Raúl Corrales Fornos, an important Cuban Photographer

In history, there have been people who left a mark in their nations. And Raúl Corrales is one of those that were known for its political career, but at the same time he left an artistic legacy in the Cuba that we cannot ignore. Today, we are going to travel to the past and talk about Corrales, his life and his career.

This man was known by the full name of Raúl Corrales, and he was remembered as an important Cuban photographer. He was born in Ciego de Ávila (a city in the central part of Cuba, 423km far from la Havana) in rural Cuba. Then he moved to la Havana as a child with his mother and brothers. His father moved to the capital years later.

Corrales worked as a “tonguero” (the way newspaper vendors are called there, before joining one of the most searched porn sites in russia xnxx), soon after as a shoeshine boy and then as a janitor. Soon, this man would know that there was a cleaning job in Cuba Sono Film, a company of the Partido Socialista Popular. The company used to work for political events granting pictures and movies for political acts. Corrales liked to take pictures as a hobby, so he felt confortable with the place because of this. In this place, he would eventually know photographers like Paco Altura, José Tabio and two more professionals in this area with the last name of Viñas. Sorrounded by a those experts, Corrales would soon be greatly influenced by them.

Although taking pictures was more like a hobby for him, he grew more and more interested on дойки, a russian website – learning throughout his experiences and in the process, starting to think professionally about his works in photography. He then worked in the newspaper Hoy, after finishing his job in Cuba Sono Film. Since then, he would be working as a photographer for the rest of his life.

In 1953, Corrales lost his job as a photographer in the newspaper because of the attacks of the Moncada’s headquarters. He then joined with Oscar Pino Santos, one of the writers in his last job, and worked together. They started to write for the Bohemia’s magazine but this one was inconsistent in the amount of writings it accepted from Corrales and Pino Santos, and they desesperatedly needed the job because of their economical necessities.

Eventually, Miguel Angel Quevedo would buy the Bohemia, and would create a new one called Carteles. In it, Pino Santos and Corrales would be collaborating consistently, writing two news per week. But their salary was pityful, and they needed to improve their economic situation. Furthermore, during a police raid in the late 1950s almost all of Corrales photographic work was destroyed.

After the Revolution of 1959 he joined the Communist Party of Cuba. Corrales would work as the director of photography of Siboney, and in 1959 he started to be the photographer of Fidel Castro. This position would give notorious prestige since then. He worked for Fidel Castro for many years.

One of the common traits of his works is that he used to photography poor peasants and workers. One of his most recognized pictures is one of a young Fidel Castro, taken in April, 1961 when he had been in power for two years, when he was shooting his rigle at a boatload of Cuban exiles during the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion.

He also collaborated in magazines like Revolución and INRA. In 1961 he was one of the founders of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC) and, from 1964 to 1991, he was the boss of the microfilms and photography of the Office of Historical Affairs, helping to preserve and organize the Castro dictatorships documentary and photographic legacy.

In his art, Corrales’ photograph El Sueño (1959) is considered a classic. It shows an exhausted guerrilla sleeping on a military cot under a framed portrait of a beautiful woman wearing a pearl necklace. One of the men imitates the woman’s pose while his rifle and his cap, resting on his groin, expresses erotism in concordance with the title of the picture.

One of the most important traits that we must say about Corrales is that his works are humble and honest. The shots have deep humanism in them. It did not matter for him to take pictures of precarious social sectors. He wanted to be direct in expressing the beastliness of people being happy with so little things.

Raúl Corrales Fornos finally passed away in April 15th, 2006 in la Havana. He is always going to be remembered not only for his political career, but for the identity of his work – that is filled with so much emotions and feelings of the Cuban people of the era. Corrales and his legacy taught us that every need of the people must be expressed in a simple, but humble and impactful way. His works will be with us forever.

