soldiers are under orders to check in daily at military posts.
Burly men who appear to be plainclothes security agents are stationed along a stretch of waterfront that saw rare anti-government riots in 1994. There are more police and army reservists throughout the capital, and dissidents said the military was telling citizens in eastern provinces that they could use force against those criticizing the government.
Repelling an invasion from the United States has been a constant theme in state media since Castro announced Tuesday that he undergoing intestinal surgery and temporarily handing power to his brother Raul.
But Cuba’s efforts appear designed as much to prevent internal unrest as to defend the communist island from the Yanquis.
“We are defending ourselves from the whole world, especially from the Americans,” 43-year-old electrician Ignacio Gonzalez said as he sat in the entryway of his dilapidated building in Old Havana. “Even from ourselves.” In Havana neighborhoods, there has been a perceptible increase in the number of officers wearing the dark-blue uniforms of the National Revolutionary Police.
Unarmed reservists in new olive-green fatigues – some wearing white tennis shoes instead of black military boots – walk through the narrow cobblestone streets of Old Havana’s tourist district.
Cubans said that their friends and relatives who are decommissioned or retired military officers are being ordered to report their whereabouts daily and be reachable at all times.
Civilian Rapid Response Brigades have been activated at government offices, with each worker assigned a separate task for any military emergency. Members of neighborhood watch groups called upon to perform extra night patrols.
Area residents say they believe concerns about possible violence among Cubans prompted the postponement of a sun-baked, beer and rum-soaked annual carnival that was supposed to open Friday.
And in Cuba’s eastern provinces, dissidents said the military was increasing its presence on the streets.
Eliecer Consuegra Rivas, 33, said that neighbors had told him that government officials had been meeting with neighborhood watch groups and telling him they had permission to respond with force against anyone criticizing the government.
Two other eastern Cuban dissidents interviewed by The Associated Press in Miami made the same charge.
The interviews were arranged by a Miami-based nonprofit that receives funding from the U.S. government through the International Republican Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy.
In Havana, carnival bleachers and food booths were disassembled outside the Deauville Hotel, where rioters smashed windows with rocks and sticks on Aug. 5, 1994 in a rare show of political unrest.
Set off by a string of ferry boat hijackings by people trying to get to the United States, angry government supporters clashed with people chanting anti-government slogans.
After Castro said those Cubans who no longer wanted to live on the island could leave, an estimated 30,000 people set sail for the United States, created a social-service crisis in South Florida.
There appeared to be an effort this week not to make a show of stepped-up defense efforts along the Malecon seawall where the rioting occurred.
Many of the uniformed police officers patrolling the seawall in recent days had been replaced Saturday with dozens of men wearing street clothes, several of them carrying backpacks. It was unclear if the men were undercover officers or civilian militiamen.
In Old Havana’s Plaza Vieja area, a sign erected before Castro’s illness wished him well for his 80th birthday on Aug. 13: “Long Live Fidel 80 Years More.” “We have to be ready for the enemy, in case the Americans try to take advantage of the situation,” said Luis Granado, a 46-year-old civilian who oversees security in the neighborhood.
“Anyone who tries to do anything here will be immediately inviting combat.”
