NIGERIA: Nigerian Election

MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2011

Determined to vote, Mararaba

 


Determined to vote, Mararaba, originally uploaded by Jeremy Weate.

 

 

Sheltering from the rain, Mararaba.

 

 

 

SUNDAY, APRIL 17, 2011

A celebrant, Mpape

 


A celebrant, Mpape, originally uploaded by Jeremy Weate.

 

 

Watching the count, Mpape

 


Watching the count, Mpape, originally uploaded by Jeremy Weate.

 

 

Watching the counting, Mpape

 


Watching the counting, Mpape, originally uploaded by Jeremy Weate.

 

 

A young citizen, Kubwa

 


A young citizen, Kubwa, originally uploaded by Jeremy Weate.

 

 

Diasporic observers, Kubwa

 


Diasporic observers, Kubwa, originally uploaded by Jeremy Weate.

 

 

Deciding who to vote for, Kubwa

 


Deciding who to vote for, Kubwa, originally uploaded by Jeremy Weate.

 

 

Waiting to vote, Karo

 


Waiting to vote, Karo, originally uploaded by Jeremy Weate.

 

 

Election technology, at Mararaba yesterday

 


Election technology, originally uploaded by Jeremy Weate.

 

 

>via: http://www.naijablog.co.uk/  

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Nigeria election:

Goodluck Jonathan 'to win outright'

 


A woman casts her vote in Bayelsa state, 16 April 2011
New transparency has been introduced to the electoral process

Goodluck Jonathan is set for election as Nigeria's president with almost double the vote of his main rival, partial results suggest.

Figures provided by regional officials suggest he has garnered enough votes to avoid a run-off.

A BBC correspondent says there is a sense of relief and jubilation that the vote and count have been relatively calm, unlike in past years.

However, some results in individual states have been suspiciously high.

Mr Jonathan had staked his reputation on the election, repeatedly promising it would be free and fair.

Unless the national electoral commission declares a large chunk of the votes to be invalid, he is now on track to become Nigeria's first elected president from the oil-producing Niger Delta region.

The Christian politician was appointed to the presidency last year, upon the death of incumbent Umaru Yar'Adua, whom he had served as vice-president.

'99.63%'

To win at the first round, a candidate needs at least 25% of the vote in two-thirds of Nigeria's 36 states.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Analysis

I'm inside Nigeria's election collation offices in Abuja and this is the nerve centre of the election.

It's where officials scrutinise results for fraud before declaring them. Election Commission Chairman Professor Jega is sitting on a raised platform, slowly reading out results. Behind him is a glass office where official paperwork is being matched and compared with data captured at 120,000 polling stations.

It's only when officials are all agreed on what they're seeing that they can confirm the authenticity of the results. It's a painfully slow process but it's designed to expose any tampering or fraud with either the computer records or the paperwork.

And this building itself is under massive security. We came through several military cordons to get inside. People here are grimly determined to get through the next six to 10 hours of this count without violent incidents.

According to regional results, Mr Jonathan has passed that threshold in at least 24 states. He polled 20.3m votes to the 10.4m cast for his nearest rival, General Muhammadu Buhari.

In Akwa Ibom state, he was credited with winning 95% percent and in Anambra it was 99%. In his home state, Bayelsa, he took 99.63%.

"Figures of 95% and above for one party suggest that these are fabricated figures and, personally, they worry me because they pose serious questions on the credibility of the election," Jibrin Ibrahim of the Centre for Democracy and Development told AFP news agency.

Former government minister Nasir el-Rufai, a supporter of Gen Buhari, told Reuters: "In most of the south-east and south-south, no real elections took place.

"In the south-west and the north, the results have no relation to what happened at the polling units and we will prove it in due course."

A spokesman for the general, Yinka Odumakin, also said irregularities had taken place but any challenge would come after the vote count.

Mr Jonathan's campaign team have said they will not publicly comment until the election commission has formally declared all the results in the capital Abuja, an announcement expected later on Monday.

"This is no time for triumphalism," Oronto Douglas, a senior adviser to Mr Jonathan, told Reuters news agency.

