BY GABRIEL MOLINA

                   THE crowded corner of Galiano and Neptuno Streets was burning like a
                   furnace on the night of December 31, 1960.

                   Firefighters, militia troops, soldiers, workers and members of the
                   population defied danger once again to prevent the flames from
                   extending to buildings adjoining the fashionable La Epoca store, one of
                   the five largest in the Cuban capital.

                   The Year of Education, 1961, was about to begin in flames, in the
                   physical as well as the figurative sense.

                   Some weeks later, on Cuban television, Reynold González, leader of a
                   group of saboteurs, confessed that the fire in La Epoca department store
                   at the end of the year had been started by Cuban CIA agents acting
                   under his instructions. They used live phosphorus and gelignite supplied
                   by U.S. intelligence officers in the guise of U.S. embassy officials. It was
                   part of a plot to provoke daily desertions from the ranks of the people
                   and seriously damage the country’s economy. In Washington it was also
                   referred to as psychological preparation for the projected Bay of Pigs
                   invasion.

                   Three months previously, Cuban State Security agencies had collected
                   sufficient information to support Cuban Foreign Minister Raúl Roa’s
                   exposé of an accelerated U.S. plan to invade Cuba, before the UN
                   General Assembly on October 7.

                   "A large number of exiles and adventurers are receiving special training
                   under the command of U.S. soldiers at the Helvetia Estate located in El
                   Palmar municipality adjoining the western departments of Retalhuleu
                   and Quetzaltenango [in Guatemala], recently acquired by Roberto
                   Alejos, brother of Carlos Alejos, the Guatemalan ambassador to the
                   United States, and members of an influential family with palatial
                   connections."

                   The report went on to state with amazing precision: "Within the
                   above-mentioned estate a concrete landing strip with subterranean
                   hangars has been built and a highway to the Pacific coast is under
                   construction¼ The Retalhuleu aerodrome has been rapidly redesigned
                   by U.S. engineers to facilitate the landing and takeoff of heavy and
                   jet-propelled aircraft¼ During August and September more than 100
                   U.S. aviators and military technicians have entered Guatemala as
                   tourists. Bomber aircraft with Cuban insignia have been seen at La
                   Aurora airport [in the Guatemalan capital]. It is public knowledge that
                   they have the double mission of attacking Cuba or simulating Cuban
                   aggression against Guatemala¼ "

                   The communiqué presented by Roa to Soviet Valerian Zorin, at that
                   time president of the UN Security Council, requested an urgent meeting
                   of that body, to "be informed of the document exposing U.S. plans for
                   direct military aggression within hours against the government and
                   people of Cuba."

                   Coinciding with the arson attack on La Epoca and not by chance, the
                   Uruguayan foreign minister announced that a "secret" U.S. government
                   report claiming that Cuba was constructing 17 Soviet rocket launching
                   pads, endangering peace in the Western hemisphere, was being
                   circulated among Latin American governments.

                   News agencies affirmed that Uruguay was considering the possibility of
                   breaking off diplomatic relations with Cuba.

                   The day before, the Peruvian government had severed diplomatic ties in
                   the wake of a CIA-organized attack utilizing Cuban
                   counterrevolutionaries on the Cuban embassy in Lima, leading to the
                   discovery of documents—previously fabricated by the U.S. intelligence
                   services—on supposed Cuban financing of Peru’s left-wing movements.
                   And prior to that, without much subterfuge, Guatemala had cut links.
                   There, open repression took the place of explanations.

                   For those reasons, the year began with a call from the Central
                   Organization of Cuban Trade Unions (CTC), convening the island’s
                   three western provinces to a mass demonstration in Revolution Square,
                   still known as Civic Square at the time. "There is imminent danger of a
                   military attack on Cuba by U.S. imperialist troops," the message read,
                   adding: "More involved, more disciplined, more active than ever in the
                   workplace; and more involved, stronger and more resolute than ever
                   before in the militia¼ "

                   Fidel had headed a New Year’s dinner with 10,000 teachers in the
                   former Columbia military camp, converted into Ciudad Libertad School
                   City, at whose entrance a splendid illuminated arch exhorted: "Teach
                   people to read and write!"

                   There, the leader of the Cuban Revolution commented on the
                   Washington-mounted farce made public in Uruguay and explained that
                   the lie about rocket launching pads was part of a plan devised by Allen
                   Dulles and the CIA to create an incident.

