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Punta Brava is a small suburb located just to the southwest of Havana, Cuba, with a population of roughly 1500 inhabitants. It is one of the wards (consejos populares) of the La Lisa municipality.
Punta Brava and the nearby town of Guatao were the scene of massacres during the Cuban War of Independence; [1] Cuban General General Maceo died there in battle on December 7, 1896. [2] [3] Fidel Castro referred to Maceo's death in Punta Brava in 1992 ("Maceo, you were not defeated the day you fell in Punta Brava); [4] on the other hand, for Castro's father, Ángel Castro y Argiz, the day Maceo died had been "one of the best and proudest days of that war," since it was his company that killed the general. [5]
The next year, Punta Brava was the site where a naked American named Kelley surrendered to the Spanish commander and was given a shirt and a pair of trousers: Kelley, who had disappeared from Havana in early April 1897, had reportedly told the insurgents that he was an expert in dynamite. They, believing he was a spy, stripped and hanged him, but the rope broke and Kelley managed to escape, naked but otherwise intact. [6]
In 1906, an unsuccessful insurrection was deemed to be ended after a "negro Gen[eral] Quentin Bandera, the most daring insurgent in Havana province," was killed near Punta Brava with two "mulatto comrades all frightfully gashed by the machetes of the mounted rural guards who ended their careers." [7]
During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets reportedly built a missile site in Punta Brava. [8]
The island of Cuba was inhabited by various Native American cultures prior to the arrival of the explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492. After his arrival, Spain conquered Cuba and appointed Spanish governors to rule in Havana. The administrators in Cuba were subject to the Viceroy of New Spain and the local authorities in Hispaniola. In 1762–63, Havana was briefly occupied by Britain, before being returned to Spain in exchange for Florida. A series of rebellions between 1868 and 1898, led by General Máximo Gómez, failed to end Spanish rule and claimed the lives of 49,000 Cuban guerrillas and 126,000 Spanish soldiers. However, the Spanish–American War resulted in a Spanish withdrawal from the island in 1898, and following three and a half years of subsequent US military rule, Cuba gained formal independence in 1902.
The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces are the military forces of Cuba. They include Revolutionary Army, Revolutionary Navy, Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force, and other paramilitary bodies including the Territorial Troops Militia, Youth Labor Army, and the Defense and Production Brigades, plus the Civil Defense Organization and the National Reserves Institution. All these groups are subordinated to the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF), consisting of Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, clandestinely financed and directed by the U.S. government. The operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure influenced relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some 870 km (540 mi) southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana.
Isla de la Juventud is the second-largest Cuban island and the seventh-largest island in the West Indies. The island was called the Isle of Pines until 1978. It has an area 2,200 km2 (850 sq mi) and is 50 km (31 mi) south of the island of Cuba, across the Gulf of Batabanó. The island lies almost directly south of Havana and Pinar del Río and is a Special Municipality, not part of any province and is therefore administered directly by the central government of Cuba. The island has only one municipality, also named Isla de la Juventud.
Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado was a Cuban politician who served as the president of Cuba from 1959 to 1976. He was a close ally of Cuban revolutionary and longtime leader Fidel Castro.
The Intelligence Directorate, commonly known as G2 and, until 1989, named Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI), is the main state intelligence agency of the government of Cuba. The DI was founded in late 1961 by Cuba's Ministry of the Interior shortly after the Cuban Revolution. The DI is responsible for all foreign intelligence collection and comprises six divisions divided into two categories, which are the Operational Divisions and the Support Divisions.
The Ten Years' War, also known as the Great War and the War of '68, was part of Cuba's fight for independence from Spain. The uprising was led by Cuban-born planters and other wealthy natives. On 10 October 1868, sugar mill owner Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and his followers proclaimed independence, beginning the conflict. This was the first of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain, the other two being the Little War (1879–1880) and the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898). The final three months of the last conflict escalated with United States involvement, leading to the Spanish–American War.
Lt. General José Antonio de la Caridad Maceo y Grajales was a Cuban general and second-in-command of the Cuban Army of Independence.
Máximo Gómez y Báez was a Cuban-Dominican Generalissimo in Cuba's War of Independence (1895–1898). He was known for his controversial scorched-earth policy, which entailed dynamiting passenger trains and torching the Spanish loyalists' property and sugar plantations—including many owned by Americans. He greatly increased the efficacy of the attacks by torturing and killing not only Spanish soldiers, but also Spanish sympathizers and especially Cubans loyal to Spain. By the time the Spanish–American War broke out in April 1898, the rebellion was virtually defeated in most of Western Cuba, with only a few operating pockets in the center and the east. He refused to join forces with the Spanish in fighting off the United States, and he retired to the Quinta de los Molinos, a luxury villa outside of Havana after the war's end formerly used by captains generals as summer residence.
The Cuban Revolution was the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's regime by the 26th of July Movement and the establishment of a new Cuban government led by Fidel Castro in 1959.
The Malecón is a broad esplanade, roadway, and seawall that stretches for 8 km along the coast in Havana, Cuba, from the mouth of Havana Harbor in Old Havana, along the north side of the Centro Habana neighborhood and the Vedado neighborhood, ending at the mouth of the Almendares.
The military history of Cuba is an aspect of the history of Cuba that spans several hundred years and encompasses the armed actions of Spanish Cuba while it was part of the Spanish Empire and the succeeding Cuban republics.
Havana Harbor is the port of Havana, the capital of Cuba, and it is the main port in Cuba. Other port cities in Cuba include Cienfuegos, Matanzas, Manzanillo, and Santiago de Cuba.
Antonio Aristides Pacheco was a Cuban-born coach and scout in Major League Baseball. A longtime minor league infielder and manager, Pacheco coached in MLB for six seasons for the Cleveland Indians and Houston Astros.
The University of Havana is a public university located in the Vedado district of Havana, the capital of Cuba. Founded on 5 January 1728, the university is the oldest in Cuba, and one of the first to be founded in the Americas. Originally a religious institution, today the university has 15 faculties (colleges) at its Havana campus and distance learning centers throughout Cuba.
José Quintín Bandera Betancourt was a military leader of the Cuban insurrection against the Spanish during the Cuban War of Independence. In 1906, Bandera, led an army of insurgents toward Havana, and was killed near Punta Brava, a village close to Havana.
Barrio de San Lázaro is one of the first neighbourhoods in Havana, Cuba. It initially occupied the area bounded by Calle Infanta to the west, Calle Zanja to the south, Calle Belascoáin to the east, and the Gulf of Mexico to the north, forming the western edge of Centro Habana. According to the 1855 Ordenanzas Municipales of the city of Havana, Barrio San Lázaro was the Tercer Distrito and was Barrio No. 8.
The Camilo Cienfuegos Military Schools System are a type of boarding school in the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. Founded 1966, it has 20 campuses in many cities, and is an official military high school. They provide pre-military training to students aged 11 to 17. They forge of more than 70% of officers and 50% of the generals and colonels in the FAR. It is named after Camilo Cienfuegos, a Cuban revolutionary who, along with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Juan Almeida Bosque, and Raúl Castro, took part in the 1956 Granma expedition. Unlike the Russian Suvorov Military Schools, they are co-educational, modeled on United States military high schools and preparatory pre-college institutes.
José de Valera was a high-ranking Spanish military figure who distinguished himself in Cuba's Ten Years' War.
23°01′00″N82°29′51″W / 23.01667°N 82.49750°W
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