Cuban Unions issue a call to mobilize for May 1st

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A CALL TO MAY 1st, 2026

Dear Cuban workers,

In the face of growing threats from the U.S. government, heightened by the January 29 executive order adding an energy blockade to the long-standing economic, commercial, and financial restrictions that have been in place for over 65 years simply for our desire to build a dignified, sovereign, and independent nation, nothing is more crucial now than uniting and moving forward together as a country.

Amidst this situation, the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC), along with its national unions and the Asociación Nacional de Innovadores y Racionalizadores (ANIR), call for the celebration of May Day, International Workers' Day, centered around a key and mobilizing idea: The defense of the Homeland.

To celebrate May Day is to demonstrate the unity of Cubans and their patriotism; it is to "break the corojo" again as Maceo did in Baraguá when he did not accept peace without independence; it is to evoke the ideas of José Martí in his speech Los Pinos Nuevos, a transcendent declaration of unity of several generations of Cubans around the fight for independence; it is to defend, in the year of the centenary of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, his ideas of May 1, 2000.

We encourage you to celebrate through parades and events in every labor group, batey, town, municipality, and province, while maintaining the rational approach we've adopted due to the intensified blockade's restrictions.

It’s a call to defend the country from the fields, the factories, the classrooms, the research centers, the power plants, the hospitals, culture, sports—every front of the fight.

We invite Cuba's friends around the world to join us, as they do every year, in celebrating International Workers' Day. We thank them in advance for their solidarity and the courage to share our fate amid a real military threat, which, far from intimidating us, inspires us to repeat with optimism and confidence in victory the glorious verse of our National Anthem: For to die for the homeland is to live.

“For Cuba we create together” is the belief that guides us today, driving the priorities set by the Party. It’s for those preparing to defend our Socialist Homeland, for our efforts to transform the energy matrix, boost food production, and find solutions to daily challenges. It’s the commitment of doctors and teachers who never give up and continue to protect life, and of all of us who are part of the Revolution—not out of dogma or fanaticism, but from conviction, ideas, and hard work.

Workers, Cuban people:

With the bright colors of our flag, and filled with joy and patriotism, inspired by the teachings of Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, just months before the final sessions of our twenty-second congress, the CTC, its national unions, and the ANIR call for a May 1 that moves us as a nation through unity and commitment, to contribute, and to defend the project that Martí dreamed of, Fidel fulfilled, and that under the leadership of the Party, headed by First Secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez alongside the workers, we will never allow to be taken from us.

Long live the Cuban Revolution!

Long live the Cuban Revolution!

Long live the Cuban Revolution!

SEE YOU ON MAY 1st!