Cuba at Christmas Time 2023

A Couple of Historic Celebrations!! 

    Today is December the 22nd of 2023 and Cuba is celebrating the 62nd Aniversario de la Campana de Afabetization. That refers to the Historic and Massive Literary Campaign that Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution began in January of 1961, two years after the Revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. "Historic and Masssive" is correct because history proclaims it as The Most Successful Literary Campaign of All Time, and historians still claim that it was much needed!! At the same time, Fidel Castro ordered free educations for all Cubans through college.

    Cuba's Historic Literary Campaign soon after the Revolution was indeed needed because, as shown above, during the brutal Batista dictatorship in the 1950s, the majority peasant families in Cuba were left with nothing -- no food, no education, no healthcare, etc. And this was while, very famously, during the 1950s Batista and the Mafia and rich U. S. businessmen were raking in millions of dollars on tourism, gambling, prostitution, drugs, etc. All that ended on January 1st of 1959 when Fidel Castro's rebels took over Havana.

    The images above show young revolutionary volunteers who spread out all over Cuba to show illeterate peasants how to read and write, something that Batista, the Mafia, and the U. S. had totally neglected prior to the triumph of the Revolution in 1959. Such facts are documented by notable historicans as well as YouTube documentaries and Goggle searches.

   The Batista dictatorship in the 1950s in Cuba robbed and brutalized the island massively, and felt no need to toss even crumbs to the majority peasants for educational or health needs. That cruelty spawned the Cuban Revolution led by a University of Havana Law School graduate named Fidel Castro. But the neglect of the peasants regarding education & heathcare was not the last straw that doomed the Batista rule in Cuba, it was the murder of Cuban children, a cruel and stupid ploy that was supposed to quell any uprising from the terrified peasants. 

    And so, instead of calming the peasant mothers, the murders of their children -- "Nuestros Hijos"/"Our Children" -- Cuban mothers bravely took to the streets in massive protests  demanding that Batista "Stop the murders of our children. Cuban Mothers," as the sign above told the murderous Batista. The mother second from the left wearing a white blouse and sunglasses was the mother of Little Willie Soler. Today, in December of 2023, the largest children's hospital in Havana is named William Soler Children's Hospital. The Mother's Marches became Batistas's nightmare but also became a powerful symbol of why Fidel Castro had enough support to start his Revolution on July 26th of 1953...and to win it!!

    But the Mother Marches to demand that Batista STOP ASSASSINATING their children was just one of the reasons Fidel Castro ousted Fulgencio Batista as Cuba's leader. Starting in 1952 the students at the University of Havana were in the forefront of trying to overthrow Batista...and alum Fidel Castro cultivated great support from the students. By 1957, when rebel forces in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra Mountains in far southeast were beginning to beat Batista's U.S.-backed soldiers, Batista had closed the University of Havana but also had murder squads, led by Lt. Colonel Esteban Ventura, that began eliminating the student leaders. The murder of Student President Jose Antonio Echeverria on March 13th of 1957 remains to this day the most notable such assassation. There are many brutal photos of Jose's body, which was left on a Havana street as a warning to others.

    In addition to what happened to Jose Antonio Echeverria, the Four University of Havana Students shown above are also well known to history. Tipped off about the safe house they were in on Humboldt 7 Street, Lt. Colonel Esteban Ventura led a squad armed with submarine guns to kill them. It is what history calls The Humboldt 7 Massacre in Havana in 1957. These four  students have historic names that are still rmembered and enshrined to this day: Frustuoso Rodriguez, Juan Pedro Carbo, Jose Machado, and Joe Westbrook -- three Cubans and one American.

    And so...today on December 22nd of 2023 Cubans are reminded that today is the "62nd Anniversary of Cuba's Historic Literary Campaign," which history calls the most successful Literary Campaign in History. That is because many historians believe it also was necessary to replace one of the Batista dictatorship's cruelest decisions {not to educate the majority peasants}...alongside Batista's decision to kill children to quell peasant revolts and to assassinate student leaders he deemed as threats to his lucrative control of Cuba.

    Also during this week leading up to Christmas in 2023, Cuba is holding massive celebrations related to the birth of Alicia Alonso, the world's best ballerina who was acclaimed from New York to San Francisco and from London to Paris. But she returned to Cuba in January of 1959 after the Cuban Revolution ousted Batista. One day to her surprise, as is known to HISTORY, there was a knock on her door by Fidel Castro. He had come to offer her $200,000 to start and run the Cuban National Ballet. She kissed his cheek and said, "I gladly accept, Commander!!"

    For sure, Alicia Alonso was absolutely the world's prime ballerina. She was born in Cuba on December 21 of 1920 and from January of 1959 when she accepted Fidel Castro's offer, she was the world's greatest ballet teacher in Havana from 1959 until the day she died at age 98 on October 17th of 2019!!

      Once she returned to Cuba after the overthrow of Batista in 1959, Alicia Alonso remained Fidel Castro's dear friend until the day he died at age 90 on October 25th of 2016. And till the day that Alicia Alonso died at age 98 on October 17th of 2019, she supported Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution.

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