Havana – Museo de La Revolucion

The Museum of the Revolution is a must see attraction on everyone’s visit to Havana. It holds memorabilia that covers everything from the tentative calls for self rule from Spain till the much better known revolution by Fidel and chums. It’s an interesting place to visit, but does have a few weird features.

After the revolution, the new Castro regime found themselves with a whole bunch of buildings that were strong symbols of the old regime. Most of these were abandoned by the revolutionaries, who had no need for them and did not like the association with the old regime. Thus, then old Senate chamber was turned into a museum. The same thing happened here. The museum is housed in the old Presidential palace.

The building has seen better days. It was built by the Americans and was designed to make a statement. The interior was decorated by Tiffany and no expense was spared. These days, the building is showing its age. It’s literally falling to bits. Luckily, a restoration program is underway. Just in time, it was dangerously close to falling to bits.

The museum contents are all a bit interesting. The museum runs chronologically from about 1870 to about 1960. The museum could never be accused of being unbiased. It’s all “anti-Imperial” and uses all the regular socialist catch phrases. “Bourgeois”, “proletariat” and “Imperialist” are all over the place.

The museum has a lot of photos covering the period. The captions are generally in English, as well as Spanish, so I was able to read all the propaganda, I mean information. The displays are showing their age. They’re all a bit faded and look like they haven’t been touched in twenty years.

There’s also a lot of personal items. Sometimes, the importance of these are a little hard to fathom. There’s a lot of shirts labelled along the lines of “short worn by XXX on the march against YYY”. The most bizarre, was some revolutionary’s spoon. Interesting? Maybe not!

Most interesting, was the balance between the revolutionaries. I thought it would be a Fidel-a-thon, but I was wrong. If anything, the museum was a bit lacking in anything about Fidel. I guess it’s part of his PR image. Given a lot more wall space was Che Guevara. He had his own room. I guess that since he’s safely dead, he can’t upset the status quo.

Attached to the museum is a nice park that contains more revolutionary paraphernalia. Right in the middle is the yacht “Granma”. This yacht forms a pivotal part of the whole revolutionary story. It was in this yacht, that 82 people set out from Mexico to start the revolution in Cuba. It crashed into the coast of southern Cuba and only twelve people survived. This included Che, Fidel and his brother Raul.

Surrounding the Granma, are a series of military vehicles. The most interesting, are tractors that have been modified to become tanks. There’s also bits of a few US planes shot down in various skirmishes. If you’re keen, you can also see the tank Fidel drove during the Bay of Pigs invasion.

I was a bit disappointed by the museum. It was very close to being a balanced representation of modern Cuban history. Close, but the bias was very obvious. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been either ridiculously biased or totally unbiased. As it stands, it’s a bit disappointing.