The capitalist system is based on the exploitation of the vast majority of the population of the planet by an increasingly smaller and richer minority. To sustain itself in this globalized and neoliberal stage, with a hegemonic superpower, it must keep the peoples disunited. Therefore, any manifestation of united action, which shows us how many we are and what our real force is, provokes concern to imperialism, its accomplices and mercenaries.

In a very synthetic way, the origin of this date was in the Federation of Organized Trades and Trade Unions of the United States and Canada that in its fourth congress, in 1884, proposed the intensification of the struggle for the eight-hour day that would culminate the first day of May 1886, which fell on Saturday.

On  May 3, at the Mc Cormick factory and on May 4 on Haymarket Square in Chicago, the events leading up to the trial and conviction of eight trade union activists, four of whom were hanged on  November 11, 1887, were arrested: Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel and Adolph Fisher, socialist and revolutionary leaders who fought to win claims for their class brothers.

In 1893, the Governor of the State of Illinois, to which Chicago belongs, annulled the trial, pointing out that it had been a legal lynching of four people for his ideas, leaving freed the other prisoners.

The tradition of the May Day was born when the Second International agreed in Paris on July 1889 to organize a large demonstration so that in all countries and in all villages at the same time, workers would place the public authorities before the obligation to legally reduce to eight hours the working day and other resolutions of the International Congress of Paris, for May 1, 1890, adopted by the American Federation of Labor at its Congress of December 1888, held in San Luis, as a tribute to the martyrs of Chicago.

In Cuba, where all that took place around the aforementioned judicial process in Chicago, had been followed by the newspaper El Productor and in the wake of the convocation of Paris, some three thousand workers in the capital participated. After parading through the streets they congregated in Consulate and Virtues.

Argentina in America and some countries also complied with the invitation. Thus began the tradition that has become simultaneous in a large part of the world, with the participation of millions of people mobilized by the most just causes of humanity.

Thus was born the commemoration of the May Day which was neither the invention of Karl Marx, who had died in 1883, nor of the Communists, since it is above all a call to unity, above trends, of all workers.

In 1891 some countries re-developed the mobilization. In Cuba, an act was performed at the Teatro Irijoa - then Martí Theater - in Dragones and Zulueta, but it also took place in the city of Camagüey. Since then May Day has been incorporated into the forms of struggle of the workers in a national and international projection.

In our country, in times of the neocolonial republic, between 1902 and 1958, there were some years of profound significance. Among them we highlight:

1925

In the Nuevo Fronton (where the national headquarters of the Cuban Workers’ Union (CTC) is today, developed a speech four speakers, Alfredo López, for the Workers' Federation of Havana, and Julio Antonio Mella, the revolutionary leader, denouncing the newly elected Gerardo Machado and comparing him with the fascist leader Mussollinni.

The attendants left for Lenin Hill in Regla, baptized in tribute to the late revolutionary leader.

1930
Together with the March 20 strike and the student demonstration on September 30, the workers' mobilization was part of the beginning of the final stage of popular struggle against the Machadist tyranny that led to its overthrow in 1933. That year the repression left several dead and wounded.

1937
With its organization and mobilization was the first decisive step for the creation in 1939 of the Cuban Workers’ Union.

1945
It was the broadest celebration throughout the pre-revolutionary period, as it spread throughout the country, for the peace and unity of all workers in Cuba and the world when World War II had not ended. They rose to complete the legislation that would allow applying the progressive ideas included in the Constitution of 1940 by the combative mobilization, precisely, of the workers.

After the vicious coup d'état of March 10, 1952, the rights that had not been able to suppress the previous governments were eliminated, establishing a strong military dictatorship in the country. Our people, and in particular the workers, were the ones who felt the effects of reactionary and anti-constitutional politics of the new government, completely surrendered to the interests of imperialism and the bourgeois-latifundist oligarchy.

In the trade union movement, the environment became even more un-breathable for the workers. The dictatorship was based on the gangster elements and politiqueros that, with Eusebio Mujal at the head, directed the official CTC, and continued with greater force the imposition of workers leaders by decree, the assaults to the union premises, the persecution and the murder of Units’ leaders. Needless to say, the government systematically banned parades and the leadership of the CTC refused to encourage joint action by the masses. For taxed leaders, rickety acts were less problematic, in confined spaces, with a public disguised as workers and a few workers recruited through threat and coercion. Nevertheless, the workers celebrated their day by all possible routes, risking their physical integrity, their own life: from hanging cloths and flags in visible places, handing out proclamations, fixing posters and painting walls, making small local parades, lightning rallies, Evenings, work stoppages and other similar activities.

