HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist Cuba marked the 52nd anniversary of the start of President Fidel Castro's revolution on Tuesday without a traditional outdoor mass rally and under a cloud of growing social discontent.
Castro's critics say there is little cause to celebrate for Cubans, who face persistent economic hardship, dilapidated housing, low wages and endless power cuts in recent months.
But the Cuban leader told supporters at Havana's Karl Marx theater that his right-wing enemies in exile in Miami were mistaken in thinking his government was on its knees.
He told his loyalists that Cuba's economy grew 7.0 percent in the first half of 2005 and breakdowns at Cuba's obsolete thermoelectric plants had been repaired.
And he blasted the Bush administration for efforts to undermine him by financing "mercenary" dissidents and spending $100 million in taxpayer money on "useless" propaganda broadcasts from a military plane formerly used in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ruling Communist Party and armed forces officials chanted "Fidel, Fidel" throughout the speech commemorating an assault Castro led on the Moncada military barracks in 1953 to launch a revolutionary movement that ousted U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista and brought Castro to power in 1959.
But power cuts of 12 hours or more a day, coupled with record heat, led to scattered protests, vandalism and rare anti-Castro graffiti this summer, veteran human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez said.
And Hurricane Dennis, which killed 16 people and destroyed thousands of houses in its July 7-8 rampage through Cuba, further taxed patience and stoked tensions.
"I've not seen such widespread discontent in four decades," said Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights.
AUTHORITIES RESPOND TO DISSENT
Authorities have responded by mobilizing rapid deployment brigades of militant supporters to disperse pockets of protest with batons, he and other dissidents said.
On Friday, hostile crowds demonstrated outside government opponents' homes and police detained 33 dissidents who had planned a protest to demand the release of political prisoners. Nine of the 33 are still being held, Sanchez said.
Castro said authorities picked up the dissidents to protect them from neighbors rightly outraged by their "treason" and such counter demonstrations would continue.
"That's nothing compared to what will happen if they try to take over Cuba ... they would have to shed more blood than in any other part of the planet," he said to a standing ovation.
Castro, who turns 79 next month, spoke for more than three hours, wearing his trademark olive-green uniform. He declared earlier this year that Cuba had overcome the deep crisis it was plunged into by the demise of the Soviet Union, with the loss of billions of dollars in subsidies.
He blames U.S. trade sanctions enforced in 1962 for Cuba's economic woes.
Shipments of subsidized oil from Venezuela and new credits from China have helped Havana weather a cash crunch, allowing Castro to raise wages and pensions this year.
"We are doing well," billboards confidently proclaim.
At the same time, an official report said 43 percent of Cuban homes needed repair and the country of 11 million people had a 500,000-house deficit. In June, authorities said 1.7 million Cubans had no running water due to a severe drought.
"This nation that undoubtedly has backed the government for many years is disillusioned and frustrated now, seeing a return to the past," dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe said.
He said Cuba should not have closed small private businesses it allowed a decade ago, instead of following other communist states that opened to capitalist markets.
"If the Cuban government opened up areas of the economy, like China and Vietnam, it may be able to avoid a social explosion," he said.