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11 | the <strong>Alamar</strong> travel guide<br />
Climate comfort). 8 The pictures convey a clear<br />
image of the targeted population: one image<br />
shows a young stylish woman with stiletto heels<br />
in a modernist design, a butterfly chair. In another<br />
picture the same woman looks out dreamily over<br />
the coastline in her elegant dress. Speculation<br />
was also a clear motive for aspiring inhabitants as<br />
the slogans betray: “Sow money where money<br />
grows” and “Este es el momento de comprar en<br />
<strong>Alamar</strong> y ganar dinero rápidamente” (This is the<br />
time to buy in <strong>Alamar</strong> and win money quickly).<br />
Even up to March 1959 <strong>Alamar</strong> was advertised<br />
along these lines and not unsuccessful: at that<br />
point about 10% of the plots was sold and built. 9<br />
Triumph of the revolution<br />
And then… The revolution triumphed. The long<br />
stretched movement for independence, which<br />
had already started with Jose Marti, continued<br />
during the first half of the 20th Century with a<br />
series of student protests and numerous riots,<br />
entered its final stage with the landing of Fidel<br />
and his revolutionary troops in 1956 with the<br />
boat Granma. After fighting his way from Eastern<br />
Cuba to Havana, he made his triumphant entrée<br />
in the capital at January 8, 1959. One week<br />
before, on New Year’s Eve 1958/1959, Eugenio<br />
Batista had fled Cuba. Castro called the triumph<br />
of the revolution and took his entree in the<br />
Hilton Hotel which had been opened just six<br />
months before. He provocatively renamed it the<br />
Habana Libre. Casinos were stormed and the<br />
roulette tables were burned in the streets. No<br />
one really hated gambling, but as it had become<br />
to symbolize the American overtaking of the<br />
island, everything having to do with gambling<br />
needed to be destroyed.<br />
Developments were very quick and radical in the<br />
first days of the revolution. The mob, Batistasupporters,<br />
but also architects and developers<br />
fled the country in subsequent waves, and<br />
all urban developments in Havana came to a<br />
8. Reinaldo Morales Campos, “El ocaso del millonario negocio<br />
de la Gran Habana del este: Publicidad y realidad”, www.<br />
monografias.com/trabajos93/ocaso-del-millonario-negocio-granhabana-del-este/ocaso-del-millonario-negocio-gran-habana-deleste.shtml#ixzz4UMkeudWZ<br />
9. Idem<br />
Advertisements for <strong>Alamar</strong>, 1957-1959<br />
(source: Courtesy of Humberto Ramirez)
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