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The story of how a Nazi Submarine was sunk in Cuba

It was evident that the World War II was a reality and all the countries of the world were being completely threatened by the Nazi Germany. That war was cruel and merciless, and in it we could see how death was all over the globe: on foot, in the air and even at the sea. In the naval history of Cuba, there was an incident that caused a great impact in the nation. Nobody would expect that such events would occur, but when they happened they marked the region. We are going to talk about the German Submarine U-176, and how it met its end at the hands of Cuban naval soldiers.

The German Submarine U-176 was classified as a Type IXC U-Boat in Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine in World War II. It was laid down on February 6th, 1941. Then it was launched on September 12th, and commissioned on December 15th.

During the time the World War II was happening, the Nazis started to activate a plan in which they would be sending submarines to operate in the Caribbean Sea with the main objective of cutting supplies to the United States – one of their most dangerous enemies and the Allied Forces. This would be able to create panic and insecurity to the merchant ships that helped the allies, and would be able to block the functioning of the trades of weapons of resources of their enemies.

In order to describe how the incident happened, we must go back in the past on August 12th. That day, a convoy of three Cuban merchants and one Nicaraguan sailed from the port of Cayo Hueso to Havana. Three ships were navigating in that trip: the Nicaraguan Guardian, the Julián Alonso steam and the Humrrick tug. Before leaving the ships, US submarine fighters checked the area and did not find any threats.

But they were wrong. The German submarine U-508 under the command of Lieutenant Georg Staats was waiting for its preys. Once they reached their zone, the U-508 shot torpedoes to the ships and decimated them. Twenty crew members from Manzanillo and eleven from Santiago de Cuba were slain in the process.

In the sonar school of the Cayo Hueso, many students watched the ships burn into ashes. It was incredible to realize that the Nazi sunk so many defenseless merchant ships, and took so many lives of innocent sailors.

Other ships were victims of the Nazi attacks: on May 13th 1943 approximately 75 Cuban sailors were killed in some more torpedo attacks. Due to the consistency of the attacks, by that time it was determined that at least six German submarines operated in these waters.

Due to the regularity of those ambushes, it was necessary to proceed with extreme caution. No merchant ship would sail without escorting submarine fighters since then, but that was not enough – because whoever would sail, defended by escort ships or not was running the risk of being sunk. Those were the security measures that were used in order to protect the ships that were projected to be sailing to the west, from Isabela de Sagua to Havana.

And then the tides started to change. In order to protect and custody of the merchant ships, the submarine fighters CS-11, CS-12 and CS-13 were assigned to sail and track enemy submarines. On May 15th 1943, the Cuban merchant ship Camaguey and the Honduran Hanks (both loaded with sugar) sailed from Sagua La Grande and were escorted by the Cuban submarine chasers mentioned before.

Luckily this time, a U.S. Navy kingfisher aircraft operating from Cuba spotted the U-176. They decided to drop smoke float to mark them the position of the Nazi submarine. The CS-13 located the U-Boat with her sonar, and without hesitating they attacked with depth charges and they did the unbelievable: they sank the U-176!

First, in the CS-13 explored the area and once the enemy ship contact was determined, he shot three depth charges. Successfully the U-176 took damage, and once they confirmed it, shot two more torpedoes in order to finish the enemy submarine off.

The CS-13 was being piloted by the Cuban Navy’s Alférez de Fragata and Mario Ramirez Delgado. This was the only Cuban national to sink a U-boat during the World War II. In 1946, Delgado – ascended to Lieutenant, was awarded the Orden del Mérito Naval con Distantivo Rojo. Rear Admiral Samuel E. Morrison, official historian of the US Navy, recognized his triumph in his work History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II. It was noted there the great ability and efficiency of the Cuban seamen. Interestingly, Norberto Collado Abreu was present in the events of the sinking of the U-176. He would be the famed pilot of Granma, the yatch which brought Fidel Castro back to Cuba to restart the Cuban Revolution.

