Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in a Prison Cell in Mexico City, 1956 — Their First Photo Together

A young Cuban Marxist revolutionary, Fidel Castro (left), and Argentine Marxist revolutionary, Che Guevara (right), in Miguel Schultz Jail in Mexico City in June-July 1956. This photograph may be the first one showing Castro and Guevara together.

After Fidel Castro’s failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in Cuba in 1953, he was imprisoned and later released under amnesty in 1955. Castro then fled to Mexico, which had become a haven for Latin American revolutionaries. There, he began organizing a new expedition to overthrow Fulgencio Batista, the U.S.-backed dictator of Cuba.

It was in Mexico City in 1955 that Castro met Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine doctor and Marxist who had been traveling across Latin America. The two men quickly bonded over their shared anti-imperialist ideals and revolutionary goals. Guevara soon joined Castro’s group — the 26th of July Movement — as its physician and one of its most passionate fighters.

In June 1956, Mexican authorities raided a farmhouse in the town of Santa Rosa, near Mexico City, where Castro’s group was training and stockpiling weapons for their planned invasion of Cuba. The authorities arrested Fidel and Raúl Castro, Che Guevara, and several other Cuban exiles.

The group was charged with violating Mexico’s neutrality laws and possessing illegal weapons. They were held for several weeks in Miguel Schultz Prison (also called Palacio de Lecumberri in Mexico City). During their imprisonment, Che and Fidel shared a cell — this is the period captured in a few surviving photographs and accounts that describe their camaraderie and determination.

Thanks to lobbying and financial help from sympathetic contacts, notably Mexican politician Carlos Prío Socarrás (a former Cuban president in exile), the men were released after about a month in prison.

Once freed, they resumed preparations for their invasion. By late November 1956, they secretly boarded the yacht Granma with 82 fighters and sailed from Tuxpan, Mexico, to Cuba. Although the landing was disastrous, only a dozen men survived the initial ambush, it marked the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, which would triumph in 1959.

Vintage Centro Universitario México Sport Uniforms Anyone?

Vintage group photos of Centro Universitario México basketball teams from the 1980s, when they abbreviated all over their sports uniforms:

The Centro Universitario de México (CUM) in the 1980s was an influential educational institution in Mexico City, known for its commitment to high-quality education and emphasis on comprehensive student development. Founded in 1954, the school aimed to prepare students academically, socially, and morally, with a strong foundation in values.

CUM was recognized for its rigorous academic programs that prepared students for higher education. The institution offered various levels of education, from elementary to high school (primaria to preparatoria), and was known for fostering critical thinking and academic discipline.

The 1980s saw an emphasis on well-rounded education, and CUM encouraged participation in arts, sciences, and sports. Students were often involved in academic competitions, cultural events, and sports tournaments.

The school’s basketball team, as well as teams for other sports like soccer and volleyball, were highly active in interscholastic leagues. CUM’s basketball team, in particular, played a significant role in regional tournaments and fostered a sense of school pride.

These activities not only strengthened the athletic skills of students but also helped them develop teamwork and leadership qualities.

30 Vintage Photographs Capture Life Inside the Black Palace Prison in Mexico, 1950

The Palacio de Lecumberri, also called the Black Palace, was known as a place from which it was impossible to escape. Legend has it that the only person who’d ever successfully done so was Pancho Villa, but after two years at Lecumberri, with the help of his wife, managed to do just that.

Palacio de Lecumberri is located at the North East border of Mexico City’s Federal District. The building was used as a prison from 1900–1976, and as the Country’s National Archive from 1980 onwards.

In 1950, the number of incarcerated Americans was around one-fifth of today’s levels. Prison is not designed to be pleasant, but the Black Palace was so dangerous, dirty and degraded as to inspire LIFE to describe it “an animal cage for great and petty criminals who … murdered each other in knife brawls and lived in depravity in overcrowded cells.”

Following a crime wave in 1949, the prison administration brought in a new warden to oversee the 4,000 inmates, who were living in a facility built for half that number. Colonel Francisco Linares introduced a militaristic management style while maintaining some of the prison’s unusual freedoms: City postmen brought letters directly to cells, wealthier inmates could employ other inmates as servants and conjugal visits were permitted—for male inmates only—with the intention of preventing homosexual activity.

As for the female prisoners, who made up 10% of the population and three dozen of whom were mothers, many found better nutrition and education within the prison’s walls than in their impoverished lives outside of prison.

Linares openly eschewed penal pedagogy, resorting to special measures for what he deemed a special situation. “We can’t run an Alcatraz, a Leavenworth or a Sing Sing here,” he explained. “We have to run this place a la Mexicana.”

See more»

25 Intimate Pictures of Frida Kahlo at Her Home

During her lifetime, Frida Kahlo intended her home to be turned posthumously into a museum. The Blue House, now one of Mexico’s most beloved cultural landmarks, is the place where Kahlo was born, lived, and died. Famously painted cobalt blue inside and out, La Casa Azul was described by Kahlo as her “intimate universe”. 

