One of the highlights are life size images of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, two heroes of the Revolution who died in the 1960s.

In the lobby are bullet holes from a failed assassination attempt of the brutal dictator Batista in 1957 by young students. The original holes were repaired, but would be recreated after the revolution. The museum fails to point out that these are not the originals.

Also there is the ship Granma. In November 1956, Fidel Castro and 81 other rebels set sail for Cuba from Mexico. Their goal was to overthrow the corrupt dictatorship of Batista. The ship would briefly get lost and ran out of supplies by the time they arrived in Southeastern Cuba and ran aground a week later. Most of the men would die in combat soon after they landed at one time Castro’s army was down to less than 20 men. On January 8th, 1959 Fidel and his army of rebels triumphantly marched into Havana.

One of the items of personal interest was a typewriter that supposedly belonged to Hebert Matthews, a reporter for the NY Times who managed to interview Castro at a time when everybody thought he was dead. Castro tricked Matthews into thinking that his army had hundreds of men when they were actually only 2 dozen. His news reports would tip the propaganda war in favor of Castro and the rest, as they say, is history. Matthews had to hike several miles up the Sierra Maestra mountains in the rain for the interview, making it unlikely that he brought the typewriter with him as the museum claims. Matthews was despised by Cuban exiles for falling for Castro’s plot.

We then got together with friends to usher in the New Year.