Loudly rejecting President Bush’s Cuba policy and, more indirectly, a dissident-led referendum calling for democratic reforms, President Fidel Castro led hundreds of thousands of Cubans in a “combative march” Wednesday, signaling that the nation’s one-party system will not be easily rattled.
Smaller rallies took place in towns across the island. The mobilizations, billed as the largest in Cuba’s history, supported a constitutional amendment that says the “economic, political and social system consecrated in the constitution of the republic is untouchable.”
The amendment was proposed Monday by a coalition of pro-government groups, exactly one month after dissidents presented an unprecedented 11,000-signature petition calling for freedom of speech, amnesty for political prisoners, the creation of private businesses and a revision of electoral law.
