From the Collection: St. George, Andrew, 1924-2001
Published / Created:
1959 January
Call Number:
MS 1912
Container / Volume:
Box 42, folder 6
Image Count:
4
Description:
The images in this folder focus on Raúl Castro. In an up-close photograph, he is smiling for the camera while apparently giving a press conference in the early days of January 1959. On the wall behind him appears a list of radio stations broadcasting the press conference: CMKC Radio Oriente / CNC Circuito Nacional / CMBC Radio Progreso / CMCF Unión Radio / CMK? (obscured by RC’s head) Red Provincial / C???? Radio Min (also obscured). He is also shown in his first meeting with his fiancée, Vilma Espín, on January 1, 1959, after many months of separation. One photograph is of an airplane cabin with Raúl Castro and gunmen stationed near the door.
From the Collection: St. George, Andrew, 1924-2001
Published / Created:
1960
Call Number:
MS 1912
Container / Volume:
Box 46, folder 9
Image Count:
4
Description:
These images are of young school boys during morning assembly at the newly constructed school at the former Moncada military barracks in Oriente. It was at this barracks that Fidel’s ill-prepared armed force attacked on the 26th of July 1953, resulting in a massacre of most of its members. Fidel’s subsequent guerrilla movement took the 26th of July as its name in honor of the dead and wounded from that famous attack. Although Fidel claimed that he would convert military barracks into schools, that conversion ironically entailed the creation of highly militarized schools such as this one. These photographs show the boys carrying their metal trays for breakfast and assembling to march, military-style, into the dining area. At this time, many of these boys would likely have come from poor, marginal families near the Sierra Maestra. This explains their disheveled appearance and the fact that at least one of them (a black boy) is not wearing shoes. One photograph is captioned: “II. MILITARY FEVER GRIPS CUBA. Barracks-type drill discipline is applied to all but the youngest children in Castro’s Cuba. Here peasant boys recruited from the Sierra Maestra region are shown in front of a school center, partly completed (right) but largely still under construction (left and right rear.) This school center, a surprisingly large and modern construction project among the roadless Sierra Maestra foothills (the nearest settlement is tiny El Cerro, and the nearest town of any size, Manzanillo, is a hundred miles away) will eventually house 20,000 farm children. The boys shown here, part of the first contingent of 500 already living and studying at the school center, spend their day under supervision of Cuban rebel army drill instructors, and - under Communist Chinese pattern the Cuban Army appears to be imposing on rural education - only half their day is spent in school; half is spent in work out among the canebrakes.”
From the Collection: St. George, Andrew, 1924-2001
Published / Created:
1960 February
Call Number:
MS 1912
Container / Volume:
Box 46, folder 5
Image Count:
6
Description:
These images document the visit of Vice Premier Anastas Mikoyan to Cuba in February 1960. Ostensibly, Mikoyan was there to inaugurate the traveling exhibit of Soviet culture and products that would be held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana. Also included are photographs of a student protest held in Central Park shortly after Mikoyan deposited an imperial-looking floral wreath with Soviet bloc symbols at the foot of the monument to Cuban nationalist leader José Martí. Other images show the lavish state reception Prime Minister Fidel Castro and President Osvaldo Dorticós held at the Presidential Palace to honor Mikoyan on the day of his arrival; Mikoyan at the airport; and members of the Soviet security detail as they kept watch during the reception at the Presidential Palace. One of the photographs is from an issue of Life magazine.
From the Collection: St. George, Andrew, 1924-2001
Published / Created:
1960
Call Number:
MS 1912
Container / Volume:
Box 46, folder 12
Image Count:
2
Description:
In this series of photographs St. George appears to document the surge in security measures taken by the Cuban government in 1960 as it mobilized to defend against the U.S. invasion at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. The photographs show snipers posted on the roof of Havana’s airport; a wrecked train and a burned-out bus that appear to have been the products of counter-revolutionary assaults; a plane of the type manned by exile counter-revolutionary forces in their regular invasions of Cuban airspace (this one appears to have either crash landed or been shot down by Cuban defenses); and images of a police check point on the western outskirts of Havana near the San Alejandro Art Academy.
From the Collection: St. George, Andrew, 1924-2001
Published / Created:
1959 October 2
Call Number:
MS 1912
Container / Volume:
Box 42, folder 13
Image Count:
2
Description:
The photographs document U.S. Ambassador Philip W. Bonsal addressing a convention of the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) delegates in Habana’s Blanquita Theatre on October 21, 1959. The convention was sponsored entirely by the revolutionary government that hoped to ignite Americans’ interest in traveling to Cuba. The revolutionary government also wanted to thwart U.S. press and governmental caricatured depictions of the Revolution as “Communist,” a charge consistently levied since January 1959 in an effort to discredit all changes in Cuba that would negatively impact U.S. business interests.
