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Cuba’s embattled president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, was outside before dawn on Friday in a baseball cap and sneakers, shaking hands and marching among thousands of Communist Party supporters and government workers celebrating International Worker’s Day.

With a severe energy crisis that has sent food prices soaring, morale plummeting and transportation halting, the Cuban government this year held its annual May Day celebration by the U.S. Embassy.

Thousands of people — more than half a million, according to the Cuban government — gathered on Friday morning amid extraordinary tensions with the Trump administration, which has imposed an oil blockade as part of its campaign to force economic and political change.

For the Cuban government, the event was a chance to maintain the appearance of business as usual as well as an attempt to demonstrate strong defiance in the face of the worst crisis in the regime’s nearly 70-year history.

Most participants came from government job sites, and many arrived on government buses.

But many Cubans say they are simply too exhausted and tired of day-to-day struggles to bother with such political fanfare. Prices for food are high, salaries are low, gasoline is hard to find and many Cuban workers believe now is not the time for propaganda and slogans.

To show its supposed widespread support, the Cuban government in recent weeks has organized a nationwide petition against U.S. intervention. After a massive campaign at state job sites and a block-by-block effort by Communist Party neighborhood representatives, the government said it had gathered 6,230,973 signatures. (The country’s population, after years of migration, is estimated to be just 8 million.)

The government has not shared the text of the petition. The state-run media presented it as a demonstration of support for the current regime as President Donald Trump makes thinly veiled threats that Cuba is “next,” after military operations in Venezuela and Iran.

The Trump administration has ratcheted up sanctions and its rhetoric against the Cuban government. It blocked nearly all oil deliveries for several months, plunging an already energy-deprived nation into increased blackouts. On Friday, Trump announced more sanctions on Cuban officials, though he did not specify whom.

The two governments have been conducting secret negotiations, with the United States demanding more economic freedom and for Díaz-Canel to be removed from office. The Cuban government has publicly affirmed that its political system is not up for debate or negotiation.

This article originally appeared in .

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