                   He announced that in the face of the danger, tens of thousands of young
                   people had marched to their posts with their anti-tank, anti-aerial and
                   mortar batteries and the Rebel Army was taking up positions in special
                   combat and artillery columns. Everyone was calm and immutably
                   determined to defend their native soil.

                   With the arson attack on La Epoca, the enemy was trying to create the
                   conditions for an invasion; however, it only succeeded in raising an even
                   higher flame: the people’s fighting spirit.

                   PRESIDENT EISENHOWER DECIDES TO BREAK OFF
                   RELATIONS WITH CUBA

                   The second anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution was
                   commemorated on January 2 in an atmosphere of tension and joy.

                   Although the Cuban people had been warned to prepare for direct
                   aggression from the United States throughout virtually the whole of the
                   previous year, popular support for the revolutionary government
                   increased rather than diminished. The profoundest structural changes in
                   Latin American history had taken place during those two years. The
                   Agrarian Reform and Urban Reform Acts, the nationalization of U.S.
                   agricultural, industrial and service companies and of Cuban industry and
                   big business, among other measures, together with the dissolution of
                   Batista’s army, complemented the destruction of the bourgeoisie’s
                   economic and military apparatus, as Karl Marx had written.

                   The expansion of jobs and wages, social advances and the benefits
                   resulting from popular measures linked with Cubans’ traditional cheerful
                   nature to spark an explosion of joy that the threats failed to dampen.

                   For that reason, the characteristics of the celebration for the second
                   anniversary were tight unity around Fidel and a display of the nascent
                   revolutionary military power.

                   People were anxious to demonstrate their support for the Revolution and
                   to have an overall view of the armaments of the different sectors in
                   training.

                   Fidel set in motion a tireless activity to strengthen awareness of the need
                   for an accelerated self-defense. The men’s and women’s militia
                   battalions, where young people took on the potentially most combative
                   positions, had been formed.

                   Several hundreds of thousands of people erupted into acclamations when
                   Major of the Revolution Juan Almeida, head of the Rebel Army, led off
                   the parade in a jeep at the head of four Rebel Army special combat
                   columns, before joining the leaders on the rostrum.

                   The columns were followed by bazooka companies, 120mm mortar and
                   anti-aircraft batteries, anti-tank cannons and heavy artillery. Nothing like
                   it had ever been seen in the country. Never before had the people
                   greeted armaments so enthusiastically. And the atmosphere reached its
                   highest point when the crowd shouted out as one: "The tanks are
                   coming!"

                   A seemingly endless, powerful file of heavy and medium T-34 tanks
                   rolled into the square with the mechanical sound of their tracks rising
                   above the acclamations. That afternoon, the sound of the advancing
                   tanks was musical harmony in people’s ears.

                   The atmosphere remained electric. After the tanks came the members of
                   the Brigades of Working Youth, known as Five Peaks after they scaled
                   the Turquino Peak in the Sierra Maestra, grasping their light bazookas
                   with martial bearing.

                   The Cubans were able to witness the fruits of the recent months of rapid
                   but painstaking training. First came the voluntary teachers armed with
                   submachine guns, followed by women’s combat battalions from the
                   Revolutionary National Militia carrying automatic rifles, and the men’s
                   with Czech submachine guns or rifles, their decided and martial gait
                   coming as a joyful surprise. Other battalions continued filing across the
                   square with bazookas, 81mm and 120mm mortars, anti-tank weapons
                   and anti-aircraft guns which had already become popular known as "four
                   mouths" among the youthful artillery forces, which would have a brilliant
                   role in the future. A rhythmical, bantering and victorious song was born
                   among the cheering mass of men and women:

                   WITH RIFLES, CANNONS, SHOTGUNS, CUBA IS RESPECTED!

                   It was no secret to anybody that the U.S. government had not merely
                   refused to sell arms to Cuba. It had not merely put pressure on the
                   Western European governments not to sell arms to Cuba. It had gone to
                   the extreme of sowing mourning and desolation among Cuban dock
                   workers, French sailors and people in the locality who rushed to help
                   when La Coubre steamer, loaded with armaments from Belgium, was
                   blown up by the CIA in February 1960 to prevent Cuba from obtaining
                   weapons with which to defend itself.

                   Everyone knew that first in secret and then openly, Fidel, Raúl and other
                   Cuban leaders had acquired armaments from the socialist countries,
                   principally the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, which would turn any
                   aggression against the island into a difficult undertaking.

                   Simply, those were moments that were lived to the full. In one of those
                   contradictions, danger presented the opportunity to feel a tremendous
                   and multifaceted joie de vivre.