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His fantastical confidence was unbowed. As they settled into the Sierra Maestra, the urban intellectuals quickly realized they were now dependent on the campesinos for their very survival.

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In , the economy expanded by 4. Chinese and Venezuelan economic support, including investment and direct aid, have given Cuba the space to eliminate many of the tentative open market reforms Cuba put in place during the depth of its mids economic crisis. Gengen 12, forum posts. The petition achieved unprecedented success in political organizing and was presented to the National Assembly with a total of 25, signatures in and In July , Cuba and Angola had offered to speed up Cuban withdrawal. Oxford: Casemate Publishers. Applying for a Specific License: Persons wishing to travel to Cuba under a specific license should send a letter specifying the details of the proposed travel, including any accompanying documentation, to the Licensing Division, Office of Foreign Assets Control, U.

Luckily, there was a built-in reservoir of support. Many in the Sierra had been evicted from their land by the Rural Guards and were virtual refugees, squatting in dirt-floor huts and subsisting by growing coffee and marijuana. The romance with Fidel developed slowly over the following months, says biographer Stout. Young farmhands swelled the rebel ranks as soldiers. The campesinos also risked the savage reprisals of soldiers of the Rural Guard, who beat, raped or executed peasants they suspected of rebel sympathies.

Today, the Sierra is still a frayed cobweb of dirt roads that lead to a few official attractions—oddities like the Museum of the Heroic Campesino—but my accidental meetings are more vivid. The father had been an organizer for the sharecroppers in the area, and one day an assassin walked up and shot him in the face.

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People came from all around, friends, relatives, supporters. Of course, we had to kill a pig to feed them all at the funeral. He ran away to join the guerrillas to get out of his debts. For six months, Fidel and his battered band lay low, training for combat and scoring unusual propaganda points. The first came when Batista told the press that Fidel had been killed after the landing, a claim the rebels were quickly able to disprove. If he had not become a revolutionary, Fidel could have had a stellar career in advertising. A more concrete milestone came on May 28, , when the guerrillas, now numbering 80 men, attacked a military outpost in the drowsy coastal village of El Uvero.

Elderly residents still like to recount the story of the attack in detail. We had no idea! Then we realized it was Fidel. From that day on, we did what we could to help him. Their strategies were often improvised. By mid, the rebels had established Comandancia La Plata and a network of other refuges, and even the self-deluded Batista could not deny that the government was losing control of the Oriente.

In summer, the dictator ordered 10, troops into the Sierra backed with air support, but after three tortuous months, the army withdrew in frustration. When the rebels revealed how many civilians were being killed and mutilated by napalm bombing, the U. Congress ended U. The CIA even began feeling out contacts with Fidel. The mile dash was one of the most harrowing episodes of the campaign, as troops slogged through flat sugar country exposed to strafing aircraft. But by late December, Che had surrounded Santa Clara and cut the island in two.

It was a stunning victory. Soon after the champagne corks popped, he was escaping with his cronies on a private plane loaded with gold bullion to the Dominican Republic. He soon moved to Portugal, then under a military dictatorship, and died from a heart attack in Spain in Despite its revolutionary credentials, Santa Clara today is one of the most decrepit provincial outposts in Cuba. A strikingly ugly memorial has been erected by the carriages, with concrete obelisks placed at angles to evoke an explosion. Guards show off burn marks from rebel bombs on the train floors, before cheerfully trying to sell visitors black market Cohiba cigars.

As the site of his greatest victory, Santa Clara will always be associated with Che. In the mids, he tried to apply his guerrilla tactics to other impoverished corners of the world with little success. In , he was captured by the Bolivian Army in the Andes and executed. The mausoleum is now guarded by cadres of young military women dressed in olive-drab miniskirts and aviator sunglasses, who loll about in the heat like Che groupies.

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It was around a. To many Cubans, the capital had become a symbol of decadence, a seedy enclave of prostitution, gambling and raunchy burlesque shows for drunken foreign tourists. Lured by the louche glamour, Marlon Brando, Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra took raucous holidays in Havana, actor George Raft became master of ceremonies at the mob-owned Capri Hotel, and Hemingway moved to a leafy mansion on the city outskirts so he could fish for marlin in the Caribbean and guzzle daiquiris in the bar El Floridita.

