As time marched on toward our final days in Cuba, there was a lot less time spent outside of the classroom, with our schedules generally being filled with more lectures than the fascinating tours and cultural experiences that had filled the days prior. While it was sad to have less of the more engaging and visceral experiences of the first half of the trip, it was honestly about time that I had some more sitting down in my schedule. By this point in the trip my back was realllyyy starting to get antsy about walking for multiple hours every day and I was quite exhausted.

Tuesday started off with a considerable change in pace from a lot of what we had seen before. Our prior adventures involved a lot of exploring both the sights and culture of Havana, but very little of it was state-run, save for the airport, a number of government buildings we had walked past throughout the week, and a number of exquisite public hotels that dotted the Havana skyline that we were repeatedly told to not spend money at in order to avoid running afoul of the US State Department. But! This day was different- we were starting off with a visit to El Centro Fidel Castro Ruz, or the Fidel Castro Center.

The previous day Julian had hyped it up as a bit of a different flavor compared to the other experiences we’d had up to that point, a specific anecdote being last years tour ending with the guide proclaiming “and that was how the Cuban people defeated the evil American imperialists” a statement that isn’t untrue per say, but definitely one carried with a much different voice compared to the ones we’d been hearing from the rest of the visit. It was certain to be a unique experience.

The Center itself is a converted Spanish house built from during Havana’s time as a Spanish colony. It funnily enough has no actual connection to Fidel or even anyone in is his family, but hey, it’s a nice looking building. Our tour took us through the 9 exhibits housed inside, all “generally” relating to Castro and his legacy.

Our tour started with a room containing a number of the various accolades and awards Castro received during his life, as well as the only real bust of the man, created by a sculptor from China and given as a gift to Castro some years before his death. The guide also revealed another point, one that is quite obvious in hindsight, but not something I had consciously noticed until this point- it’s actually illegal to iconize Castro in Cuba. The reason given was that Castro wanted to avoid creating a cult of personality around himself, is it a meaningful or successful prohibition? I really have no idea, while there aren’t Castro T-shirts being sold on every street corner in Havana, there certainly are Che Guevara ones. Is that a different situation? Yes it is. But I’m not going to write an essay on that specific topic (or at least not presently) so that thought is unfortunately bound for the cutting room floor.

We wove through a number of other rooms containing belongings of Castro, vaguely following the history of his life and some of his achievements, medical aid that Cuba has provided to a number of other countries, important legislation passed by the revolutionary government, all things that I will sadly be skimming over to highlight a few specific elements while hopefully keeping this post under 50 thousand words.

The first thing (save for my medal room anecdotes) was this silly animated graphic display that morphed between Jose Marti and Fidel Castro that was explicitly pointed out to us despite being rather… simple and uninteresting? It was the first of a number of very weird breaks in the pacing of the tour and I found it unbelievably entertaining, although not for the intended reasons. It felt like the sort of museum display you just kind of walk by without really paying much attention to, like a quick plaque or single info panel in the museum of science in some connecting hallway between two areas of the museum- an amusement-park-ride-queue-decoration-tier attraction. Although this one was treated as almost a full stop on the tour, with the guide explaining how it shows how similar Marti and Castro were and having us take an awkward pause to appreciate the display. Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of such a masterpiece of craftsmanship, but alas I did not truly appreciate its majesty at the time.

Moving on with the tour, I got to answer a personal question of mine- elevators! Those who know me are familiar with my elevator freakhood, and with almost all of the elevators we interact with here being Otis elevators, an American brand (although you do frequently see some Finnish Kone models too!) I was really curious to see what the elevator situation in Cuba was! With the blockade I was expecting to see some brands I’d never heard of before, as well as potentially some cool old Otis models! This tour was the first time I finally found one, with almost all of the buildings we’d been in up to this point having no elevators whatsoever. Well, the one in the Fidel Castro Center was a company I’d never heard of- a Spanish brand named “Orona.” Is there anything interesting about them? Nope! But their LinkedIn page lists them as a “vertical lifting partner” which I think is just wonderful.

My final tour highlight is the film room, where we watched a single video on the Bay of Pigs Invasion. I wasn’t really sure what to expect going into it, but it was most certainly one of my favorite parts of the entire trip. The guide tapped the play button on the displays little control touch screen and then stepped out of the room as the most hilariously overproduced video I have ever seen in my life starts to play. It starts up with this like military-style font reading “BAY OF PIGS INVASION” which then explodes into a quick intro cinematic of the insignia of the invading brigade 2506 as the numbers “2506” appear in the over-the-top stencil font beneath it. With the whole thing going up in flames and transitioning to a shot of CGI wireframe soldiers loading up assault rifles and preparing to land on the island. The video went on for 5 or 6 minutes and was one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen.

Overall, the tour was all over the place, and did showcase some actually pretty cool things in addition to the more “propaganda-ey” elements. A specific example would be the room devoted to foreign aid given and received by Cuba to and from other nations, which was genuinely interesting. But I’ve spent basically all of my time budget on the rest of the Fidel Castro Center, and will have to leave the rest confined to the deep storage archives in my mind palace. I very much enjoyed my visit to Cuba, and while I wouldn’t consider this specific event a very accurate slice of the rest of my time their, it was certainly a very interesting one.