1957: New Year's Eve bombs terrorize Havana

Cuba History Timeline Events
January 1, 1957
The revolutionaries bring in the New Year with a savage escalation of urban terror, victimizing ordinary citizens and businesses. Several department stores were extensively damaged by eighteen bombs that revolutionary terrorists detonated in Havana in one night night. The New York Times reported two young women were seriously injured when a bomb exploded at the Tropicana night club at New Year's Eve festivities. The right arm of one was so badly shattered that it had to be amputated.

And the terror wave extended to the countryside. As Time reported the first week of 1957:
"Saboteurs were at work the length of the sugar-rich island. Buses were set on fire, power and telephone lines cut, store windows smashed, cars bombed, bridges burned. A train was derailed, and a railroad station burned down. In the Guantanamo power station, two bombs went off and plunged the big adjoining U.S. Navy base into darkness."

That Time article devoted most of its attention to the impact on Batista of the terrorism and the Ortodoxo and Auténtico criticism from a civil liberties viewpoint of Batista’s jailing and suspected killing of terrorists (acknowledging that some of these deaths may have been inflicted by the terrorists on one another).

based on Manuel Márquez-Sterling's Cuba 1952-1959 and
Cuba 1952-1959 Interactive Timeline