First U.S. Cruise Sets Sail To Cuba, While May Day In Havana Calls For The Return Of Guantanamo Bay

Six-hundred passengers set sail to Cuba on the Adonia Sunday (May 1). They are the first American cruisers to travel by sea to the island since U.S.-Cuba relations discontinued more than 50 years ago.

According to the Miami Herald, passengers will visit typical tourist attractions like the Plaza de la Revolucion, the Colon Cemetery and the National Fine Arts Museum. To adhere to the people-to-people requirements, however, there will also be an exchange of dialogue with native artists and special visits to community projects.

Despite U.S. overtures, a growing alliance between the United States and the Communist nation hasn’t stopped leftist leaders from raising their voice against foreign political powers.

May Day keynote speaker Ulises Guilarte, the secretary general of the Workers’ Central Union of Cuba, “repeated Castro’s call for the United States to lift its more than half-century embargo on Cuba and return the “illegally occupied territory” of the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, major sticking points in the old Cold War foes’ rapprochement,” reports Yahoo.

Prior to the call for the restoration of their territory, Guilarte presided over a massive crowd on Revolution Square in Havana to announce they’re defending Latin American leftists in times of political upheaval. (Presidents in Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela, for example, are all facing impeachment or expulsion from office). “This May 1 is also a day to condemn the maneuvers aimed at… reversing the gains achieved in social policy in our America and destabilizing the leftist and progressive governments in power.”