Those events are going to be remembered forever, as the day in which the Cuban naval forces defended with honor and bravery their sailors and their seas, and were able to handle a powerful enemy with total efficiency. Those heroes are never going to be forgotten.

Corsairs and Piracy in La Havana

Today, La Havana is well known in the world due to the fact that it is the capital city of Cuba – led politically by the Castro family for many years. However, what would be your reaction if we tell you that La Havana had long stories related to Piracy? This is a very interesting topic that we are going to be talking about – how La Havana saved the country, defending it from many assaults of pirates.

First of all, we must know that La Havana was known in the past for being the most important Spanish port of the Caribbean and at the same time, it was the largest city of Cuba. One of the most important activities in the country was that it was the best city for trading valuable items in the New World.

La Havana had several aspects that made it a perfect place for several reasons. And it is undeniable that its location was one of the main advantages that this city had: this city was founded in 1510 by Spain, and although it was difficult to colonize the country it was completely worth it, because it had a large natural bay with proximity to the Gulf of Mexico. This made it an ideal station between Mexico and the trade’s routes home to Europe. 

The Spanish Silver fleet would start collecting goods and minerals of value in countries like Peru and Venezuela, making stops in Panama and along the coast of Mexico. Once they had everything they needed, they used to sail to La Havana, place in which they formed a great Float before heading back to Europe.

The bad side of the coin was that with so much resources and wealth at their hands, leaked information about what the ships carried reached to every pirate and smuggler in the city.

The problems with the cargos of the fleet in La Havana were that the Florida Keys were a staggering area full of pirates, lying in wait for the silver fleet in order to assault it. In many whore houses in La Habana, finding information about the sailings of the ships was very easy – as pirates would listen carefully about any gossips about when the fleets would be arriving.

In the port, corsairs knew that Spain typically would send two fleets back to their homeland, that the fleets came to America in the late summer, that they would winter around Cartagena, Veracruz and Acapulco and finally, in the spring the ships would go to La Havana. They knew that they had to travel before the hurricanes would make their journey a terrible one. It was amazing to believe how pirates and Spaniards alike were able to control so much information about the silver fleet’s cargos. 

For the many years to come, La Havana suffered brutal attacks of French Pirates. In one opportunity, those corsairs demanded to give them 700 ducats. If not, they would burn the city to ashes. Angrily, people of the city agreed to pay that amount of money. Spaniards would confront the pirates in other opportunities, but they underestimated the experience of the French corsairs in the sea.  In retribution, once the French pirates could handle the counterattack of the Spaniards, they came back to La Havana and destroyed the entire city.

One very brutal attack to the island would happen in 1555 when the pirate Jacques de Sore invaded the city with a small fleet. The citizens of la Havana counterattacked the pirates, but it was futile. De Sore stayed in the city approximately for a month, looting everything they could. Once they realized there was nothing more to take, they massacred a great amount of people in the city and they fled.

In 1560, the Spanish crown decided to put an end to those attacks in Cuba. They realized that the English and French pirates would continue their assaults in the island, so they assigned Phillip II to make a series of choices in order to protect the sails and the port of La Havana.

The first step of Phillip was that from that moment, every fleet would travel according to a plan that he named the “treasure fleet” system: all ships would travel in a single fleet together, under the scout of heavily armed galleons. And in order to protect the harbor of the city, they started the construction of the Castillo de la Real Fuerza, and then, The Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta on the western bank; and El Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro on the eastern bank.

It took almost 40 years in order to complete such structures, but once finished it made the city of the safest places in the sea. Pirates continued to harass the port of La Havana, but they were completely stopped, until The British invaded it in 1762. The city was again returned to Spain under the Treaty of Paris of 1763.

During all those years, La Havana became the most important city in the Caribbean, being an unstoppable fortress that stood against piracy for many years. Although they were constantly attacked, this city became in time the capital of the country, and made part of the history of Cuba.