Following Fidel across Cuba: the Production Journey
Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa
December 2, 1956, about 6.30 AM. An old and tatty wooden boat built in 1939 disembarks on the south eastern coast of Cuba, in the marsh of Los Cayuelos.
The boat is called ‘Granma’, as the area, and on board there are 82 armed men, among which Fidel Castro, aged 29, his brother Raul and Ernesto Che Guevara.
It is the beginning of the Cuban Revolution against Batista dictatorship.
The revolutionaries manage to camp out in the Sierra Maestra zone, the poorest area of Cuba. Castro chooses the highest mountain of the island, the Piquo Turquino, about 2.000 meters, to set his headquarters.
From here, thanks to the frequencies of ‘Radio Rebelde’, Castro popularizes the revolutionary ideas and organizes the armed guerrilla. After three years of fight against Batista troops, he finally endears the Cuban population and overthrows the regime.
On January 2, 1959, Fidel Castro calls together a general strike and occupies Santiago de Cuba, that is provisionally elected Capital of Cuba.
From this city, deeply revolutionary, Castro keeps his first public speech, becoming the matinee idol.
The day after Castro begins his triumphal march towards Havana.
Almost 1000 km on a military jeep, among crowds in state of excitement, that consider him the savior. Castro arrives in Havana on January 8, 1959. Ever since he never left the scene. Up to the ‘Proclama’ of July 31 2006.
This is the route that the documentary production decided to retrace back-to-front, from Havana to Granma disembarkation spot, across cities and places that represent the history of Cuban Revolution.
The trip from Havana to Santiago de Cuba seems to be a trip into the past, from the Capital now invaded by tourists to the eastern area, the poorest and most revolutionary, where ‘Radio Rebelde’ seems to be still on air.
A trip which report Cuba today, a two-faced island, divided between past and future, Revolution and capitalist penetration.