Fidel ordered Che and Camilo to rush ahead to Havana to restore order and occupy the two main military barracks. The cavalcade finally arrived in Havana on January 8, with Fidel riding a tank and chomping a cigar. People had been terrorized. And here were these baseball-playing, roguish, sexy guys who roll into town and chase them off. By all accounts, it was an orgy. Other guerrillas camped out in the lobby, treading mud over the carpets, while tourists going to the pool looked on in confusion.

The baroque Presidential Palace now houses the Museum of the Revolution, but it is a shabby affair, its exhibits fraying in cracked, dusty cases. A glimpse of the feisty past is provided by the notorious Corner of the Cretins, a propaganda classic with life-size caricatures of Batista and U. It was perversely satisfying to find that the hotel has defied renovation.

The marble-floored lobby is filled with leftover modernist furniture beneath Picasso-esque murals, and the cafe where Fidel came for a chocolate milkshake every night is still serving.

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My room on the 19th floor had million-dollar views of Havana, although the bath taps were falling off the wall and the air conditioner gave a death rattle every time I turned it on. I made a formal request to visit the Presidential Suite, which had been sealed up like a time capsule since Fidel decamped after several months.

It was a voyage into the demise of the Cuban dream. While we used the light from my iPhone to find our way, we could hear the increasingly shrill cries of a woman stuck in the elevator a couple of floors down. With its Eisenhower-era furniture and vintage ashtrays, it looked like the perfect holiday apartment for Don Draper. A crumbling sculpture in the main hallway was threatened by a pool of brownish water accumulating on the floor; part of the railing on the wraparound veranda was missing. Calm yourself, madam! Indeed, most of the world was fascinated by the romantic victory of a handful of idealistic guerrillas forcing an evil dictator to flee.

Fidel and Che basked in celebrity, entertaining intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and a stream of third-world leaders.

At first, the affection also extended to the United States. When Fidel arrived on a goodwill tour in , he was thronged by admirers: He was the keynote speaker at the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D. Soon American college kids were flocking to Cuba to see the brave new world firsthand. Never had a revolution been so photogenic. In Cuba, the revolution was established with photographs.

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Revolutionary tourism immediately took off. Dozens of others beat their way on to the Comandancia La Plata in the Sierra Maestra to bask in its aura. In February, Che and Fidel personally escorted the visiting deputy premier of the Soviet Union, Anastas Mikoyan, to the aerie on a sightseeing trip, and the group spent the night chatting by a campfire. Secret negotiations with the Cuban Communist Party were already being conducted. Now Che and Fidel openly declared their intention of pursuing a socialist revolution, and asked for Soviet economic aid.

How do you gain political sovereignty? You have to kick them out.

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Fidel knew a confrontation was coming, and he needed a new sponsor. The argument over whether Cuba was pushed or jumped to become part of the Eastern bloc may never be fully settled. But by early , the tit for-tat standoff with the U. And when Che did visit Moscow, he was shocked—all these guys wearing old woolen suits from the s and eating onions they carried in their pockets.

This was not the New Socialist man he had imagined. Continue or Give a Gift. Privacy Terms of Use Sign up. SmartNews History. History Archaeology.

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Arroyo, who was 55 at the time, was suffering digestive problems and had been given permission by authorities to finish eating his food in his cell. Santos watched a prison guard stop Arroyo and ask him where he was going with the food. When Arroyo answered and kept walking, the guard punched him in the back of the head, knocking him to the ground, and beat him while he was on the floor. Santos said the officer punched Arroyo several times in the face and the body, shattering his glasses. Santos was released on parole in December He said a plainclothes police officer was permanently stationed outside of his house, and anyone who visited him was threatened.

She has since stopped coming to see him. Santos was given a short contract as a bricklayer when he was released, but he told Human Rights Watch that he since had difficulty finding a job because of his reputation as a dissident. Shortly before his dismissal, Barrera had started attending the meetings of an unauthorized political group that is critical of the Cuban government. He spent weeks looking for a new job, but was repeatedly turned away.

Unable to find work, he took a job working for a vegetable seller who lacked official government authorization, and thus was considered illegal. Barrera continued to attend meetings of the unofficial group and began participating in public activities raising awareness about political rights.