History
The province was named after the yacht Granma, used by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro to land in Cuba with 82 guerrillas in 1956; until 1976 it was part of the larger "Oriente Province". The American who sold them the secondhand yacht in Mexico apparently had named it "Granma" ("Granma", more usually "Grandma", is an affectionate term for a grandmother) after his grandmother and so the name of this vessel became an icon for Cuban communism.
The province is full of reminders of the Cuban Revolution, and the Cuban Wars of Independence, plaques in the mountain commemorating the 1959 struggle against Fulgencio Batista. Also unmarked, although there are archaeological digs, are the sites of several palenques, the fortified hamlets of escaped slaves. In 2005 Hurricane Dennis destroyed the site of Castro's headquarters at La Plata. There are numerous abandoned gold, silver, and manganese mine sites.
Read more about this topic: Granma Province
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