LIFESTYLE

Tourists flock to Fidel Castro's birthplace in Cuba

By Fox News
Published | Updated

This June 10, 2016 photo shows the home-turned-museum where Fidel and Raul Castro grew up in Biran, Cuba. Their father Angel planted and sold sugarcane and timber as well as raised cattle here, deep in the lush green hill country of Holguin province in eastern Cuba. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 10, 2016 photo, a guide shows tourists and visiting soldiers the bedroom that was shared by Fidel Castro and his brothers at the home-turned-museum where the Castro brothers grew up in Biran, Cuba. Museum director Lazaro Castro, no relation to Fidel, said 27,800 people visited the often-sweltering site in 2015, two-thirds Cubans, and 31,000 so far this year, with the same mix of foreigners and Cubans. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 14, 2016 photo, a farmer carrying grass to feed his animals steers his horse-drawn cart past a welcome sign featuring brothers Fidel and Raul Castro, at the entrance of Biran where the Castro's were born in eastern Cuba. Many of the area's young people have migrated to Cuban cities or overseas, leaving parents and grandparents working the land. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 10, 2016 photo, a soldier takes photos at the home-turned-museum of Fidel Castro and his brother, President Raul Castro, where they grew up in Biran, Cuba. A large portrait of Fidel's parents, Angel Castro and Lina Ruz hangs behind her. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 11, 2016 photo, a message that reads in Spanish "It's not the best but it's mine" adorns a horse-drawn wagon with men selling sea-caught fish as they ride along the coastline near Gibara in Cuba's Holguin province. Amid the rise in visitors to the region where Fidel Castro was born, which includes the provincial capital of Holguin, locals farm, raise livestock and travel the area's dirt roads by bicycle and horse cart. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 11, 2016 photo, men commute on a motorcycle with sidecar, driving past wind turbines along the way in Gibara, in Cuba's Holguin province where Fidel Castro was born and grew up. "There is no cult of personality around any living revolutionary in the form of statues, official photographs or the names of streets or institutions," Castro said in his 2003 May Day speech. "The leaders of this country are human beings, not gods." (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

This June 10, 2016 photo shows a family photograph of the Castro brothers, from left, Fidel, Raul and Ramon, on the wall of the room they shared as children in Biran, Cuba. Since 2002, the site has been a museum, and it is gaining increasing attention in the run-up to Fidel Castro's 90th birthday on Aug. 13. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 10, 2016 photo, government contracted driver Ricardo Reidy washes a Soviet-made car in the Biran River near the home-turned-museum where Fidel Castro and his brother, President Raul Castro, were born in Biran, Cuba. Since 2002, the site has been a museum, and it is gaining increasing attention in the run-up to Fidel Castro's 90th birthday on Aug. 13. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 15, 2016 photo, a nurse shades herself with an umbrella as she walks home after work with a friend near the home-turned-museum where Fidel Castro and his brother, president Raul Castro, were born in Biran, Cuba. Fidel Castro hasn't visited Biran since his childhood property was restored and quietly opened to the public in November 2002. Even the name of the place, "The Biran Historic Site," makes no mention of Castro, who is among the most famous Latin American figures of the 20th century. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 12, 2016 photo, a youth does a back flip from an overpass into the Mayari River as he and friends spend their Sunday afternoon in the village of Mayari, in Cuba's Holguin province where Fidel Castro grew up. Alcides Leyva, who directs the Castro homestead, said the former leader had signed plans to flood the property under a reservoir in the 1960s until his secretary, Celia Sanchez, intervened to save it. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 15, 2016 photo, Yosbani Rodriguez bikes his son Meiler and daughter Mayla to school before work in Biran, Cuba. Rodriguez works as the historian at the nearby home-turned-museum where Fidel Castro and his brother, President Raul Castro, grew up. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 11, 2016 photo, a man carries a house door on the passenger side of a bicycle taxi in Holguin, Cuba, the region where Fidel Castro and his brother President Raul Castro were born and grew up. Fidel Castro has written of happy memories of his countryside childhood, but he has shown little attachment to the place itself. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 15, 2016 photo, four-year-old Kelvin Lopez Quintana gets an early morning piggyback ride to school from his father, along the road where the childhood home-turned-museum of Fidel Castro and his brother, President Raul Castro, is located Biran, Cuba. Fidel Castro spent only his early childhood living at his family's property in Biran before he was sent to boarding school in Santiago, though he often returned for vacations. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)

In this June 10, 2016 photo, a soldier uses a fan to keep cool as she takes a guided tour, with her colleagues from the Revolutionary Armed Forces, of the home-turned-museum where Fidel Castro and his brother, President Raul Castro, grew up in Biran, Cuba. The Castro farm was the first to be expropriated under Cuba's move toward collectivized agriculture. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribu)