page_title: Havana Plan Piloto
section_title: December 31, 1958
hierarchical_section_title: Havana Plan Piloto / December 31, 1958
caption_attribution_description: English: Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista while having breakfast in the Presidential Palace with wife Marta Batista - Havana, Cuba, April 1958.
context_page_description: The Havana Plan Piloto was a 1955-1958 urban proposal by Town Planning Associates which included Paul Lester Wiener, Paul Schulz, the Catalan architect Josep Lluis Sert, Seely Stevenson of Value & Knecht, Consulting Engineers seeking to combine "architecture, planning, and law," in a project heavily influenced by the politics of Fulgencio Batista which in turn were dictated by his involvement with the American Mafia and their desire to augment United States tourism, and thru his architects, the modernist principles of CIAM and the Athens Charter. The Charter got its name from the location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the in SS Patris II bound for Athens from Marseilles. This conference is documented in a film commissioned by Sigfried Giedion and made by his friend Laszlo Moholy-Nagy "Architects' Congress." The Charter had a significant impact on urban planning after World War II and, thru Josep Lluis Sert and Paul Lester Wiener, on the proposed modernization of Havana and in the effort erase all vestiges of the 16th-century city.
context_section_description: On December 31, 1958, at a New Year's Eve party, Batista told his cabinet and top officials that he was leaving the country. After seven years, Batista knew his presidency was over, and he fled the island in the early morning. At 3:00 a.m. on January 1, 1959, Batista boarded a plane at Camp Columbia with 40 of his supporters and immediate family members and flew to Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. A second plane flew out of Havana later in the night, carrying ministers, officers and the Governor of Havana. Batista took along a personal fortune of more than $300 million that he had amassed through graft and payoffs. Critics accused Batista and his supporters of taking as much as $700 million in fine art and cash with them as they fled into exile.
  As news of the fall of Batista's government spread through Havana, The New York Times described jubilant crowds pouring into the streets and automobile horns honking. The black and red flag of July 26 Movement waved on cars and buildings. The atmosphere was chaotic. On January 8, 1959, Castro and his army rolled victoriously into Havana. Already denied entry to the United States, Batista sought asylum in Mexico, which also refused him. Portugal's leader António Salazar allowed him to settle there on the condition that he completely abstain from politics.
  By the end of Batista's rule possibly as many as 20,000 Cubans had been killed.
caption: Batista, having breakfast in the Presidential Palace with wife Marta Fernández Miranda, eight months before he fled Cuba.
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