MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (AP) -- More than 300 Cubans gathered in this seaside Argentine town Thursday, where the governments of every nation in the Western Hemisphere minus Cuba were scheduled to meet for a two-day Summit of the Americas.

Cuba, a communist-run adversary of the U.S. government for four decades, is prohibited from participating in the summit that begins Friday because it is not a member of the Organization of American States, which is organizing the meeting.

Milling around a sports complex a couple miles (kilometers) from the luxury hotels where the other nations will meet, the Cubans said they don't feel slighted by the snub.

"Even if they invited us, we would not have come," said Ricardo Alarcon, Cuba's parliamentary speaker and the highest-ranking government official in the Cuban contingency, which also included well-known singers and a top athlete.

The Cubans, along with thousands of leftist activists, are taking part in a "People's Summit," which Alarcon said is more important than "the other" summit.

"What they have planned is what the Americans call a 'photo opportunity,"' Alarcon told Associated Press Television News in an interview.

Protesters said some 10,000 people planned to march through the streets of Mar Del Plata on Friday. About 8,000 police and soldiers are deployed in the city to prevent violence.

The protesters' goal: to prevent U.S. officials from using the fourth Summit of the Americas as a springboard to renew talks on the Free Trade Area of Americas agreement, which seeks to create a free-trading zone stretching from Alaska to the tip of South America.

Negotiations on the agreement have been stalled but are taking center stage with the gathering of U.S. President George W. Bush and representatives from 33 other American nations.

Silvio Rodriguez, a Cuban singer recognized throughout Latin America, said he came to Argentina not as a singer but as a "citizen of the earth" to protest the U.S. government.

"I oppose these thieves and murderers who want to take over the world at the cost of hunger, misery and the slavery of others," Rodriguez told a cheering crowd of Cubans, many of whom were dressed in red and white sweat suits with "CUBA" emblazoned across the back.

Rodriguez is known for a ballad style of music called trova that is similar to American folk music.

Also on hand in Mar del Plata was Cuba's world record-holding high jumper, Javier Sotomayor, who shyly said he opposes Bush but has nothing against Americans.

"Look, one of the reasons I even took up high jumping was because I was in awe at watching the American high jumper Dwight Stones," said Sotomayor, who set the record in 1993.

Julio Martinez, a 37-year-old director of a youth communism center in Havana who is in Argentina for the "People's Summit," said Cuba's presence in Mar Del Plata also is designed to offer solidarity for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Chavez, a frequent Bush critic, plans to use the summit to protest capitalism and promote his "Boliviarian" revolution.

He is using profits from Venezuela's huge oil reserves to fund socialist initiatives in a political movement loosely based on the ideals of Simon Bolivar, the South American independence hero.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.