page_title: Plaza del Vapor, Havana
section_title: El Curita
hierarchical_section_title: Plaza del Vapor, Havana / El Curita
caption_attribution_description: English: Parque El Curita.Dragones, Aguila. Havana
context_page_description: The Plaza del Vapor was a covered market in Havana. Its name derives from its builder Francisco Martí who was the impresario of the Tacón Theatre and who had a monopoly of fish in the city. Martí had an image in his office of Neptuno, the first vapor that made regular round trips between Havana and Matanzas. "It was the image of that ship that ended up naming the building." From the Plaza del Vapor, Martí sold 50% of all the lottery tickets in Cuba.
context_section_description: The Little Priest, after whom the Spanish: Parque El Curita is named, was born in Aguada de Pasajeros, in 1921, and for nine years prepared for the priesthood in the seminaries of San Basileo el Magno, in Santiago de Cuba, and San Carlos and San Ambrosio Seminary, in Havana. Everyone affectionately called him El Curita. He was imprisoned in the Castillo del Príncipe. While there, he organized a hunger strike and led a daring escape. He was responsible for the sabotage to the fuel tanks of the Belot refinery in Regla, whose black smoke, for several days, showed the people of Havana that the fight against Batista was reactivated. He was also involved with organizing the Night of the Hundred Bombs, showing that the dictatorship could no longer control the city. This was an action that was planned with great care; he demanded from the participants that the bombings could not cause victims; there were not any. The Batista forces persecuted him without. On March 11, 1958, an emissary from the Sierra Maestra, on behalf of Fidel Castro, asked El Curita to move to the Sierra Maestra mountain in order to preserve his life. He responded that his place was in Havana. On the 18th he fell into a trap in an apartment in Vedado and was taken to the Bureau of Investigation where he was brutally tortured. The next day, his corpse, sewn with bullets, appeared in Altahabana. El Curita worked in a small printing press installed in Plaza del Vapor where the first edition of La Historia Me Absolverá was secretly printed. The distribution of the pamphlet in the country, before the amnesty of the moncadistas, in 1955, contributed decisively to forge the vanguard that would lead the armed struggle against Batista.
caption: Parque El Curita. Aguila, Dragones and Zanja. Havana. 2017
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