Mission To Cuba

No one can be neutral about Cuba.  Thriving on images and myths, its name alone can provoke an argument. From its very beginning, due to a combination of location, size and resources, the island has spent a great deal of its history as a geopolitical pawn. The flags of Spain, Great Britain and the United States have flown over it at various times, and it was not so long ago that Cuba to most Americans meant a tropical playground for the wealthy. Images of casinos, nightclubs and exotic dancers seemed to tell the whole story.

Then came Jan. 1, 1959. A mere 90 miles from U.S. shores, Cuba suddenly became the scene of the most radical revolution in the Western Hemisphere. After two years of struggle in the mountains, an army of long-haired rebels, led by a young lawyer named Fidel Castro and an asthmatic doctor from Argentina, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, seized control of the island. The suddenness and the severity of the revolution caught the world, especially the United States, completely by surprise.

Read the entire article in the March 1999 issue