"It is a time for deep reflection, for strengthening the bond of our union and for all of us to work together."

'True democracy'

Previous polls were marred by widespread violence and vote-fixing but Saturday's election was reported to have generally gone smoothly, after violence in the run-up left dozens of people dead.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Election Season

  • 20 presidential candidates
  • 74 million registered voters
  • Parliament, president and local elections on three consecutive weekends
  • Ruling PDP dominated every vote since end of military rule in 1999
  • Previous elections plagued by corruption and violence
  • New election commission head has promised clean vote

A woman is said to have been killed in the central city of Jos on polling day and two bomb explosions hit the north-eastern city of Maiduguri.

Casting his vote in Bayelsa, Niger Delta, Mr Jonathan said the election was a "new dawn in Nigeria's political evolution".

"Nigeria is now experiencing true democracy where we the politicians have to go to the people," he added.

In Daura, home to Gen Buhari, crowds waited for hours despite the intense heat to cast their votes.

The general predicted the ruling party would try to rig the election in a "sophisticated way", he told the BBC.

But he added that he had more faith in the national electoral commission this time round, adding that "probably 60% of the election" would be credible.

Other challengers for the presidency included former anti-corruption chief Nuhu Ribadu and Kano state governor Ibrahim Shekarau.

Nigeria: A nation divided

The People's Democratic Party (PDP) has won all elections since the end of military rule in 1999. It won two-thirds of Nigeria's 36 states last time. But having a southerner - President Goodluck Jonathan - as its candidate in the presidential elections may lose it some votes in the north.

Nigeria's 160 million people are divided between numerous ethno-linguistic groups and also along religious lines. Broadly, the Hausa-Fulani people based in the north are mostly Muslims. The Yorubas of the south-west are divided between Muslims and Christians, while the Igbos of the south-east and neghbouring groups are mostly Christian or animist. The Middle Belt is home to hundreds of groups with different beliefs, and around Jos there are frequent clashes between Hausa-speaking Muslims and Christian members of the Berom community.

Despite its vast resources, Nigeria ranks among the most unequal countries in the world, according to the UN. The poverty in the north is in stark contrast to the more developed southern states. While in the oil-rich south-east, the residents of Delta and Akwa Ibom complain that all the wealth they generate flows up the pipeline to Abuja and Lagos.

Southern residents tend to have better access to healthcare, as reflected by the greater uptake of vaccines for polio, tuberculosis, tetanus and diphtheria. Some northern groups have in the past boycotted immunisation programmes, saying they are a Western plot to make Muslim women infertile. This led to a recurrence of polio, but the vaccinations have now resumed.

Female literacy is seen as the key to raising living standards for the next generation. For example, a newborn child is far likelier to survive if its mother is well-educated. In Nigeria we see a stark contrast between the mainly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south. In some northern states less than 5% of women can read and write, whereas in some Igbo areas more than 90% are literate.

Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer and among the biggest in the world but most of its people subsist on less than $2 a day. The oil is produced in the south-east and some militant groups there want to keep a greater share of the wealth which comes from under their feet. Attacks by militants on oil installations led to a sharp fall in Nigeria's output during the last decade. But in 2010, a government amnesty led thousands of fighters to lay down their weapons.

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VIDEO: Young In Prison - The Safe Side on Vimeo

MEET NANA 

She is a bright, beautiful, intelligent young woman who works hard to support her two young children and she has serious aspirations to become a journalist. 

Surprisingly, only a few years ago she was in and out of prison, she was a gang member, a drug addict and a school drop-out. 

What changed? She met an organization called Young in Prison that turned her entire life around, putt ing her on a positive path in life. 

The mission of Young In Prison is to ensure that even within a harsh prison environment, our children are given the opportunity to become creative, responsible, productive citizens of our country. 

Nana’s story is just one of many shining examples of how Young in Prison is dramatically transforming young lives and securing a peaceful future for all in South Africa. 
 
