Marchers protested U.S. efforts to undermine and topple the government of Venezuela headed by President Hugo Chávez. They called for an end to Washington’s decades-long embargo and travel ban against Cuba, and for normalization of relations with that Caribbean nation.

The protesters demanded an end to Washington’s illegal occupation of Guantánamo and closure of its notorious prison camp there. They rallied for the release of five Cuban revolutionaries framed up and jailed in U.S. prisons, and for the extradition to Venezuela of Luis Posada Carriles, a right-wing Cuban bomber harbored by the U.S. government.

Ike Nahem of Cuba Solidarity New York condemned the current U.S. military maneuvers in the Caribbean as a threat against Cuba and Venezuela. He said Washington fears “the examples of solidarity and internationalism represented by the Cuban Revolution and Bolivarian Venezuela,” such as the Cuban doctors serving in Venezuela and now Bolivia.

Carlos Lazo, first secretary of the Venezuelan mission to the United Nations, noted that his government is using Venezuela’s oil income “for the development of health, education, and housing.” He said, “The only threat we represent for Yankee imperialism is the achievement of these goals and setting an example for humanity.”

“We have to continue these mobilizations,” said William Camacaro of the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle, a Venezuela solidarity group in New York. “Venezuela is an engine for changes taking place in Latin America today.”

“We are for the immediate normalization of economic relations with Cuba,” said Juan José Gutiérrez, a leader of the Los Angeles-based International May 1 Coalition. The U.S. embargo against Cuba “has been a failed foreign policy for 40 years, and we don’t want to see that done in relation to Venezuela.” The May 1 Coalition was among the forces that initiated the April 10 and May 1 demonstrations for the legalization of undocumented immigrants.

The rally was the first nationwide action organized by a recently formed Venezuela Solidarity Network, working together with the National Network on Cuba. The sponsors included dozens of local Cuba and Venezuela solidarity committees and other political organizations.  
 
Campaign to free the Cuban Five
Rally organizers read a message from Leonard Weinglass, one of the attorneys for the Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, René González, Antonio Guerrero, and Ramon Labañino—who have spent the last eight years in U.S. prisons. They were convicted and given long sentences in a 2001 frame-up trial. Last August a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out all of the convictions and ordered a retrial. Government attorneys are seeking a reversal of that decision by the full court of appeals.

“We are now awaiting word on whether or not the federal appellate court in Atlanta will hold firm to its initial determination,” Weinglass said. “It’s not a time to relax our efforts to free the five.”

Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly, also sent a message to the rally. “We appreciate your solidarity in our struggle for independence and justice in the face of the imperialist aggression that our people have been resisting, heroically and successfully for over 47 years,” he said.

Many of the protesters pointed to the efforts the Venezuelan and Cuban governments are carrying out to extend health care and educational programs to workers and peasants in Venezuela, Bolivia, and other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean.

“I went with a group of students to the World Youth Festival,” said Amory Ballantine, a student at Oakton Community College near Chicago, referring to the international anti-imperialist youth gathering that was held in Caracas last August. “I saw a lot of the social programs that Chávez had started. I decided I had to see more, so I stayed on for five months.”

“I spoke to one of the Cuban doctors,” said Sheila Jain, 26, an epidemiologist who participated in the World Social Forum in Caracas in January. She had just finished medical school and “didn’t even think twice when asked to volunteer in Venezuela,” she said.

“You’re taught in school that America helps everybody,” said Kirstin Williams, a high school student from Decatur, Georgia. “But when the war broke out against Iraq I started to see the truth. Then I heard about the Cuban Five.”

At a simultaneous rally in Los Angeles that drew about 120 people, high school teacher Brian Johnstone said Venezuela and Cuba must be defended against U.S. threats because “they have both established a path independent of U.S. control.” He had traveled to Venezuela for last year’s World Youth Festival.

“One of the things Washington fears most is the example of the Cuban Revolution,” said Naomi Craine, of the Socialist Workers Party, addressing the Los Angeles rally. “A revolution that produces doctors who go to Venezuela, Bolivia, and Haiti; that produces people who go to Angola to fight to defeat the racist South African regime.”

On May 20 similar actions also took place in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada; Madrid, Spain; and Sydney, Australia. In Miami, 100 people, in their majority Cuban-Americans, rallied at the Federal Building to protest U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba.
 
 
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U.S jailers attack protesting Guantánamo prisoners  
 
 
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