US-CUBA-POLITICS-SOCIAL-HISTORY-REVOLUTION-60TH ANNIVERSARY

Bay of Pigs Veterans Association President Johnny López de la Cruz poses at the Brigade 2506 Museum in Little Havana, Miami, on December 11, 2018. - Underpinning Miami, Florida, is sixty years of Castroism in Cuba: the island's diaspora has transformed the city into a towering skyline, where smells of fried "croquetas" and sounds of Spanish fill the air. Just 367 kilometers apart, at the turn of the 20th century Havana and Miami were already closely connected by trade and tourism. But 1959, upon the triumph of Fidel Castro's revolution, saw an end to that -- and the Cuban diaspora was born. "We were losing everything our family had worked for for years, we couldn't accept it," said 78-year-old Johnny Lopez de la Cruz, a member of the 2506 Brigade, a group of CIA-sponsored Cuban exiles who tried to invade Cuba's Bay of Pigs in 1961. (Photo by Leila MACOR / AFP) (Photo credit should read LEILA MACOR/AFP via Getty Images)