History was made here on December 29, 1958, when Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and a band of 18 rifle-wielding revolutionaries barely out of their teens derailed an armored train using a borrowed bulldozer and some homemade Molotov cocktails. The battle lasted 90 minutes, and it effectively sealed the fate of the Batista dictatorship and ushered in 50 years of Fidel Castro. The event is remembered with a boxcar museum east on Independencia, just over the river, which marks the spot where the train derailed and ejected its 350 heavily armed government troops.
