Cuba’s embattled president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, was outside before dawn on Friday in a baseball cap and sneakers, shaking hands and marching among thousands of Communist Party supporters and government workers celebrating International Worker’s Day.
With a severe energy crisis that has sent food prices soaring, morale plummeting and transportation halting, the Cuban government this year held its annual May Day celebration by the U.S. Embassy.
Thousands of people — more than half a million, according to the Cuban government — gathered on Friday morning amid extraordinary tensions with the Trump administration, which has imposed an oil blockade as part of its campaign to force economic and political change.
For the Cuban government, the event was a chance to maintain the appearance of business as usual as well as an attempt to demonstrate strong defiance in the face of the worst crisis in the regime’s nearly 70-year history.
Most participants came from government job sites and many arrived on government buses. Communist supporters like Rogelio Guerra Rodríguez, 65, who works for the state’s agricultural transportation service, carried a sign that read “No Blockade.”
“I came here to serve my country, to stand with all workers and to say, ‘No to the blockade,’” Mr. Guerra said. “To say, ‘Freedom for Cubans, for everyone. Peace, freedom and continue forward.’”
But many Cubans say they are simply too exhausted and tired of day-to-day struggles to bother with such political fanfare. Prices for food are high, salaries are low, gasoline is hard to find and many Cuban workers believe now is not the time for propaganda and slogans.
To show its supposed widespread support, the Cuban government in recent weeks has organized a nationwide petition against U.S. intervention. After a massive campaign at state job sites and a block-by-block effort by Communist Party neighborhood representatives, the government said it had gathered 6,230,973 signatures. (The country’s population, after years of migration, is estimated to be just eight million.)
The government has not shared the text of the petition. The state-run media presented it as a demonstration of support for the current regime as President Trump makes thinly veiled threats that Cuba is “next,” after military operations in Venezuela and Iran.
“Anyone who wants to know what Cuba is, anyone who wants to truly know us, should watch the parades and events of this May Day,” Mr. Díaz-Canel posted Friday on Facebook. “Let them read, one by one, the 6,230,000 signatures for peace, against the blockade and against the war.”
The Trump administration questioned the wisdom of the May Day festivities.
“It’s very telling that amid a crisis, the illegitimate Cuban regime opts for spending their scarce resources and limited fuel in staging a demonstration rather than providing goods for the Cuban people,” said Tommy Pigott, a spokesman for the State Department.
The Trump administration has ratcheted up sanctions and its rhetoric against the Cuban government. It blocked nearly all oil deliveries for several months, plunging an already energy-deprived nation into increased blackouts. On Friday, Mr. Trump announced more sanctions on Cuban officials, though he did not specify whom.
The two governments have been conducting secret negotiations, with the United States demanding more economic freedom and for Mr. Díaz-Canel to be removed from office. The Cuban government has publicly affirmed that its political system is not up for debate or negotiation.
For now, it is not clear whether the discussions are yielding any breakthroughs or are instead at a stalemate.
Luis García López, a social sciences professor at the José Antonio Echeverría Higher Polytechnic Institute in Havana, said the petition the government circulated “advocates for peace” and calls for an end to a possible military intervention and the decades-long U.S. economic embargo against Cuba.
“The desire for peace, the desire for nonintervention, is a desire shared by perhaps the entire population,” he said, adding that he hopes no one was forced to sign and that the government is honest and transparent about the results.
“The document states that the country urges international organizations and the U.S. government to respect Cuba’s right to peace,” he said.
Mr. López, who said he had signed the petition, was speaking on Thursday as a bulldozer scooped up a gigantic pile of trash nearby.
Other Cubans in Havana said they were subtly pressured to sign, or not really given a chance to read what it said.
Jailén Ferrer, a street vendor who sold horns and other toys, said he had also signed, but acknowledged that he was not interested in politics and eager for some kind of change.
He attended the May Day parade in pink bunny ears and brandished balloons he had formed into animal shapes, selling them for the equivalent of 20 cents.
At the end of the event on Friday, he had made only about $2.
In better times, people would have thought nothing of buying trinkets for their children.
“They would say, ‘Give me four or five of the big horns,’ but not anymore,” he said. “Before, anyone would buy a 100-peso horn without thinking twice. But now, with the economy the way it is, you have to be thinking about saving those 100 pesos for your family.”
He wondered whether it was time to leave Cuba.
One woman interviewed laughed out loud when asked if she planned to attend the May Day celebration. Another said she was too busy looking for work.
The Cuban government petition came as a coalition of independent media outlets operating in exile conducted an online survey.
José Jasán Nieves, the editor in chief of elTOQUE, an independent media outlet critical of the government that he said was forced to flee Cuba in 2019, acknowledged that the survey was far from scientific.
Preliminary results show more than 21,000 people in Cuba have responded, Mr. Nieves said, even as the government has tried to block access to the survey. When asked what forms of external pressure they support, more than half of respondents chose direct U.S. military intervention, Mr. Nieves said.
“In the last few weeks the Cuban regime has given signals, defiant signals if you will, that they are prepared to outlast President Trump and Marco Rubio,” he said, referring to the U.S. secretary of state. “I don’t think they are bluffing. I really think that they are closed off in an echo chamber, and they believe their own propaganda.”
Ada Ferrer, a Cuba scholar at Princeton University, said the results of elTOQUE’s survey were not that surprising.
“I think it’s fair to say people are desperate for change and are less focused on the details of how it will come,” she said.
Aida Oliva Caraballo, 61, who works for the government oil company, said she and others had proudly attended the May Day parade to “defend the nation and the revolution.”
At the same time, she looked around and acknowledged that the crowd was much smaller than in past years.
“Maybe people aren’t very motivated; maybe people are a bit fed up with the power outages,” she said. “The power goes out at work, and when I get home, the power is out there, too.”
