On to Havana
With the victory in Santa Clara, the path to Havana, quite literally, lay right infant of Che Guevara. On January 2nd, 1959, Che and Camilo Cienfuegos received the order from Fidel Castro to move on to Havana. Upon arrival, Che was to take over La Cabaña, the fortress of Havana. Che thanked the people of Santa Clara for their part in the "revolutionary cause" and asked that those people continue on with their "revolutionary spirit" (Anderson 356). When Che left for Havana, he did not share the same sense of victory that many of his revolutionaries felt on their trek. Unlike many of those who saw the liberation of Cuba as the ultimate goal, Che was well aware that the struggle would be far from over upon his arrival in Havana. He knew well that liberation was only a stepping stone to something more. The greater struggle would be the transformation of Cuba into something new. Turning the island country into a revolutionary communist state was the true goal he had set out to accomplish, and the liberation of Havana was just one more step towards that. Pictured here is Che's army of rebels leaving Santa Clara for Havana.
image: (Anderson 355)
info: (Anderson 355-356)
image: (Anderson 355)
info: (Anderson 355-356)