Havana (19)


Source: Photograph (2010) by WTL© on site in Havana.
Comment: Behind Havana's Museo de la Revolución is located two blocks from the Malecón in La Habana Centro. Behind the Museum of the Revolution is what you see in these photos; that is, the Granma Memorial. The Museo de la Revolución itself was created in the giant and very palatial former residence of the dictator Batista. The building, which is to of the right side of these photos, was constructed in 1920 in Neo-Classical architectural style with Tiffany glass ornamentation inside. It is in this presidential palace of Batista's that university students failed in their attempt to assassinate the dictator. Behind the glass gallery in the photos above you can make out the yacht Granma, which Fidel Castro bought and used to sail from Mexico to Cuba in 1956 to start the Cuban Revolution when he and his men landed at the Playa Las Coloradas in Oriente Province. The boat is a sixty-foot diesel cabin cruiser built in 1943. It has been on display in this glass gallery since 1976.
Notes: Granma is the name of Cuba's official communist government newspaper. Link to the newspaper: => Granma. The professor-photographer did not visit the Museo de la Revolución.
Humanities topic
: Compare and contrast the commemorialization of other famous ships used by sailors from other countries throughout history. The USS Nautilus? The Mayflower? The USS Constitution? John Paul Jones' USS Ranger? The Monitor and Merrimack? Captain Langsdorff's Admiral Graf Spee? Ernst Lindemann's battleship Bismarck? Admiral Nelson's Victory? Captain Bligh's HMS Bounty? Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hind? Vasco da Gama's São Gabriel? Magellan and Elcano's Victoria? The three ships of Columbus? Zheng He's fourteenth-century treasure ships? Or the Argo of Jason and his Argonauts?