For more information, visit:younginprison.org

A Butterfly Film made by Anna Telford & Felix Seuffert
butterflyfilms.co.za

 

VIDEO: Building Bridges: The BIG Issue: Reflections > The MIMI Magazine Blog

The Big Issue—REFLECTIONS

Written By: MIM!Cape Town based Butterfly Films makes short promotional documentary films that take us deep into the heart of the matter. In The Big Issue: Reflections, Butterfly Films follows two women living and working in Cape Town. Despite living in the same city, their worlds are far apart. One woman lives in a squatter camp. The other in the city center. Their paths cross and, momentarily, a bridge is built, a connection is made. Watch their story now.

The Big Issue – REFLECTIONS extended version from Butterfly Films on Vimeo.

The Big Issue - Reflections

A simple portrait of two women living and working in Cape Town. One lives in a squatter camp. The other next door to me in the city centre.

Despite living in the same city, their worlds are far apart. Through the work of the Big Issue, their paths cross and, momentarily, a bridge is built, a connection is made.

Build more bridges. Support the Big Issue. The Change is in your pocket.

bigissue.org.za

A Butterfly Film by Anna Telford & Felix Seuffert
for more information please visit
butterflyfilms.co.za
felixseuffert.com

To see more moving videos from Butterfly Films, visit www.vimeo.com/user2804571 and to learn more about The Big Issue, visit www.bigissue.org.za.

 

PUB: Call for Submissions from Poets of Color: "The Moment of Change" Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry (Aqueduct press)|Writers Afrika

Call for Submissions from Poets of Color:

"The Moment of Change"

Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry (Aqueduct press)

 

 

Deadline: 15 June 2011

Rose Lemberg is currently editing "The Moment of Change," a feminist speculative poetry anthology for Aqueduct press.

This anthology will bring feminist questions to the foreground, while featuring queer poets, poets of color, and international poets as much as possible. This will be the first feminist anthology within the history of speculative poetry.

To this end, the editor would like to solicit reprint submissions at the editorial address, feministspec at gmail dot com. Submissions are not limited by gender and sexuality, age, race and ethnicity, disability, immigration status, etc - everyone is welcome. Please send your previously published poems that you think are feminist (maximum 5 poems per submission, please). Date of original publication does not matter, but please supply the previous publication details for each poem.

The following are considered: fantasy, science fiction, magic realism, surrealism, weird, and slipstream.

If you have ideas for poems by others that can fit the anthology, please let the editor know at the editorial address (feministspec at gmail dot com).

Rights: We ask for non-exclusive one-time reprint rights, non-exclusive promotional rights, and non-exclusive ebook reprint rights. These rights should be available when you send me your submissions (i.e. if the poem is under exclusivity period somewhere, that would be problematic).

Payment: one copy per contributor.

Submissions are open now, and will remain open until June 15th, 2011. I will respond to all submissions by July 15th, 2011.

Contact Information:

For inquiries: feministspec at gmail dot com

For submissions: feministspec at gmail dot com

Website: http://www.aqueductpress.com/

 

 

 

PUB: The Sun Magazine

Readers Write asks readers to address subjects on which they're the only authorities. Topics are intentionally broad in order to give room for expression. Writing style isn't as important as thoughtfulness and sincerity.

Because of space limitations, we're unable to print all the submissions we receive. We edit pieces, often quite heavily, but contributors have the opportunity to approve or disapprove of editorial changes prior to publication. (If you don't want to be contacted regarding the editing of your work, please let us know.)

We publish only nonfiction in Readers Write. Feel free to submit your work under "Name Withheld" if it allows you to be more honest, but be sure to include your mailing address so we can give you a complimentary one-year subscription if we use your work, as a way of saying thanks. Occasionally we will choose not to publish an author's name, or will use only a first name and last initial. While we don't question the truthfulness of the writing, we must be sensitive to considerations of libel or invasion of privacy. If you've already changed the names of the people involved, please say so.

Send your typed, double-spaced submissions to the address above. If you cannot type, please print clearly. We're sorry, but we can't respond to or return your work, so don't send your only copy unless you don't want it back. Because we must wait until the last minute to make our final selections, we are unable to answer questions regarding the status of submissions. If your work is going to appear, you'll hear from us prior to publication.

