President Fidel Castro told more than a million May Day demonstrators today that Latin American nations which cast a recent UN human rights vote against Cuba were "boot-lickers" of the United States.
"We will not lower our flags before the hegemonic superpower that today dictates its orders to lackeys and boot-lickers," he said.
"This has been the largest demonstration in Cuba since the triumph of the revolution [in 1959]," President Castro told the crowd at Havana's Revolution Square.
Under the gaze of a towering black-on-white image of revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara on the facade of the interior ministry, the crowd chanted, listened and spilled out into several kilometers of side streets in the capital.
Across the 14 provinces, seven million of Cuba's 11.2 million people were reported to have congregated to rail against the governments of Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay - all of which supported the UN resolution that chided Cuba, on behalf - say Cubans - of the United States. President Castro, clad in olive military fatigues, continued his recent tough talk against Latin American neighbors he slammed as "lackeys" and "boot-lickers" of the US in a 45-minute speech.
AFP