Originally published in Spanish on May 1, 2026.
Opinion | Ernesto García
The Cuba May Day parade of 2026 moved through Havana in union-organized blocks, with health workers at the front. In this column, Ernesto García argues that the march honored the regime rather than Cuban workers: average state wages are worth about $16 a month, the only legal union answers to the Communist Party, and dissent can cost a job.
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Every May Day, Havana puts on flags and slogans. Organized contingents fill the Plaza de la Revolución, microphones repeat the names of Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel, and official loudspeakers proclaim unity and workers’ achievements.
In 2026, the parade again proceeded in union-organized blocks, led by health workers and promoted with slogans about building Cuba together and marching for peace. On paper, it honored those who sustain the country. In practice, it was one of the dictatorship’s most cynical performances. While banners proclaimed working-class pride, actual Cuban workers survived on wages that could not buy enough food, belonged to a monopoly union that would not defend them and faced workplace surveillance for thinking differently.
A wage that cannot sustain a life
The original column cites ONEI figures placing average state-sector monthly wages in 2025 between 6,685 and 6,930 Cuban pesos (Diario de Cuba reported the 6,930-peso average in April 2026). At the government’s 410-peso-per-dollar rate used in the comparison, that was roughly $16 to $17 a month, and a little over $15 at the cited informal rate. In the budget-funded sector — hospitals, schools and government offices — the average fell to 5,799 pesos.
Meanwhile, independent economists estimated that an average household needed more than 50,000 to 61,000 pesos a month. A basic food basket for a couple in Havana cost around 41,000 pesos. Using the state-wage range above, that food basket alone cost roughly six average monthly salaries; the household estimate represented roughly seven to nine.
Related: a girl begging for food in a Cuban park and the child hunger the regime tried to hide.
The official figures cited in the column show prices multiplying by 4.6 between 2021 and 2025. This is the supposedly happy worker displayed every May Day: paid in a devalued currency, charged in a dollarized economy and required to applaud the architects of that impoverishment. Celebrating workers’ achievements under those conditions falsifies their reality.
Cuban health workers and modern slavery
It is no coincidence that health workers led the parade. They are among the regime’s most profitable exports. The original article places more than 40,000 Cuban professionals on overseas missions described at home as solidarity, while international organizations have raised concerns about forced labor and modern slavery.
The state charges host governments and, according to the figures cited here, retains up to 80% to 90% of the payment. Doctors, nurses and technicians receive a small share. Accounts of these missions describe withheld passports and credentials, surveillance, restrictions on movement and an eight-year prohibition on returning to Cuba for those who abandon an assignment, separating them from their families.
The criticism extends beyond political opinion. U.N. special rapporteurs raised concerns between 2019 and 2024. The original cites four European Parliament condemnations, criticism in Spain and an April 2026 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report addressing labor rights in Cuba’s medical missions. The IACHR’s April 7 announcement warns that some missions may involve forced labor and that certain circumstances could amount to trafficking. It recommends voluntary participation, decent contracts and conditions, freedom of movement and respect for the right to return home. U.S. trafficking reports have also placed Cuba in their lowest tier.
That is the vanguard the regime puts at the front of its parade: workers used to sustain a business model built on leasing human labor under coercive conditions.
Related, in Spanish: Cuban doctors in Uruguay and who controls their salaries.
Watch the first video referenced in the original column on Facebook.
The monopoly union that fails to defend workers
The regime boasts that 96% to 97% of Cuban workers belong to the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, or CTC. It omits the absence of a freely organized alternative. The federation, whose origins predate the revolution, became a transmission belt for the Communist Party under Castroism.
Workers cannot meaningfully exercise an independent right to strike, bargain collectively or form free unions. Those who try to organize outside the CTC face persecution. The original column reported that at least 10 independent unionists had recently been summoned by political police for questioning under threat.
A membership rate of 97% without freedom of association is coercion, not a union triumph. Calling it worker representation resembles calling the regime’s elections free. The CTC does not protect workers from the state employer because it is part of that employer’s system.
Thinking differently can cost you your job
The threat of losing a job is among the regime’s most effective tools of repression because it is often quiet. The message is clear: keeping your employment depends on agreeing with the government.
Amnesty International has documented harassment and dismissal of workers who question conditions in Cuba. Once branded disloyal, they can be effectively excluded from comparable employment. The Penal Code continues to punish conduct deemed a threat to the socialist state’s social, economic or political order.
In the weeks preceding the original article, workers in Matanzas reported pressure to sign declarations of ideological allegiance under threat of dismissal. The mechanism is “demonstrated suitability,” an elastic labor standard allowing the state to judge a worker by political loyalty. In many workplaces, refusing to attend the May Day parade also carries consequences.
Watch the second video referenced in the original column on Facebook.
The private sector’s escape route is closing
For years, the regime marketed micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, known as MIPYMES, as an opening. In 2025–26, the reality was a sustained offensive against private business.
Decree-Law 91/2024 increased fines up to 72,000 pesos. Tax exemptions were removed, foreign-currency use restricted and commercial margins capped at 30%. Resolution 86/2026 required self-employed workers, small businesses and cooperatives to act as financial-monitoring agents, reporting clients appearing on lists associated with suspected terrorism or money laundering.
Mandatory electronic invoicing and cross-checking of financial data intensified scrutiny. Díaz-Canel also pressed for Communist Party and Communist Youth committees inside private companies.
The original column notes that small businesses recorded a net decline at the end of 2024 for the first time since their authorization in 2021. Hundreds closed; others restricted themselves to avoid confiscation. The regime wants an obedient, closely monitored and diminished private sector. Even self-employment must not become a credible route to economic independence.
Read the related Cubanos por el Mundo post on Facebook.
What the Cuba May Day parade is really celebrating
May 1 was a celebration of the regime above the workers it claims to represent. The organizers pay salaries worth around $16 a month while collecting many times that amount from foreign governments for health personnel. They demand declarations of loyalty under threat of dismissal, turn the union into a party office and treat private enterprise as suspect by default.
Cuba’s real workers’ day is lived in the kitchen empty at month’s end, by the doctor trapped on an overseas assignment, by the self-employed person closing to avoid fines and by the Cuban choosing to leave because work no longer pays enough to live.
This editorial is dedicated to the workers who truly sustain Cuba, inside and outside the island. No parade can conceal the truth: the dictatorship exploits and humiliates them and, when useful, hires them out.
Read more opinion columns from Cubanos por el Mundo.
