In 1960, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir visited Cuba during, as Sartre wrote, the 'honeymoon of the revolution'. Military strongman Fulgencio Batistaˇs regime had fallen to Fidel Castroˇs guerilla army and the whole country was alight with revolutionary zeal. When the couple returned to Paris, Sartre wrote numerous articles extolling the revolution. De Beauvoir, who was equally impressed, wrote, 'For the first time in our lives, we were witnessing happiness that had been attained by violence'. De Beauvoir and Sartre would ultimately denounce Castro in an open letter that criticized him for the arrest of Cuban poet Herberto Padillo.