Next Year in Havana

by Chanel Cleeton

Some of these explosions make the newspaper the next day; other times they don’t and we’re left wondering if the loud booms, the screaming, were figments of our imagination, the product of a city poised for the next burst of violence. It’s hard when a country descends into such turmoil, harder still when there are so many groups vying for power, attempting to feast on the carcass of a dying island. There are—were—the Organización Auténtica, an ill-fated group of guerrilla fighters; the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, a group of students from the University of Havana; the mostly defunct Federación Estudiantil Universitaria, another group of students from the University of Havana who together with the DRE fought their way into the Presidential Palace and attempted to assassinate Batista last year; members of the Communist Party whose uneasy alliance with Batista wanes; the 26th of July Movement fighting Batista’s army in the Sierra Maestra mountains; and any number of other enemies Batista has garnered over the years.