Life little changed where Castro launched revolution

Monday August 7, 1:12 AM
Life little changed where Castro launched revolution

HAVANA (Reuters) - In the foothills of Cuba's rugged Sierra Maestra
mountains, where President Fidel Castro launched his armed revolution
half a century ago, life appears frozen in time.

Cars are scarce. Horse and buggy are still the best way to get around,
other than by bicycle, foot or the back of a Soviet-era truck.

Oxen pull plows through fields and many peasant families live in
traditional thatched wooden huts in the region some 800 km east of Havana.

"Things have changed a little, but not much," said Raul Torre, sitting
on his horse outside the cemetery of La Plata, where Castro led a
handful of guerrillas in their first successful attack on an army
barracks in 1957.

Torre, who grows yucca and vegetables like his parents before him, told
Reuters last month that roads were paved and electricity came after
Castro's bearded rebels overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista
in 1959.

Otherwise, not much has changed in the Sierra Maestra, which a Reuters
team visited before Fidel Castro handed over power this week, at least
temporarily, to his younger brother Raul Castro while he recovers from
stomach surgery.

In Las Mercedes, where a Sherman tank destroyed by fellow revolutionary
Che Guevara's column attracts tourists and history buffs, "guajiro"
cowboys wearing straw hats race horses on weekends and bet bottles of
rum on who will win.

The big landowners are gone, their sugar cane plantations expropriated
by the state and turned into worker cooperatives. The ruling Communist
Party decides most aspects of daily life.

Widespread illiteracy was eradicated early under Castro, the son of a
wealthy Spanish landowner. There are schools in most villages and
medical posts that provide free health care.

And there is no shortage of politics. Government slogans line country
roads, and are painted on stones, walls and billboards. "The struggle
continues," says one sign. "We are and always will be Socialist," reads
another.

LOW PAY, BAD HOUSING

Residents complain their wages are low, and they have limited access to
consumer goods. But they thank Castro for the little they have.

In Bartolome Maso, the highlight of the year is the summer carnival when
a fair with a rickety Ferris wheel comes to town. There is music and
dancing, roast pork and plenty of cheap, flat beer.

As elsewhere in Cuba, housing is poor and run-down.

In Niquero, not far from where Castro's 82 rebels waded through a swamp
in a disastrous 1956 landing from the yacht Granma, hamlets of thatched
houses were demolished by Hurricane Dennis last year.

"We had to run for our lives. We rebuilt the house from the ruins," said
Juan Rodriguez as his neighbors played dominoes under a mango tree.

The government, which has a monopoly on building materials, took four
months to provide him sheet metal for a new roof.

Still, Rodriguez is grateful for electricity, refrigerators and
television sets provided by the state. "Work and food are not lacking,"
he said. Respect for the "Comandante" is total.

"80 and onward," read a sign nailed to a tree in front of Rodriguez's
home, marking Castro's upcoming 80th birthday.

Local peasants, tired of poverty and brutal repression under the Batista
dictatorship, gave Castro vital support in food and weapons in the
initial stages of his guerrilla war.

The Quinteto Rebelde, a family folk group on whose mountaintop property
Castro and his men set up camp, went to war singing parodies of Batista
through megaphones to demoralize the dictator's troops. "Out with the
monkey" was a hit song.

"Our weapons were musical instruments," said group leader Alejandro
Medina, 67, sitting on the porch of his clapboard home, a sticker of Che
Guevara on his guitar.

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