Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Cuban Revolution Behind-the-Scenes 20240714

Inglorious career as a film extra. Based in the east village of manhattan, he makes it a point to continue exploring in iceland, tiara dell fuego, beijing, tasmania and zanzibar to name a few. Tonys travel stories have been published in magazines like the New York Times and smithsonian magazinelated int languages. Having been selected seven times for the best American Travel writing series. He is also a regular television guest on the History Channel where hes spoken about everything from the crusades to the birth of disco. Cuba libre is available for sale and signing of the program. Now please join me in welcoming tony perrottet. [ applause ] wow. H hey, everybody. Thank you for coming out on a beautiful spring night. D. C. Is looking pretty good today. To celebrate the secrets of the cuban revolution. You may be wondering from my funny accent what is an australian doing living in new york and writing about cuba . Many have wondered. The reason is i used to live in argentina in buenas aries and reported a lot around south america and if you live in latin america, you deal with latin america, everyone there is in some way thinking about cuba. What happened in cuba, whats going to happen in cuba. And so in that sense, i felt like i really had to go and i finally did in 1996. Which was just after the soviet union had collapsed. It was the nadir of cubas fortunes. It was kind of an economic disaster. I got down there from new york because you couldnt fly direct in those days. I went via nassau. All i knew was that i had to take 1,000 in cash and give to it a guy named lionel at the airport. And i would recognize him by his porkpie hat. And i did get to the airport, i went into a disused terminal with wires hanging down everywhere, and lionel did appear. I gave him the money, he gave me a little handwritten thing and pointed out to a russian prop plane. Six people squeezed onto this plane that zoomed over the caribbean and landed in cuba. It was a fascinating experience. The next time i went was under the obama years. And i got invited on the first private jet to fly from miami to havana. Also six passengers, slightly different experience. Champagne flowing. Getting picked up in these beautiful american cars. Being taken to a luxury hotel with a rooftop pool. It even had wifi. It was kind of like science fiction. But, yeah. So after that before i went on that trip, i asked a friend, a cubaphile specialist, i wanted to find out about the revolution. Is there some book that would tell me more or less what happened. She said, no, it doesnt exist, you should write it. I said, okay, that seems wildly difficult and extremely unlikely. On this trip, the obamaera trip, i heard there were certain sites still around the island, still around cuba, including, for example, the hideouts in mountains where che and fidel used to lurk and other extraordinary places. I proposed to the smithsonian that i go back and follow this trail and follow the history of the revolution which is how that story that is in the printout came up. It was a rough 3,000, 4,000word story of actually going to these places and finding all the things that were going on. Look, okay, i should have had that up just to give you an idea of the classic image of havana, but so after i did that, i realized there was much more to be learned, much more to be discovered. That really was just the tip of the iceberg. So i suggested doing a book about it. And penguin got into it. I started the way i was trying to get into it, in a way, the thing that sort of inspired me was this idea that i discovered how popular the revolution was amongst americans back in those days. Back in 1959. Which seemed, you know, extraordinary, given what had happened since and how difficult it was to find out about the revolution here and, in fact, going to cuba it can be quite difficult as well. I decided to try and investigate and here, the image that sort of most intrigued me was just after he the dictator add fled, ed sullivan flew down to cuba to interview fidel just as he was about to come into havana. The interviews still around, you can see it on youtube. Hes like and eds absolutely star struck. Hes all over fidel calling him comparing him to george washington, talking about guerillas as a fine young group of revolutionary youngsters. Which is, again, this Twilight Zone feel to it. And ed asks, what do you think of america . Fidel says, a very positive feeling. And ed says, we want you to like cuba, and we like you. So on the other hand, we want you to it was sort of a love fest, anyway. So this was the sort of point where i started the book and sort of go back to find out how it all unfolded because it was incredibly unlikely that this bunch of youngsters, these sort of, like, theyre in their 20s. Some are teenagers. Sort of crash land on the coast of cuba. And at one stage decimated down to, like, 12 people. How they ended up defeating an army of 40,000 professional soldiers in the space of just over two years. It really seemed like an extraordinary story. The thing that i like about the story as well is its broken up into very specific little chapters in a way. Like a little operetta. A fivepart operetta. I should have put this on printouts. Its nice to have printouts. But there are five parts to the story. So youll know more or less where we are as we drift along. And the first part, the sort of prelude in a way, is the young fidel playing basketball. And he was a very athletic character, a very sort of charming, garrulous, student. As well as his nickname was el loco, the crazy one. He would do things like bet his friends that he wouldnt drive his bicycle into a wall. At full tilt. And well bet you that. So he went down a hill, smashed it into a wall, was out for like three days. And that was just to prove a point. This sort of gives an insight into character in a way. And he loved sport. You know, basketball and baseball were his favorites. All the american sports. And you can actually go and visit his family house which is in the eastern side of cuba. A place called the oriente, the east. His family manse is still there. He was from quite a rich family, strangely