This modernist house is now a small museum commemorating the colonial histories of Mexico and Cuba and their significance to Fidel Castro's ill-fated uprising of 1956. Murals and photos of Castro and Che Guevara abound and there's a tiny model of the revolutionary yacht, Granma. To get here, take a lancha (M$5) across the river from the quay near the ADO bus station.
On November 25, 1956, the errant lawyer-turned-revolutionary, Fidel Castro, set sail from the Río Tuxpan with 82 poorly equipped soldiers, including Che Guevera and Castro's brother Raúl, to start an uprising in Cuba. The sailing was made possible thanks to an encounter in Mexico City between Castro and Antonio del Conde Pontones (aka ‘El Cuate’). On meeting Castro for the first time, Pontones, a legal arms dealer, was immediately taken by the Cuban’s strong personality and agreed to help him obtain guns and a boat. To smooth the process, he bought a house on the south side of the Río Tuxpan, where he moored the boat and allowed Fidel to meet in secret. Today that house is the Museo de la Amistad México-Cuba.
