February 20
Dateline: Havana

Today would be our last day in Cuba. Later this afternoon, we would be flying back to Miami. But that still left us a couple of hours in Havana. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to visit the Museo de la Revolucion, which had been closed when we had tried to visit it earlier.

Arriving at the museum grounds, we walked past the SAU-100 Soviet tank that Fidel Castro supposedly commanded at the Bay of Pigs. In a bit of irony, what now serves as a repository for revolutionary artifacts and memories was once a Presidential Palace, built in 1920 with an interior decor by the firm of Louis Comfort Tiffany. In 1957, the palace was the site of an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow General Batista. You can still see bullet holes in the foyer from that attack.

Although the museum focuses on the years of the revolution, it actually highlights chronologically much of Cuba’s political development, from slave uprisings to joint space missions with the Soviet Union.

The descriptions are in Spanish, but even if you don’t understand that language, the visuals allow you to comprehend the story. Two of the more noted exhibits are one of Che’s famous berets and a diorama of Che and Camilio Cienfuegos emerging from the forest of Sierra Maestra ready to continue the fight.

But I found an omission to be the most interesting fact about the museum. There is not one word, not one picture, not one news clipping, not one artifact about the 13 days known in America as the Cuban Missile Crisis. To me, given the impact it made on me as a 12-year-old, that was exceedingly strange. I tried to ask a couple of the guards the reason for the omission, but my Spanglish wasn’t sufficient for me to convey my questions.

Just outside the museum, a glass encasement – Memorial Granma – enshrines the vessel that brought Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and 80 others rebels from Mexico in 1956 to launch the revolution. Also outside is a display of other vehicles involved in the struggle including planes and tanks. There is a piece of a last U.S. spy plane shot down over Cuba in the 1970s.

To Follow Our Cuban Trip in Chronological Order

• Cuban Ties, Cuban Dreams
• Moon Over Miami
• A 1st Look at Cuba
• La Melia y El Malecon
• Havana: The Last Virgin City in the Americas
• Look for What You Don’t See
• Hemingway and Cuba
• The Truth of Our System
• Now You’re Smoking
• At Home with Hemingway
• We’re Only Dancing in the Dark
• The Cuban Countryside
• A Night of Love Under a Havana Moon
• A Day of the Dead
• Thank You, My Good Frenemies
• Lunch with a Close Companion of Castro
• Rapping About the Cuban Music Scene
• When You Go to Cuba, You Must Expect the Unexpected
• The U.S. and Cuba: What Comes Next?
• Hearing the Angels Sing
• The International Pool Champions of Cienfuegos
• Beisbol: A Passionate Pasttime
• The Bay of Pigs