enough. But he grew up with a terrible sense of injustice. Hed go to the local school and all the other kids didnt have shoes. He was the only one with shoes. He realized that his dad, who was a landholder was paying his workers badly. Hed get into arguments. He organized a strike of his fathers workers which didnt endear him to his dad. But if you go to this place called buran, you can hop into the family bedroom. He and his brother, raul, shared the bedroom there. You can see his baseball outfits there. Unfortunately, the story that fidel was offered a contract with american baseball was not true. He had a great pitching arm but not enough to get a scholarship to nmiami or indianapolis. The two places he was often. So, anyway, fidel, this extraordinary character, one of the more extraordinary characters of the 20th century, the thing that i love about this this is him without a beard. He once didnt have a beard. He was this young lawyer, quite conservative. He went to havana, went to the university there. Studying law. And became more and more radicalized as he went there. He sort of less the studies and the studies that was going on. There were a lot of things brewing including in 1953 a coup by a former president , filencio batista. Now fidel was running for politics at that time. He was trying to become a senator. Had he had probably would have won. Then maybe eight years later run for president. Instead batista comes in, takes over, everyones suddenly cut out of the process. Batista invites american mobsters to run the casinos. Basically running the state, milking the state in a blatant way and extremely violent as well. The secret police were going around beating up and murdering opponents. It was this incredibly thuggish environment. Fidel came to the conclusion, and many cubans came to the conclusion, that this americanbacked dictator could not be defeated by peaceful means. That they had to do something kind of extreme. So they decided to start an insurrection. This is way before the actual revolution begins. Its sort of the first volley. So in the east the major city is called santiago. A very beautiful place, very dreamy. It also has a barracks there, called the moncada. So he and another 100 of his friends, basically students, got together and sort of taught themselves how to shoot guns. Not very well. And they made themselves uniforms to make themselves look like soldiers and they piled into a bunch of chevrolets and buicks and dodges and sort of, like, trundled off to attack this place that had, like, maybe 500 soldiers in it and they thought that if they surprised them while they were asleep, because it was their last night of carnival, they came to the conclusion that theyd be so hungover that they wouldnt fight. This was not the case. Turned out they completely blew it. Fidel accidentally nearly ran over a couple of patrolmen who let off the alert. And a fire fight started. Many of them were killed and many were captured and tortured to death. So it was kind of a disaster, yet one of those disasters like the battle of little big horn in the United States thats celebrated in its own weird way. So you can go to the moncado, and you can still see the bullet holes they preserved as part of a shrine. But fidel was eventually captured as was his brother, raul, and a bunch of them and they were all sent to the Devils Island of cuba. Its called the isle of pines off the south coast. They were all thrown into this model prison which is modeled on one in chicago. Its an example of the p penopticon, where a guard can be in the middle there and see everyone in the whole place. It was a very sinister place in those days, very violent. For whatever reason the Political Prisoners were all put in their own room together, which was a strange decision. They all got together and they gave each other classes on revolutionary theory and they plotted what to do and they sent messages to people outside. And fidel even managed to in a great publishing story, he wrote a book while he was in there, sort of a pamphlet, really, on his defense speech which he then he wrote on little pieces of paper and smuggled out piece by piece to supporters in havana. Most of the time they were also writing in lemon juice. And so the guards never asked why they had this sort of passion for citrus. Typically. So, anyway, eventually the pressure mounted to release fidel and his friends. Theyre only, like, theyre still youngsters and basically unknown at this stage. So they go to mexico city. They flee to mexico city where they organize and decide to invade cuba. And theyre complete amateurs. The thing that i love, another thing i love about the story, its as if a bunch of ph. D. Grads from princeton were dumped into the Appalachian Mountains and told to get it together to hold a revolution and overthrow the government. They had to teach themselves how to shoot, how to navigate, how to survive in the mountains. So they would put rocks in their backpacks and go hiking up and down the streets of mexico city. Sometimes up in the mountains. They found a guy, a veteran of the spanish civil war, to teach them how to shoot guns. They tried to raise money. They were often caught. The secret police were all after them in mexico city and at one stage, they were all arrested. By this stage theyve been joined by a young chap named ernesto rivera. He was a medic, a doctor. And he signed on to the expedition. He was also arrested. This is the first known photograph of che and fidel together in a mexico city prison. So things were really tightening for the sort of squeezing down on them. They decided to get going as fast as they could. And this is the second part of the story, really. Where they actually stage the invasion. This sort of dimmeented plan, really. They decided to buy a boat from a doctor, april american doctor, retired doctor in mexico city. And it was called the grand mar which ill show you later. They organized with the locals, the local supporters. This guy is frank paez, sort of a Frank Sinatra type. He was sort of the poster boy of the revolution for a long time. And he was the one who organized in santiago, knowing they were all going to arrive sometime at the end of november. Theyd planned it all out. Fidel