Cuba's president Raúl Castro led some 800,000 people in the traditional May 1 march to Havana's Plaza de la Revolución. In a brief speech, Salvador Valdés, head of the Cuban Workers' Confederation (CTC), asked workers to support the government's economic plan, which he said "will require extraordinary efforts and sacrifices" but is "vital for preserving our social system." In April President Castro called for a reduction of public spending, the elimination of subsidies and of the black market, a stimulus for agriculture, and layoffs of as many as 1 million workers, about a fifth of the workforce, from their current employment. Castro said the government would seek to create conditions so that everyone would be able to find a productive job. (Prensa Gráfica, El Salvador, May 1 from AFP; La Jornada, Mexico, May 2 from correspondent)

As has become traditional, rival Mexican union confederations celebrated International Workers Day on May 1 with separate rallies in Mexico City's huge Zócalo plaza. The largest was organized by the independent National Workers Union (UNT), which claimed 250,000 to 300,000 participants; the local police failed to give an estimate.

In Panama, thousands of workers marched on May 1 to oppose the neoliberal economic policies of President Ricardo Martinelli's government, which they said was seeking to "take the workers back to the labor conditions of the 19th century." They protested an increase in prices of staple goods, an increase in consumption taxes, government plans for labor "reform," and a law which imposes prison sentences of up to two years for blocking traffic during protests—an effort "to stop the unions and to criminalize social protest," according to Mariano Mena, director of the National Coordinating Committee of Organized Workers.

Thousands of unionized public employees marked International Workers Day on May 1 with marches in Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador, joined by members of socialist president Rafael Correa's PAIS Alliance (AP) party. ("PAIS" is the acronym of "Proud and Sovereign Homeland" in Spanish, and also spells the word for "country.") Unemployment in Ecuador reached 9.1% in the first quarter of 2010, up from 7.9% at the end of 2009, while underemployment among the country's 4.6 million economically active workers is officially at 51.3%.

Latin Americans generally used the traditional International Workers Day marches on May 1 this year to protest around national issues, but some also demonstrated their support for immigrants in the US—where tens of thousands of immigrants and supporters were marching against anti-immigrant measures and laws.

Several thousand marched in the Bolivian capital La Paz on May Day, in a militant display that incessantly shattered the air with hurled firecrackers—and some much louder explosives that might have been dynamite. While the main Workers Central of Bolivia (COB) led at the front of the march, contingents ranged from indigenists to Trotskyists to anarchists, with varying degrees of support for (or dissent from) the left-nationalist Evo Morales government. (World War 4 Report on the scene in La Paz)

In the wake of the Louisiana oil spill, Florida's Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Orlando) called for President Barack Obama to reverse his recent executive order to open up areas of the Gulf of Mexico to offshore oil and gas exploration. Nelson also introduced legislation to stop exploration in the Gulf pending an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon incident. The bill would stop the Interior Department from developing a new five-year plan for Gulf drilling and exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf. "Stop the five-year plan on drilling on the offshore continental United States until we get to the bottom of this," he told CNN April 30. (Florida Today, May 1)

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan have posted two videos since the attempted Times Square car-bomb attack of May 1. In one, a Taliban spokesman claims the botched New York attack. In the second, alleged to have been filmed April 4, TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud promises attacks inside the US within a month. Mehsud had been believed killed in a drone attack back in January. New York police dismiss the Taliban claim, and are looking for a middle-aged white man caught on videotape near where the SUV loaded with propane, fireworks, fertilizer and timing devices was left. (CSM, ABC, May 3)