You can also use our online form to suggest a topic.

 

Upcoming Topics Deadline Publication Date
Authority May 1 November 2011
Saying Too Much June 1 December 2011
Boxes July 1 January 2012
Warning Signs August 1 February 2012
Promises September 1 March 20102
The Best Feeling In The World October 1 April 2012

Send submissions to:

Readers Write
The Sun
107 N. Roberson St.
Chapel Hill, NC 27516

 

Thank you for your interest in The Sun.

 

PUB: Call for Submissions: Nelson Fiction Series (Nelson Publishers, Nigeria)|Writers Afrika

Call for Submissions:

Nelson Fiction Series

(Nelson Publishers, Nigeria)

 

 Ibadan-based Nelson Publishers, a subsidiary of Evans Publishing, last year launched the Nelson Fiction Series. Nelson Fiction will be aiming to publish works of Nigerian writers and are looking to publish six books annually. They welcome manuscripts for consideration.

Works may be on any subject matter, which should be typed and double spaced with the writer's info; name, address, telephone number and email address, included on the first page of the manuscript. The manuscript should not be bound, but paginated. Short story anthology writers could send in as many as six examples of their works. Good writing is a requirement.

Manuscripts should be sent by post to Nelson Publishers, Jericho road, Ibadan, Oyo State or emailed to nelsonfiction@gmail.com.

Contact Information:

For inquiries: nelsonfiction@gmail.com

For submissions: nelsonfiction@gmail.com

Website: http://nelsonfiction.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

CULTURE + AUDIO: Beyond the Beats: Towards a Radical Analysis of the State of Hip-Hop > voxunion

Dr. Chris Tinson, Rosa Clemente, Mariama White-Hammond and Jared Ball participated at this year’s National Conference for Media Reform held in Boston, MA. and looked to expand and promote this concept of “hip-hop radicalism.”  Our panel probed the political state and direction of hip-hop where the panelists spoke of their current work in articulating new perspectives on hip-hop culture, organizing and scholarship relative to black and brown communities around the nation and world. The panel attempted to highlight the dire state of hip-hop politics and economics with regard to political struggle, and provide tangible ideas for building a politics that incorporates and embraces radical political histories, GLBTQ communities, consistent critique of the prison-industrial complex, and the politics of media justice.  We also challenged some conventional notions of hip-hop’s death, the erasure of radical politics and the white left’s continuing struggle with majority people’s inclusion/centering within their media work and conferences.  We even had to ask why there was an apparent need for the conference to change the title of the panel which appeared in their conference materials as “Beyond the Beats: New Perspectives in Hip-Hop Culture.”

* This panel took place April 9, 2011 (2-4p EST).

 

Download the panel!

 

 

SPORTS: The Work of Sport in the Age of International Acquisition By Alexander Provan > Bidoun Magazine

The Work of Sport in the

Age of

International Acquisition

By Alexander Provan

Much like modern war, modern sport
is undertaken by a marginalized group
for the benefit of a powerful elite.

One day in the winter of 2002, Dorothee Paulmann received a telephone call at her home office in Trier, Germany. Paulmann had recently abandoned a career as a triathlete to become a sports agent, specializing in East African runners; the previous year one of her clients, a thirty-three-yearold Kenyan runner named Edith Masai, had won the bronze medal at the World Cross Country Championship. The caller was Leonard Mucheru, a 24-year-old long-distance runner from Kenya, seeking her services. She agreed, and Mucheru began to travel between his home in the Kenyan highlands and Trier, Germany’s oldest city. “He was impressed by the nice training facilities,” Paulmann recalls, “especially the forest and the stadium.” Mucheru improved steadily, and soon he was being recruited by friends of Paulmann, Moroccan trainers on the international circuit who were putting together a track team for Bahrain. There was one condition: Mucheru would have to renounce his Kenyan citizenship and become Bahraini. As Paulmann tells it, Mucheru agreed without hesitation and flew to Bahrain with the Moroccans. He filled out the necessary paperwork, changed his name to Mushir Salem Jawher, and settled into his new arrangement. Henceforth he would receive a salary of $1,000 a month, payable until death — his checks signed, oddly, by the Bahrain Defense Force — with substantial bonuses for winning races. Mucheru returned to Trier to train with Paulmann for the 2004 Asian Indoor Athletics Championship in Tehran, where he won the 3000-meter race.

