Castro Trades Combat Boots for Sneakers

H A VA N A, Oct. 18 -- President Fidel Castro led hundreds of thousands of Cubans on a march today to protest a change in the economic embargo on the communist-run island shortly before it was passed by the U.S. Congress.

Wearing tennis shoes rather than his usual military boots, and waving a Cuban flag in one hand, Castro, 74, strode past the U.S. diplomatic mission on Havana’s sea-front at the head of an estimated 800,000 people who followed noisily behind.

The crowd had been called out by the ruling Communist Party to express popular rejection of restrictions included in a U.S. bill to alter the four-decade-old trade embargo by allowingfood and medicine sales to the Caribbean island.

They also protested a new U.S. measure that would allow the use of frozen Cuban funds to compensate alleged terrorism victims.

“This is a patriotic march against the [genocidal] blockade, and the latest attempts to destroy our Revolution,” said one Havana housewife, Olga, as she joined the march. “Whenever the Revolution calls us out, we will be there.”

While the Congress move on sales is hailed in some quarters as a historic easing of the sanctions, Havana rejects it as a sham which actually bolsters the embargo because of conditions written into the bill at the behest of anti-Castro factionsincluding Florida’s Cuban-American exile community.

Those include a prohibition on U.S. financing and a codification of the ban on American tourism to Cuba.

“They have included a load of restrictions which are humiliating for the country, and make it impossible in practice,” President Fidel Castro said on the eve oftoday’s march in his first public comments on the bill.

“They still pretend that it [the bill] is an historic moment,” he added. “The historic moment is when 800,000 citizens speak in the name of the people of Cuba.”

Havana Paralyzed

The U.S. Senate passed the legislation today, the last step before sending it to President Clinton for enactment. Havana says it will not buy a singleaspirin or grain of rice, although some analysts view that as apossible lobbying position rather than an immovable stance.