Sixteen years ago today the Cuban people came as close as they had been in a long time to finally ridding themselves of the tyrannical Castro dictatorship. What started as a shoving match on Havana's famed Malecón on August 5, 1994, quickly escalated into a riot with thousands of Cubans streaming onto the seaside boulevard and chanting for freedom.

The situation deteriorated with every second that passed, and the regime's state security soon found themselves losing control of the crowd. There was no other choice but to use deadly force and they began beating and arresting protesters they could safely get their hands on, and shooting those they could not. Wounded protesters began arriving at the hospitals with bullet holes in their buttocks and eyes missing from their sockets, and fearing the mayhem would spread, civilian doctors were sent home and military doctors were brought in to treat the wounded.

With no help from the outside, the protest was finally quelled by the regime's use of sheer force and violence. It was then, when things had been calmed, that Fidel Castro showed up at the Malecon and entered at a point his security detail had already secured.

Journalist would go on to report how Fidel fearlessly faced down the throngs of protesters and brought calm back to the seaside boulevard, ignoring his cowardly appearance long after the crowd had been subdued. But tales of cowards don't sell newspapers or magazines, and just like 36 years earlier when the media had taken a gutless criminal and made him into a courageous revolutionary, on August 5, 1994, they took a cowardly dictator and made him into a fearless leader.

The real story was how close the Cuban people came to freedom that day. The media, however, was more interested in telling the world how far the Cuban people were from it.

Zoé Valdés lived through this day in Havana, and she has an excellent post on El Maleconzo that is today's must read.