Bahrain’s recruitment efforts imitated those of Qatar, which had been importing athletes for years — mostly that special breed of Kenyans from the Rift Valley highlands. Qatar had cultivated a network of scouts and agents to bring promising Kenyans to the emirate for negotiations, and contacts among Kenyan sports officials able to waive a rule requiring a three-year “cooling off” period before an ex-Kenyan athlete could represent an adopted country in competitions. The delicacy of these dealings was such that, in exchange for Kenyan assistance, Qatar agreed to construct a professional stadium with a running track in the Rift Valley, where most athletes practice on improvised dirt trails. But as time passed and the stadium remained merely notional, Kenya accused Qatar of chicanery. Qatar blamed Kenyan corruption and bureaucratic infighting for the delay. In 2003, relations nose-dived when Kenyan Olympic Committee president and former track star Kipchoge Keino barred a newly Qatari runner, 20-year-old Saif Saaeed Shaheen, from competing in the Athens games the next year.

Until that August, Shaheen had been Stephen Cherono. He was not well-known in Kenya, where there is such a surfeit of world-class runners that few qualify for the national team. Hardly anyone took notice when Cherono switched his citizenship and name in exchange for a lifetime monthly salary of $1,000 and the standard complement of elite trainers and cutting-edge facilities. But then he started winning races. In a surprise victory at the World Championships in Athletics, held in Paris that spring, Shaheen broke the world record for the 3,000-meter steeplechase. After crossing the finish line he fell to his knees and began to cross himself, but an official rushed to stop him; he then took a Qatari flag, wrapped it around his shoulders, and ran a victory lap; when he stepped up to the podium he forgot his new name and had to check the scoreboard. His brother, a runner on the Kenyan team, finished fifth in the same race, and refused to congratulate him.

This jarring scene was replayed on television in Kenya and elsewhere, and Shaheen, who had received a multimillion-dollar bonus for his victory, was condemned in his homeland’s newspapers. “That some Kenyan sportsmen are willing to be regarded in the same light as champion horse breeds and agree to sell their birth rights to the power of the dinar speaks ill of us Kenyans,” opined the Daily Nation. Kenya’s minister of sports attempted to pass a law prohibiting the country’s athletes from changing citizenship at all.

The president of Kenya’s athletics federation equated the practice to “trading slaves,” while others compared the exploitation of African athletes to colonialism. For his part, Shaheen returned to Doha, where the sheikhs bestowed upon him a mansion and a squad of servants, as well as a title: “The Falcon of Qatar.” And despite the general opprobrium back home, dozens of athletes, mostly runners and mostly Kenyan, have been Qatarized since Shaheen’s public shaming.

Most athletes who become Qatari citizens do not actually reside in the country and, despite their Arabized names, are not acculturated. This includes Saif Saeed Assaad, formerly Angel Popov, a Bulgarian weightlifter (one of eight ex-Bulgarians on team Qatar) who won the emirate a bronze medal in the 2000 Olympics. (Zhu Chen, a Chinese chess grandmaster who represents Qatar in the World Chess Federation, is a rare exception — she married a local chess grandmaster. “The only thing I could not understand when I first came here,” she has said, “is their slow rhythm of life.”) Runners generally live and train in their home country, flying to Doha every few months to renew their visas, and many expect to find a way to regain their citizenship once their careers end. Renato Canova, an Italian coach who heads Qatar’s recruitment program, has said, “I’ve told my athletes that if they marry a Kenyan girl, they will become Kenyan again.”

