The waters of Playa Girón, in south-central Cuba, remain crystal clear and free of government-led capitalist development, thanks in large part to their historic importance to the early Cuban Revolution’s quest for sovereignty from the United States: here, in mid-April 1961, thousands of armed Cuban volunteers and Revolutionary Armed Forces famously defeated the CIA-directed invasion of Brigade 2506, a two-thousand man force of exiles recruited in Miami and trained in Central America to topple Fidel Castro’s revolutionary socialist regime. Playa Girón [also known as the Bay of Pigs], 2011. Photograph by Matthew Joseph.
