She said her 94-year-old father – who oversaw a historic 2015 rapprochement with the United States under Barack Obama that Trump later reversed – was indirectly involved in the talks.
Raul’s grandson Raul Rodriguez Castro, a colonel, is reportedly among the negotiators.
Diaz-Canel admitted that the current moment was “very grave” but stressed Cuba’s “socialist” nature, as proclaimed by Fidel Castro on April 16, 1961.
The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion was launched two years after Castro’s revolutionaries took control of the island and began nationalising US-owned properties and businesses.
Between April 15 and 19, around 1400 anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami, trained and financed by the CIA, landed at the Bay of Pigs, about 250km south of Havana.
Cuban forces repelled the invaders, inflicting a humiliating defeat on the Americans.
Six decades later, Washington now has Cuba again in its sights.
After Maduro’s capture in Caracas, Trump imposed an oil blockade of Cuba, aggravating the impoverished island’s worst economic and energy crisis in decades.
Diaz-Canel rejected what he referred to as a US portrayal of Cuba as a “failed state”.
Havana largely blames its woes on a US trade embargo imposed shortly after Castro’s arrival to power, still in place today, and the more recent oil blockade.
“Cuba is not a failed state, it’s a besieged state,” he said.
Maria Reguiero, an 82-year-old attending the rally, said that, like in 1961, Cubans were “ready to defend their sovereignty, whatever the price”.
-Agence France-Presse