Of course, Qatar is not unique in recruiting players from beyond its borders. Tunisia has acquired a Brazilian soccer player; Georgia has two Brazilian volleyball players; Azerbaijan’s women’s hockey team features a clutch of South Koreans; and African asylum-seekers are suffusing Nordic track rosters. Second-tier American basketball players serve on teams across the globe. (The greatest acquisitory coup in sports history occurred in 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria — and its athletes — leading to the creation of what was, until war intervened, the world’s greatest soccer team.)

The situation of the Kenyan runners is more acute in part because Kenya does not allow for dual citizenship. In any case, it may be that Qatar’s “foreign legion,” as it is often called, rankles because of the easy allegories: the majority of the emirate’s population is foreign guest workers, few of whom will ever be offered citizenship.

In most countries, sports are still perceived by fans and government officials (if not by athletes) as something like the auto industry in America: an ideal realm that should be kept 63 apart from the economic shifts wrought by globalization. The Olympics are the last redoubt of the nation-state — or, at least, they profit immensely from being marketed as such. The opening ceremony, which is the highest-rated television broadcast of the games, hinges on a vow by amateur athletes to compete “for the glory of sport and the honor of [their] teams.” That promise is packaged by the International Olympic Committee and sold for around $4 billion; a negligible amount makes its way to the athletes.

Much like modern war, modern sport is undertaken by a marginalized group for the benefit of a powerful elite. But even war, which was the initial model and impetus for the Olympics, is no longer fought exclusively among nations, or for a cause assigned to, rather than chosen by, the combatants. Perhaps we should blame this situation on the diminishing purity of sport: for most of human history, the hallmark of international athletic competition has not been patriotism but the sublimation of violence. The Olympics was originally accompanied by a cessation of all hostilities between nations, and the hope that it might temper those hostilities. According to Nigel Spivey, author of The Ancient Olympics: A History, the Greek games revolved around a differentiation between Good Strife and Bad Strife: “Good Strife, born of a coupling between Zeus and the Night, encouraged mortals to make the most of their brief time on earth; Bad Strife set up lusts for battle and bloodshed. Good Strife nurtured desires for wealth and fame; Bad Strife was a destroyer of lives and property. Good Strife urged creative industry, stirring the energies of emulation.” In other words, all games were war games.

And yet the battlefield is never far from the track. In January 2007, Mushir Salem Jawher entered the Tiberias Marathon, which traces the Sea of Galilee. He finished in two hours and thirteen minutes, winning the race and becoming the first Arab athlete to compete in Israel. He was “very proud,” he told the press afterward, calling Israel “a free country,” and stating that “people should live together in harmony.” Bahrain responded by announcing its intention to strip Jawher of his citizenship. He became a man without a country, spending two months in Nairobi trying to convince the government to take him back. “He called me after the race and explained what kind of trouble he was in,” Dorothee Paulmann remembers. “It was a shock. He should have known. But maybe he just didn’t think about it.” Bahrain eventually bowed to international pressure and agreed not to revoke Jawher’s citizenship, but his name had been ruined. Later that year Kenya agreed to take him back. And in 2008 he successfully defended his title, winning the Tiberias Marathon, this time as Leonard Mucheru.

 

CUBA: Bay of Pigs: The 'perfect failure' of Cuba invasion > BBC News

Bay of Pigs:

The 'perfect failure'

of Cuba invasion

Fidel Castro's forces outnumbered the invaders by about 10 to one

 

Fifty years ago, shortly before midnight on 16 April 1961, a group of some 1,500 Cuban exiles trained and financed by the CIA launched an ill-fated invasion of Cuba from the sea in the Bay of Pigs.

The plan was to overthrow Fidel Castro and his revolution.

Instead, it turned into a humiliating defeat which pushed Cuba firmly into the arms of the Soviet Union and has soured US-Cuban relations to this day.

The Bay of Pigs is a large isolated inlet on Cuba's southern coast.

There is little here apart from mosquitoes and a crocodile-infested swamp.

The beach at Playa Giron, a village with a small airstrip at the mouth of the Bay of Pigs, was the invaders' primary target. (To this day, it is referred to in Cuba as the Playa Giron invasion.)

A simultaneous landing was planned near the village of Playa Larga, 35km away at the far end of the bay.


