Cubans Rally as U.S. Plays Down Unrest

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans gathered at Havana’s Revolution Square on Sunday to show support for the government, two days after clashes in the capital that injured 35 people.

The sea of people waved Cuban flags, chanted revolutionary slogans and stood through a rain shower to hear Deputy Defense Minister Ulises Rosales del Toro reiterate Cuba’s angry charge that the United States was behind the unprecedented clashes, the worst in the capital in decades.

In the United States, officials sought to play down the unrest and the possibility of an exodus of refugees from the island.

The clashes were triggered by at least three hijackings of ferries in 10 days by Cubans seeking to leave illegally by sea for the United States. In a speech Friday, Cuban President Fidel Castro blamed the United States for encouraging the exodus and threatened to allow free emigration, raising the specter of the 1980 Mariel boat lift, in which about 120,000 Cubans came to South Florida.

Without saying how it would do so, the Clinton Administration quickly promised to prevent another such influx. An Administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sunday that one option is a blockade by U.S. warships of the passage between Key West, Fla., and Cuba.

Sunday’s gathering in Havana was in honor of 19-year-old police officer Gabriel Lamoth Caballero, killed by hijackers who commandeered a ferry Thursday. The body of a second officer killed in the same incident has not yet been recovered.

That ferry hijacking ended with authorities bringing the hijackers and passengers back to Havana after the vessel ran out of fuel.

The Sunday newspaper Juventud Rebelde--the youth Communist weekly--said 35 people, including 10 police officers, were injured in Friday’s clashes between police and stone-throwers along a stretch of the Malecon seafront drive.

The paper said “important groups” had been arrested but did not give a number.

Juventud Rebelde said 300 to 400 people gathered near the port early in the morning and were dispersed. Following that, 21 people tried to commandeer a tugboat, even though it had no motor, and were detained, the newspaper said.

Later, about 700 people congregated near the port, and clashes erupted around the Hotel Deauville, along the Malecon, the newspaper added.

Granma, the Communist Party daily, published a graphic account of the clashes, quoting members of civilian law enforcement brigades.

“They hit the eye out of one colleague, broke the skull of another and split another’s head,” Granma quoted one man as saying. Said another: “Stones were flying all over the place. . . . It was a body-to-body clash, and we pushed them back.”

Cuba says U.S. policy stimulates illegal exits because Washington limits the visas it grants but allows Cubans who have left the island illegally to stay in the United States.