By Vanessa Bauzá
Havana Bureau

HAVANA · Cuba's socialist system would overcome any new U.S. initiatives aimed at hastening political change on the island, President Fidel Castro told a sea of flag-waving Cubans in a two-hour May Day speech.

Referring to a report by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, expected to be presented to President Bush this weekend, Castro said his enemies across the Florida Straits are "once again making themselves hoarse, shouting threats of upcoming measures to affect our economy and destabilize our country."

Included in the commission's report is a proposal to slash the amount of money Cuban Americans are allowed to send their relatives, according to sources familiar with the report. The cash transfers are among Cuba's biggest source of money -- between $100 million and $1 billion annually. Castro did not mention the potential loss of revenue.

"To those who persist in their efforts to destroy the revolution, I simply say, in the name of the crowd gathered here ... long live socialism!" he said.

Dressed in his traditional green fatigues, Castro, 77, frequently digressed from his prepared text during his wide-ranging speech, touching on many of his favorite topics: Cuba's low infant mortality and high literacy rates, to criticism of the war in Iraq and conditions at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, where 600 so-called enemy combatants are detained.

He also called the European Union and several Latin American countries a "herd of hypocrites" for recently voting in favor of a resolution criticizing Cuba at the U.N. Human Rights Commission while ignoring a motion made by Cuba to seek inspections into the detention facility at the naval base.

International labor leaders, leftist groups and anti-capitalist demonstrators commemorated May Day around the world on Saturday. Few rallies were as massive as Cuba's, where hundreds of thousands of people were bused into squares in cities across the island.

One supporter, Lazaro Castro, said he arrived in Havana's Plaza of the Revolution at about 2 a.m. Saturday to secure a spot in front of the flag-waving crowd. Castro, 40, who is not related to Cuba's leader, said he has not missed a May Day rally since he was a child.

"It's a tradition in our family," he said. "Fidel speaks from his heart. His ideas are the ideas of the people. Personally, we pray for his health every night."

After his speech, Castro left the plaza in a black Mercedes Benz as thousand of Cubans started walking home or boarding the waiting buses.

Like other bicycle-taxi drivers who swarmed the trash-strewn plaza at the end of the rally, Luis Diaz, 34, was grateful for any extra work the huge crowd might bring. He left his government job at a foundry several years ago and turned to self-employment to better his family.

"We are going through economic hardship because of the blockade," Diaz said, using the Cuban government's term for the U.S. trade embargo.

"This is very hard work," he said on his bicycle taxi. "But it gives me enough to live on."

Vanessa Bauza can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com.

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