In possible first, Cuba allows march by animal activists

On Sunday morning a group of animal-lovers will march a mile down one of Havana's main thoroughfares waving placards calling for an end to animal cruelty in Cuba.

Short, seemingly simple, the march will write a small but significant line in the history of modern Cuba. The socialist government is explicitly permitting a public march unassociated with any part of the all-encompassing Communist state, a move that participants and historians call highly unusual and perhaps unprecedented since the first years of the revolution.

"It's a historic event," said Beatriz Del Carmen Hidalgo-Gato Batista, a 21-year public communications student who received the permit for the march from the Plaza of the Revolution borough of Havana.

There is no indication Cuba is moving toward unfettered freedom of assembly: The state still clamps down on unapproved political speech with swift and massive police mobilizations, waves of arrests and temporary detentions. So a march by independent civil society groups seeking government action will be a remarkable sight in a country where, for nearly 60 years, virtually every aspect of life was part of a single chain of command ending in a supreme leader named Castro.

"It's unprecedented," said Alberto Gonzalez, a co-organizer of the march and publisher of The Ark, an online Cuban animal-lovers magazine. "This is going to mark a before and an after."'
The animal-rights march is part of a wider change in the relationship between the Cuban state and independent civil society Cubans trying to effect change in their society while making clear to everyone, particularly the authorities, that they have no interest in crossing the red line known as "politics."