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el palacio de las fritas on eighth street?

No el palacio de los Jugos

Oddly enough, this building was known as el palacio but no of fritas or jugos.

Can you guess?

United Fruit?

Looks like a partial view of El Colegio Belen.

Yes indeed, that's the front entrance of Colegio de Belen, in Marianao, next to the Tropicana. From one of the baseball fields you could see part of Tropicana. Late at night, those of us who were attending Belen's boarding school could hear Celia Cruz, Night King Cole and other performers playing at Tropicana when we were already in our rooms and everyone was supposed to be quiet. Belen also had a school on campus for poor children who could not afford to pay the regular school.
You can see another photo of the whole school building here:
http://www.therealcuba.com/COLEGIODEBELEN.jpg

Something else that I forgot, that round thing on the roof at the right was the Observatorio Meteorologico del Colegio de Belen, where Father Goberna used to give all the hurricane and storms forecasts. He was also a great Math teacher. He was forced to leave Cuba in 1961. He died in Bolivia in 1985

Sorry for the typo, I should have said Nat King Cole :(

Now that I know what it is named I have to say that I love "El Palacio de Los Jugos" en la calle Ocho way west near Krome. Great Cuban hillbilly food.

Boy real Cuba you are old ! LOL

Fidel Castro turned his former high school into a military institute. Here is a more recent photo:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/fidel/belen.gif

According to the book "Tropicana Nights', Nat King Cole so loved Cuba he wanted to buy a house there. Martin Fox, the owner of the Tropicana talked him out of it in 1958 given the revolution. This was also confrirmed in a recent PBS biography of Nat Cole. He was a big hit at the Tropicana. He would phonetically sing some of his songs in Spanish although he didn't know the language.

Thanks to the Real Cuba. I wondered what happened when a boarding school was located next to one of the world's great open air night clubs.

And of course Belen was closed by one of its most infamous students..fidel castro.

In the PBS bio of castro there is a picture of the little shit standing in uniform in the courtyard.

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