The image was originally shot for Life Magazine in Cuba on 20th January 1961. It shows thousands of Cuban militia men, guns aloft in a salute to Fidel Castro, at the Presidential Palace in Havana. For almost three weeks, Havana had bristled with guns as 400,000 militia men left their day jobs to take up battle stations for an expected invasion backed by the USA. Castro called off the alert at this rally, 12 weeks before the Bay of Pigs invasion.
