San Juan Hill...and Santiago Bay.... where American armed forces (Army and Navy) decisively ended 500 years of Spanish Colonial ....joining Cuban independence armies who had been battling the Spaniards, off and on, for more than thirty years. The is the very spot where TR charged (on foot) up the hill.....after it had already been taken, BTW,...by the Buffalo Soldiers. TR goes on to become President, the Buffalo Soldiers to fade from the nation's memory...though... permanently memorialized on commemorative plaques at the site, if you know your military history well enough to pick out the regimental citations.
From "El Morro" sweeping views of the entrance to the Bay where the Spanish naval squadron was destroyed by the "Great White Fleet" --- one of whose ships, BTW, is presently a water-borne museum in Philadelphia. And just beyond , the Sierra Maestra Mountains, where Fidel and the 26th of July Movement gathered enough military strength, two years after a nearly catastrophic "return" from Mexican exile, to overthrow the Batista regime on New Year's Day 1959.
December, 2016
Link to Photo Album:
Cuba - Santiago de Cuba : San Juan Hill, El Morro
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