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

"We thought, 'This is the invasion boys, be careful! They are trying to invade' ”

 

—Domingo Rodriguez

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Flawed plans

An old, fortified concrete trench dug into the coconut palm-fringed beach is one of the only visible reminders of the historic battle.

Fidel Castro had ordered defences like these to be built at key points throughout the island - an invasion was widely expected, but no-one had any idea where it was going to land.

The American plan was to sneak ashore virtually unopposed, secure the area, take the airfield and fly in a government-in-exile who would then call for direct US support.

 

Domingo Rodriguez
Domingo Rodriguez believes the attempted invasion was a turning point for Cuba

 

At the same time, they were relying on a mass uprising in Cuba against the revolutionaries.

It could not have gone more wrong: when an advance frogman lit a beacon to show the exiles where to land, it also alerted the Cuban militia to their presence.

Local fisherman Gregorio Moreira, who still lives in the same house beside the beach, was one of the first to raise the alarm.

"I went out of the house and saw a flare, like a candle, in the sky. So I headed to the trench with my father and my brothers," 74-year-old Mr Moreira recalls.

He was joined on the beach by one of his neighbours, another fisherman, Domingo Rodriguez.

"We thought, 'This is the invasion boys, be careful! They are trying to invade.'

"We had 11 rifles between us and at about 0400 they started the landing so we opened fire."

 

Michael Voss revisits the site of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and meets some of those who remember what happened on 16 April 1961

 

Reinforcements, including Cuban air force planes, quickly arrived.

The exiles had some air support, but US President John F Kennedy was determined to keep the US involvement a secret and as the initiative turned against the invading force, he backed away from providing further critically needed air cover.

Cuba map

At the same time, Fidel Castro took personal charge of the operation, and within only three days the battle was over.

Mr Rodriguez is now 70 years old and losing his eyesight but his memories are as clear as ever.

"It was like a great school for the Cuban people, we finally learnt that we don't have to be afraid of the enemy," he said.

"As Fidel said afterwards, the people of Latin America have become a little freer."

More than 1,000 of the anti-Castro fighters, known as Brigade 2506, were taken prisoner.

About a year-and-a-half later, they were sent back to Miami in exchange for $50m worth of food and medicine.

'Yankee defeat'

There is a small museum in Playa Giron.

In the forecourt are two of Fidel Castro's tanks, along with a British-built Sea Fury fighter bomber, one of the Cuban air force planes used against the invaders.


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

The secret to the Cuban victory was the ideal for which we were fighting”

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The museum's director, Barbara Sierra, says the exhibits are testimony to the "first great defeat of Yankee Imperialism" in the Latin America.

The US, she believes, completely underestimated the degree of support for Fidel Castro's revolution inside Cuba.

"The secret to the Cuban victory was the ideal for which we were fighting. Our lives were very difficult before the revolution. That's why everyone came here to fight."

Among the visitors to the museum when I visited was American author Peter Kornbluh, who has written extensively on the Bay of Pigs, drawing heavily on declassified CIA documents.

Gregorio Moreira
Gregorio Moreira still lives by the beach where the US-backed troops landed

 

He describes the Bay of Pigs as a "perfect failure" for the US, which the rest of the world quickly realised was behind the operation.

"It was supposed to rid the hemisphere of a potential Soviet base, but it pushed Fidel Castro into the waiting arms of the Soviet Union. It was meant to undermine his revolution but it truly helped him to consolidate it."

Half a century after the failed invasion, this Caribbean island remains the only communist-run country in the Western hemisphere.

Despite countless attempts by the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro, it was ill health which finally forced him to hand over power in 2006 - to his brother, Raul.

It is no coincidence that the authorities have chosen this weekend to hold the long-delayed Communist Party Congress, which will kick off with a military parade through Revolution Square.

With the US trade embargo still in place, Cuba insists that it remains in a state of siege.

While it is set to ratify a series of market reforms, the Congress is also set to reaffirm the "socialist character of the revolution".

Political change remains no nearer now than it did following Cuba's victory at the Bay of Pigs.