The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Havana

In the palace of a fallen dictator, the grade-school kids in their red Communist Pioneer bandanas are getting their mandatory introduction to the glories of the revolution. Clattering from one display case to the next, they gaze wide-eyed at an antique gun, a fighter's bloodied shirt, the engine of a downed U.S. spy plane.

Moving on, they stare at the yacht named Granma that carried Fidel Castro back from exile to launch his guerrilla war, and the combat boots his brother-successor wore as a ponytailed 27-year-old rebel.

The palace of Fulgencio Batista, the ruler whom Castro overthrew, is now the Museum of the Revolution, and these 6- and 7-year-olds are the heirs to a communist government about to turn 50 - a system that may be softening at the edges but appears determined to crush any threat to its grip on power, lest it crumble like its one-time godfather, the Soviet Union.

Since Castro declared victory on New Year's Day, 1959, the day after Batista fled the country, his rule has prevailed through 10 U.S. presidents, the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion, a world-shaking missile crisis, the U.S. embargo, the Soviet collapse and the onslaught of globalization. Now 82, he is ailing and out of sight but still the head of the Communist Party of Cuba. Raul Castro, his successor as president, is taking baby steps toward change and vowing to fend off any challenge to his brother's legacy.

But today, between the extremes of enforced communist dogma and the die-hards of the Cuban diaspora still dreaming of bringing down the Castro regime, other faces of Cuba are emerging from deep underground: rappers, gays, dissident bloggers, installers of pirate satellite dishes, teenagers with tattoos and pierced belly buttons, and the women who call themselves Las Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White.

Each Sunday, these women deliver a muted counterpart to the official cry of "Viva Fidel! Viva la revolucion!" by marching down Quinta Avenida, a busy Havana thoroughfare, each dressed in white and carrying a gladiola, silently demanding the release of their husbands from political imprisonment.

Dissidents have a new way to reach the outside world - blogging. Yoani Sanchez, 33, gets her message out by dressing like a tourist and slipping into a hotel with Web access for foreigners. She works quickly at a computer terminal and gets out before someone notices her.