IN SEARCH OF A REVOLUTION 8

Day 5 and today we retrace our steps to Havana and then south into the Matanzas province. We will be passing the area on the Zapata peninsula that is rich in exotic wild life and visiting a museum at Playa Giron near the 'Bay of Pigs' that tells the tale of this episode of the socialist revolution.
      As we pass the park/zoo where you can see crocodiles, Ainsley tells us that our fellow countrymen don't rate it- it's too tame- so we won't be stopping there. Instead we get a chance to swim in a sea water cave. And the history lesson begins today in earnest.
     Ainsley has named four men travelling together with the family as,'The Four Seasons.' Uncle is one and today he's decided to opt out. He puts in his blue ear plugs and closes his eyes. He's soon spotted. They have a laugh and Uncle sits up to listen.  We arrive at the museum half an hour after closing but it's opened up for us and we wander round looking at the photos and hearing the story.
     'Fidel is my hero,' Uncle says. Ainsley looks a bit surprised and replies, 'Yes, he's mine too.'
     After the success of the revolution lead by Fidel with Che Guevara and others in 1959, huge sectors of Cuban industry were nationalised and foreign businesses, most of them American, were confiscated. The US Government retaliated by freezing all imports of Cuban sugar, restricting exports and in 1961, breaking off diplomatic relations. Seeking to overthrow what they saw as an evil regime, the CIA became involved and the US backed counter-revolutionary forces in Cuba. They trained mercenaries and Cuban exiles in the US and Guatemala, and on April 17 1961 launched an invasion landing at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast. The revolutionaries were ready for them and the whole operation ended in failure but many lives of soldiers and civilians were lost.
      There were guns and weapons of war displayed in cases against a backdrop of photos of Fidel and Che Guevara. The most moving item for me was a pair of pretty silk white shoes blown off their teenage owner, Nemesia, in the battle that lasted 72 hours and killed her mother. Next to them a poem by El Indio Nabori (El Cuculambe) imagining the scene; Before the revolution the daughter of a poor charcoal worker had dreamed of owning a pair of white shoes but her father would never earn enough to afford them. Then came the revolution and landowners were forced to hand over their land to the workers. At last the young woman was able to have her dream, she no longer wandered barefoot and wild. She wore her white shoes with pride. Until the invasion.