1953

From April 25, groups of workers began to roam the streets under the persecution of the police, demanding a united parade. Due to the imminent prohibition of the unitary parade and the rejection of the CTC Mujalista to the united celebration, the working section of the University Student Federation offered the University Stadium to carry out the act. A joint working-student committee was created, which issued a communiqué that was published on April 29.

On May Day, the streets near the sports field and its surroundings dawned full of police for intimidation; But they could not prevent the act from being carried out with thousands of workers and students.

1957

After the glorious disembarkation of the Granma the repression became more acute. In May of 1957, still fresh the assault to the Presidential Palace, the conditions were extremely difficult for the workers' mobilization. However, Labor Day was celebrated throughout the country. In the Central Park of Havana a floral wreath was deposited before the statue of Jose Marti with cries of "Down with tyranny! Down with Mujal!

In Cabaiguán a public demonstration took place that, despite the arrest of its organizers, toured the town with banners, canvases, posters and slogans of struggle. The campesinos of Realengo 18, Sales of Casanova and San Lorenzo, also celebrated commemorative acts. Similar activities were carried out in Pinar del Rio, Bayamo, Santa Clara, Camajuaní, etc.

1958

In the clandestine acts of May Day, the center of the demands raised by the proletariat was the call for the struggle for the overthrow of  Batista and his Mujalist agents.

From the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 the celebrations reached an incomparable level with any previous stage, highlighting the popular character of the process that began. In these years May Day has become something of much greater significance than the one that gave rise to it: the struggle for the just demands of the workers.

Among its new features it has become a moment of revolutionary reaffirmation against imperialism; it is no longer just a workers' party, that is, of the majority of the people, but of all the patriotic people, which is expressed in the participation with the trade union organizations of the whole society.

Above all, it gives continuity to the internationalist sense of the date. It is the opportunity to express solidarity with other countries of the world that face aggressions, crises, dictatorships and other harms; it is the moment of denunciation against imperialism and its various forms of trying to exercise world domination.

Special moments have been dedicated each May Day to the Latin American spirit of unity in each of the moments of the struggle against dictatorships, foreign intervention, immoral external debt and, more recently, against the annexationist attempt of the Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) and the formation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, ALBA.

In 1959, a colossal parade took place in the morning and culminated in the dawn of the following day, leaving as a stage of mass acts, the Plaza Civica - José Martí Revolution Squaren since 1961- , Where the final speech was given by then Commander Raul Castro Ruz, as the Commander-in-Chief was on a work trip across the continent. There he said:

"This is now the Cuba that Marti dreamed; this is the progressive Cuba that stirred in the twenties Julio Antonio Mella, it is the Young Cuba, extinct to the flower, that dreamed Antonio Guiteras.

In Camagüey Commander Camilo Cienfuegos presided over the mobilization and in Santiago de Cuba, Commander Ernesto Guevara de la Serna.

Our Commander in Chief has said:

"The revolutionary CTC has played an irreplaceable role in all the battles of the Revolution for the defense of workers' power, the nationalization of fundamental enterprises, literacy, mobilization for sugarcane harvesting, maintenance of production under the conditions of the imperialist blockade, and so many other countless efforts that have made possible the victory and consolidation of the first socialist revolution of the American continent.”

This quote from the First Party Congress in 1975 did not yet include one of the most glorious pages written by Cuban workers: internationalist missions, whether as civilian collaborators or as reservists of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in the struggle against imperialism and Apartheid.

Nor was the tremendous test of the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, nor the extraordinary example of heroism and resistance that the Cuban people, and in particular the millions of men and women who work in every sphere of society. Thanks to his irrevocable decision to preserve the achievements of socialism, the flame of hope for the new generations, which has guided other peoples in the way of their social and national liberation, was kept alive.

In 2009, in the midst of a complex situation created by the economic depression and global crises (food, energy, environmental, financial) caused by the irresponsibility and cravings of the capitalist system which provokes effects on all countries of the world, including our own, makes clear the need for a May Day with firmness, combativeness and massiveness.

The workers and all the patriotic people will show, with their presence in all the events celebrating this day, that we are the Revolution and that we follow the same ideals that have inspired this celebration for 119 years.

United with the Party, Fidel and Raúl, we strengthen our economy to consolidate that we advance, to eradicate errors and imperfections, to face the difficulties imposed by the economic depression and natural phenomena, and to demonstrate that all solutions will come out of work, not for some few, but with all and for the good of all.

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