Nov-Dec 2016. Fidel Castro Farewell - Havana and Santiago

On the morning of November 30, 2016, my son José Víctor and I shot from different positions (street level and from my balcony) Fidel's ashes caravan when passing through 23rd and G streets in the Vedado neighborhood in Havana. The caravan had started at the Revolution square, not far from home. Streets of Havana were packed with people and feelings. The caravan would spend the next days moving along towns and cities in all the island, to end in Santiago de Cuba, as a remembrance of the journey a victorious Fidel Castro did on January 1959, but from Santiago to Havana, after the triumph of the Revolution. On December the 1st I left Havana to Santiago de Cuba by bus, to take care of a group of US photographers visiting Cuba with the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops school ( http://www.santafeworkshops.com). In Santiago, on December the 2nd, I did some shots in the famous Enramada street. The caravan finally arrived to Santiago on the 3rd. I was able to position myself (and US photographers that arrived that same day) just outside the main entrance of the historical Moncada garrison, attacked by Fidel and a group of young revolutionaries on July 26, 1953. That attack started the insurrection against the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Honestly, no better place than this. The next day Fidel ashes were laid to rest at the Santa Efigenia cemetery, no far from the mausoleum that eternally holds the remains of our national hero José Martí. Castro’s grave is a simple but massive granite rock brought from the Sierra Maestra mountains, just stamped with the word FIDEL. The two final photos were taken in Bayamo, a couple of days later.