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IN THE early hours of January 1st 1959, as New Year parties were in full swing in an otherwise unnaturally quiet Havana, Fulgencio Batista stole away. He flew from Camp Columbia, the city’s main military base, to exile in the Dominican Republic with an entourage of relatives and cronies. The dictator’s flight meant that just 25 months after landing with 81 men, all but a dozen of whom were immediately killed or captured, Fidel Castro, a lawyer and former student leader, had led his guerrilla force to an improbable triumph against Batista’s American-backed army. The next day Mr Castro spoke to a jubilant multitude, many dressed in the red and black colours of his July 26th Movement, in the main square of Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second city. “The revolution begins now,” he proclaimed, adding: “This time, luckily for Cuba, the revolution will truly come into being. It will not be like 1895, when the North Americans came and took over…For the first time the republic will really be entirely free.”