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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Ed Augustin in Santa Cruz de los Pinos

Cuban missile crisis, 60 years on: what the Russians left behind

The remains of the bunker used to store nuclear warheads in Santa Cruz de los Pinos.
The remains of the bunker used to store nuclear warheads in Santa Cruz de los Pinos. Photograph: Ed Augustin

Julio Loace was 24 when, in the summer of 1962, soldiers from Havana turned up at his sleepy rural village to say he and his family had to leave the plot of land where they reared cows and planted black beans. A house would be built for them, he was told, beyond a new perimeter.

Soon after, lorries hauling ominous objects as long as trees drove through his village under cover of darkness. The ground trembled under their weight.

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