Heat Summary: Heat is about Michael Arroyo, who immigrates to the Bronx, New York City with his Brother Carlos, and his dad. Michael is a great pitcher; unfortunately too good to be true. He had stopped a purse thief by hitting him with his baseball while practicing but when his team goes against another team; he makes an enemy with a kid named Justin. Justin the Jerk is the coach's son on the other team, and after he sees how good of a player Michael is and when Michael beats him in a baseball game, he tells his dad, who talks with other coaches who have played against Michael in Little League, and send in a complaint about him, because not too long ago, another boy from New York City lied about his age, and had been playing against kids in a different level than him. To prove that he is 12, Michael must produce his birth certificate, which is somewhere in Havana, Cuba. What with his dad having died a year ago, and Carlos struggling to pay the house bills, and yet attempting to hide the death of their father from authorities so him and Carlos won’t have to be separated, this is too much. While he is practicing baseball with his friend Manny for when he can get back into Little League, Michael meets a girl, who turns out to be the New York Yankees star, his idol;"El Grande’s" daughter. He finds this out by watching TV. He finds out later on in the story that Carlos had been selling stuff illegally just to pay the house bills and was arrested by the police. Then he starts thinking about people other than himself. He thinks about the previous mean things he said to El Grande's daughter, Ellie and decides just to do the best with what he has for now and to take care of his friends the best he can. In the end, while he is coaching the team game that will get them into the finals and World Series, El Grande runs up to him and gives him his birth certificate. Manny had been talking to Ellie who told her dad about Michael. El Grande knew some people back in Havana who found Michael's birth certificate. The story ends well with Michael Arroyo getting into the championships and finally getting to see the inside of Yankee Stadium which he'd always lived in the shadow of and achieves his worldwide dream and his father’s dream of going to the Little League World Series.

Cuba

Geography of Cuba

The largest island of the West Indies group (equal in area to Pennsylvania), Cuba is also the westernmost country, just west of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and 90 mi (145 km) south of Key West, Fla., at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico. The island is mountainous in the southeast and south-central area (Sierra Maestra). It is flat or rolling elsewhere. Cuba also includes numerous smaller islands, islets, and cays.

Geography of Cuba cont…

Arawak (or Taino) Indians inhabited Cuba when Columbus landed on the island in 1492. They died from diseases brought by sailors and settlers. By 1511, Spaniards under Diego Velásquez had established settlements. Havana's superb harbor made it a common transit point to and from Spain.

In the early 1800s, Cuba's sugarcane industry boomed, requiring massive numbers of black slaves. A simmering independence movement turned into open warfare from 1867 to 1878. Slavery was abolished in 1886. In 1895, the poet José Marti led the struggle that finally ended Spanish rule, thanks largely to U.S. intervention in 1898 after the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor.

Geography of Cuba cont… again

An 1899 treaty made Cuba an independent republic under U.S. protection. The U.S. occupation, which ended in 1902, suppressed yellow fever and brought large American investments. The 1901 Platt Amendment allowed the U.S. to intervene in Cuba's affairs, which it did four times from 1906 to 1920. Cuba terminated the amendment in 1934.

In 1933, a group of army officers, including army sergeant Fulgencio Batista, overthrew President Gerardo Machado. Batista became president in 1940, running a corrupt police state.

In 1956, Fidel Castro Ruz launched a revolution from his camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Castro's brother Raul and Ernesto (Ché) Guevara, an Argentine physician, were his top lieutenants. Many anti-Batista landowners supported the rebels. The U.S. ended military aid to Cuba in 1958, and on New Year's Day 1959, Batista fled into exile and Castro took over the government.

Fidel Castro

Castro• Born Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz on August 13, 1926

although there are some discrepancies about the year he was born (some say he was born a year later). He was born near Birán in Cuba's eastern Oriente province. Fidel Castro was the third of six children: two brothers, Raul and Ramon, and four sisters, Antelita, Juanita, Emma, and Augustina. His father, Angel, was a wealthy sugar plantation owner originally from Spain. His mother, Lina Ruz Gonzalez, had been a maid to Angel's first wife, Maria Luisa Argota, at the time of Fidel's birth. By the time Fidel was 15, his father dissolved his first marriage and wed Fidel's mother. At 17, Fidel was formally recognized by his father and his name was changed from Ruz to Castro. Educated in private Jesuit boarding schools, Castro grew up in wealthy circumstances amid the poverty of Cuba's people. He was intellectually gifted but more interested in sports than studies. He attended El Colegio de Belen and pitched for the school's baseball team. After his graduation in late 1945, Castro entered law school at the University of Havana and became immersed in the political climate of Cuban nationalism, anti-imperialism, and socialism.

• In 1947, Castro became increasingly passionate about social justice. He traveled to the Dominican Republic to join an expedition attempting the overthrow of the dictator Rafael Trujillo. The coup failed before it got started, but the incident didn't dampen Castro's passion for reform.

The End