It is impossible to know whether young loyalists like EBIR teacher Roberto García Añel would have chosen a Marxist path for Cuba if Fidel Castro had given them a choice. What is clear is that García Añel made a commitment to what he understood was “the Revolution” as a very young man, and he worked hard to promote the ideology that Fidel promised would be Cuba’s salvation. Posed once again with their training manuals, the faces of these young “revolutionaries” and the fact that García Añel saved these photographs for so long help humanize Cuba’s experience—especially in the early 1960s when nobody, especially the very young, could have predicted what would happen in the decades to come. A three-pack-a-day cigarette smoker, García Añel died at the age of 42 in 1981. Havana, 1964. Personal Collection of Rolando García Milián, used with permission.