These pictures give us an intimate glimpse of Kahlo at her home, where she suffered miscarriages, got strapped into corsets that kept her upright after polio and a tram accident at 18 broke her spine in three places, ordered a pair of red boots decorated with bells so her prosthetic leg could match her good foot.

“She was a formidable being, but in great distress … not only because of the physical pain due to her terrible tram accident but because she was a deeply conflicted being.” wrote Rauda Jamis, the author of a biography of Kahlo.  “She loved men, but did not turn away from women. She would shower you with gifts large and small, ranging from a charm, a tiny brass ex-voto, or a good luck stone to pre-Columbian pottery, as well as the heavy jewelry that she was crazy about … One day she told me: I don’t want to live a long time. I am really suffering too much.”

Take a look at Kahlo in her house through these 25 stunning pictures:

Kahlo smoking at Casa Azul, 1930.

Kahlo in Rivera Living Room with Figure of Judas, ca. 1940. (Bernard Silberstein)

Kahlo photograph by Bernard Silberstein

Kahlo photograph by Bernard Silberstein

Kahlo photograph by Bernard Silberstein

See more»

Monkeys, Dogs and Deer: Vintage Portraits of Frida Kahlo Posing With Her Beloved Pets at Home

Why was the Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo, obsessed with monkeys – not to mention parrots, pre-Hispanic dogs and deer? Eight of the large number of self-portraits she painted in her short life (55 out of 181 paintings) feature spider monkeys.

Born to an Oaxacan mother and a German father, she grew up in a free-spirited yet strongly political environment and began taking art lessons at a very young age. During her childhood, she had contracted polio which left one of her legs thinner than the other. Shortly after her recovery, she had been involved in a nearly fatal car accident which had a lasting impact on her overall health and wellbeing. Because of her poor physical condition, Kahlo was never able to mother her own children. Feeling lonely and depressed, Kahlo filled her home (known as ‘Casa Azul’ located in the Coyocán neighborhood of Mexico City) with a menagerie of animals that included spider monkeys, cats, birds, and indigenous hairless dogs called Xoloitzcuintli. Recognizing her pets as soulful and insightful creatures, she frequently portrayed them ― notably her monkeys Fulang Chang and Caimito de Guayabal, and her deer Granizo ― throughout her oeuvre. 

Infatuated with their Mesoamerican roots, both Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera collected important artifacts from these early civilizations. This had extended to Kahlo’s collection of pets, many of which were representative of Aztec and Mayan cultures. Monkeys, for example, were highly revered by the Aztecs as deities of fertility. In a way, it can be said that Kahlo’s fluid sexuality (Kahlo was known to be a philanderer, having had multiple affairs with both men and women) resonated with that of her pet monkeys due to their rambunctious and unapologetically sexual nature, which might also explain why she had depicted them as her equals. The extremely intelligent Xoloitzcuintli dogs she kept were also very important for the Aztecs, as they were representative of the underworld. If not eaten for special sacrificial ceremonies, the dogs were buried along with their owners to safeguard their souls after death.

These animals played both a significant role in her life as they did in a number of her works, helping her to effectively tell her stories.

See more»

Gay Men Pose for a Photo While Being Detained at a Police Station in Mexico City, 1935

A set of pictures of Mexicans, purportedly arrested for homosexuality in 1935. It belongs to the collection of the National Photo Library of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico.

Very little is known about the detainees themselves, except these pictures come from Lecumberri prison in Mexico City.

Up until 1976, gay men were imprisoned in the prison ward J, or Jota. Joto(s) is still a common homophobic slur in Mexico.

Luis Arturo Salmerón, in his article ‘Pride Behind Bars’, covered the photos: “The detainees smile, posed to scandalize the same people who took them prisoner; they look proud before the cameras of the society that represses them.

“Why do they do it? I want to believe – and the images seem to confirm it – that it is their way of resisting, of challenging the society that oppresses them and encloses them, but, as their faces shout at us from the distance of the years, they can not change them.

“They are shouting that there they are, that they can lock them up or kill them, but they will not leave, that they will fight so that society can finally be inclusive and that sexual diversity is not persecuted as a crime.

“We do not know their names, but we can remember their challenging faces as a brief tribute to the thousands of victims of a struggle that in Mexico has made some progress, although it still has a long way to go.”

Beautiful Vintage Black and White Photos of Mexico in 1952

Born in 1905 in Seattle and raised in San Francisco, Earl Leaf spent many years finding his calling.  By 1936 he was the North China manager of the United Press Associations covering the Sino-Japanese war. Before that he was a cowboy, sailor, prospector, dude rancher, actor, bookkeeper, Salvation Army cadet, and many more. After the war Earl decided that he would be both a photographer and a journalist and spent time in New York shooting the city and taking assignments to shoot artists like Martha.

