Batista's model prison

So our nice taxi-man with his ancient car with big comfy seats took us to Presidio Modelo, the prison where Fidel Castro and his merry men were incarcerated by Batista after the July 26th uprising.

The main part of the prison was rather terrifying. There's a central round dining hall and four massive round prison blocks.



The prison blocks are almost empty inside save for a tower in the middle and rows upon rows of cells around the walls, five or six stories high. Each tiny cell contained two men, and had a window on one side and a barred door on the other.



The tower in the middle was for the watchman, who accessed it via a tunnel from outside which came up in the centre of the tower so the watchman was never in any danger and could keep an eye on approximately 1,000 prisoners at once.

Castro and his men were rather lucky in that Batista was afraid they would spread dissent amongst the other prisoners, so they were kept in the much, much, nicer hospital wing. But Castro was moved to solitary confinement after an incident when Batista visited the prison, where all Castro's cronies started singing July 26th [the song] out the window at him.

I got the feeling we got a much better tour from our taxi driver than we would have from the tour guide, who did follow us around but I couldn't understand a word she was saying. The nice thing about the taxi-man was that he spoke a little English and, more importantly, was able to tone down his Spanish to a level we could understand.