By 1949 Earl had picked up and moved back to the West Coast arriving in Hollywood in the summer of that year. By the Fall he had his first Hollywood celebrity session shooting the actress Cleo Moore at home. Press agents took notice and soon he was shooting up-and-coming stars. By the early 1950s Earl was well established on the scene shooting both candid sessions (never in a studio) and out on the town hobnobbing with the cream of Hollywood like Bogart and Bacall, Brando, etc. He was welcome everywhere from the Oscars to Ciro’s the Mocambo and the Cocoanut Grove.

He slowed down in the ’70s and by 1980 at the age of 75 he was dead. The complete overview of the essay about his life and career from Jonathan H, a Getty Image archive editor who used to work with Earl, can be found here.

Below are 25 photographs depicted local life in Mexico taken by Earl during his trip to the country in 1952:

Local women wear native dresses in Tehuantepec.

Couples dance in traditional dress in Tehuantepec.

Local women carries items on her head from the local market in Tehuantepec.

A rancher rides his horse on a ranch in Michoacan.

Little boys sit on the fence at a ranch in Michoacan.

See more»

Haunting Photos From Abandoned Island of the Dolls in Mexico City

Dolls can be creepy for a number of reasons, the lifeless eyes, the knowing smile, or the outstretched limbs that seem to be calling out to you. But nothing is creepier than the Island of the Dolls (La Isla de las Munecas), located in the channels of Xochimilco, 17 miles south of Mexico City, Mexico.

The Island of the Dolls, originally owned by Don Julian Santana Barrera, is full of dolls hanging from trees and buildings covered with cobwebs and insects. The place was named during the 1950s when the owner began to hang them as protection against evil spirits.

According to legend, a young girl drowned entangled among the lilies of the canal and her body was found on the banks of the Santampa chinampas. Don Julian began to experience inexplicable situations so, terrified, placed dolls that he found in the garbage or in the canals of Cuemanco with the idea that they would scare the soul of the young girl who would cry out “I want my doll.” He also found a doll floating nearby and, assuming it belonged to the deceased girl, hung it from a tree as a sign of respect.

Many stories have been associated with the island over the years. A popular tale was that Don Julian had gone mad and believed the dolls to be real children who he pulled from the canal and tried to revive. But the truth, as told by his family members, is that Don Julian simply believed the island was haunted by the spirit of the little girl. For reasons only known to Don Julian himself, he believed that he could make the dead girl happy and keep evil at bay by hanging discarded dolls in all of the island’s trees.

The story took a particularly sinister turn in 2001 when Don Julian drowned in the canal just like the little girl. Many people said that the dolls, inhabited by tortured spirits, conspired to murder the old man. Others believe that Don Julian’s death was an accident and that since his passing, the dolls have taken over his role as the island’s caretaker.

Although the island did not receive much tourist attention during Don Julian’s lifetime, it has become a well-known attraction since then. International television crews have filmed there several times, including one show that claimed to find proof the island is haunted.

Getting to the island is a long and difficult task, but walking among the creepy dolls is an experience like no other. Most, if not all, of these dolls were rejected by their previous owners for various reasons. Severed limbs and body-less heads hang side-by-side with whole, sun-bleached dolls. Mold covers some, while others are missing nearly all of their artificial hair. Spiders and insects have taken up residence in the hollow parts of most of the dolls.

Although Don Julian’s sentiment was innocent and admirable, the doll graveyard he created is undeniably creepy. Soulless eyes follow visitors as they move around the small island (which is actually a chinampa, or artificial floating garden), and many swear that they can hear the dolls whispering to them. This labor of love (or fear, as it were) has resulted in an accidental sensation amongst those who admire the bizarre and twisted side of tourism.

See more»

Vibrant Vintage Photos of Mexico in 1968

In advance of the Summer Olympic Games which would take place in Mexico City, making it the first Games to be staged in Latin America and hosted by a developing country, LIFE photographer John Dominis came and offered an intimate look at the people, their life and their rich culture. Take a look at the country through 18 vibrant photographs taken by Dominis during his stay below:

Men wearing masks performing.

School children playing on Olympic logo Mexico 68.

16-year-old Olympic Stadium being refurbished including a colored apron which directs crowds to the entrances.

A child carrying bouquet on her way to the fiesta.

Park dancers in flurry of action.

See more»

Beautiful Black and White Portraits of Frida Kahlo Taken by Sylvia Salmi in 1944

Sylvia Ester Salmi (1909-1977) was a prominent and highly respected American photographer. During the 1930s and 1940s, she took portraits of numerous great artists and intellectuals of the time, including Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and, in Mexico, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco and Leon Trotsky.

In 1964, following the death of her second husband, Salmi embarked on an eight-year tour of the world before settling in Ajijic in about 1972. Sylvia Salmi passed away in January 1977 at the age of 67.

Below are some iconic photographs of Frida Kahlo taken by Sylvia Salmi in Mexico, 1944.

See more»

Five Shots of a Woman Braving the Streets of Mexico City, circa 1950

A women being watched and harassed in Mexico City, Mexico in 1950. There are 5 pictures of her being watched by men everywhere she went.

(Note: She has been identified as Mexican movie and television actress Maty Huitrón.)

(Photos by Nacho López)