was going to send a telegram saying the book that you ordered is out of print. This was the code that they were going to leave mexico city, the caribbean coast, and head over. They planned it was going to take, like, five days. They all piled into this boat, the grand mar. Which is like the ss minnow. Leaky. Barely worked. It had been waterlogged. And there are like 120 people who wanted to get on, they squeezed in 82 like sardines. They set off at night in a storm, ignoring the fact that it was one of the worst storm warnings in months. As soon as they got out of the harbor, it started to rock a lot and they started to get seasick. Che, for whatever reason, had forgotten to pack the tablets, the seasickness tablets. They all started, with the exception of raul and the professional sailors, they all started to get seasick. Theyre awash with vomit. It was a spectacular disaster. Worse, water was coming into the boat. And they realized it was starting to flood. So they grabbed whatever they could and started throwing things overboard. To lighten the thing. They thought they were actually going to sink until someone realized the tap was on in the toilet and it was flooding it. This set the tone, really, for the revolution. The early days of the revolution. They were heading over to this amazing coastline, which for the story i was able to travel along, but it has some of the worst roads in cuba, which is saying something. Its very remote, very isolated. Fidel had decided on this so they could hike into the Sierra Maestra, mountains in the east, poorest part of cuba and, indeed, of the caribbean. Theyre heading there, it turns out theyre two days late. The ground people who were expecting them gave up. And then so they come along, they sort of crash land. Theyre going along, the coast, suddenly the boat stops. And its kind of like, what . Theyve hit a sandbank. This is the only known photograph of them getting in there. They all get in there. The 82 of them go across. And they realize, to their horror, they havent landed one of the beautiful beaches for which cuba is renowned, they landed in a swamp. And, in fact, one of the worst, most sinister swamps in the east. And today you can go and visit the spot. Theyve done this sort of, like, beautiful walkway to go out there and see where they crash landed, but they had to climb over the vines. They dropped their stuff. They sort of panicked. They lost their shoes. It was a complete fiasco. And day were already dehydrated and desperate. So they turn up and meet a farmer. Somebody wanders out of the bushes and sort of sees them. Fidel says, have no fear, weve come to save the cuban people. The guy apparently resisted the urge the to burst out laughing. But anyway, theyre there, the farmer is very helpful. He catches a chicken and is going to cook it for them, as well as a piglet. Suddenly they hear shooting at the boat. They realize their boat has been spotted by the coast guard. So the air force is coming. They decided to schlep off toward the 30mile walk to the Sierra Maestra. Unfortunately, on the shithird , theyre surrounded. Theyre ambushed. The armys found them. The bullets start appearing out of nowhere. Its a massacre. 20 were killed. The rest were captured. Everyone else scatters in wide directions. Che rivera is there. He thinks hes dying. Hes a poetic soul. He leans up against a tree and remembers his favorite jack london story about a guy whos want o die in the wilderness. Of alaska. Until someone grabs him and says, come on, get out of here. Were going to get they make a run for it and end up in the bushes. People are scattered everywhere. No one knows if everyones been wiped out. Fidel is by himself and hes sitting in a shaugarcane field. As it gets dusk, he notices two of his friends also there. The army is going back and forth, the soldiersoldiers. They get together and hang out in the sugarcane field for five days waiting for the army to go away. Theyre drinking dew in the morning, sort of gnawing on sug sug sugarcane to keep themselves sustained. Much of the time fidel is rocking back and forth saying, victory will be ours, dont worry, vibtry wi ryvictory will the other two are looking at each other saying fidel lost it, hes gone mad. As it turns out, they get it together and they walk basically takes them, like, ten they manage to get to the Meeting Point up in the mountains. This is very rugged an very beautiful and very isolated. Others managed to survive as well. Turns out rauls i mean fidels brother, six years younger, made it out with a couple of people. And che guevara, they nicknamed him that, sort of like buddy, pal, in australian it would be like mate. So he ends up there as well. Eventually about 20 of them gather this and they are sort of camping out in the coffee field you know, recovering from the wounds. Many others were caught and butchered by the army. You know, machine gunned. So it was kind of a miraculous thing. Those that survived by spite of fault became the great leaders of the revolution. The one who was meant to be running the army unfortunately was caught and he was beaten to death with shovels. So the guys, these you know the few people, and later they would someone would write a book called the 12. It was more like 20, but they liked the religious connotations of 12. So theyre up there up in the mountains sort of like trying to stay low and trying to survive and the only reason they do survive is through a doctors daughter who lives in the low lands and who is sort of the major organizer of the revolution. You can find her notes, accounts. She was very meticulous. She would do things day by day. She found new boots and food and would organize mule trains to go up and take them stuff. And over the coming months it would turn out that if it wasnt for her, the whole revolution would have snuffed out. The boys were very inspired and full of enthusiasm but couldnt organize their way out of a paper bag. They were very disorganized. They couldnt clean their guns. They would lose ammunition, guns were going off left and right and center but she was aim to able to organize reinforcements and kept the revolution going through the crucial early months. Now, at this stage, bautista had put out the word that fidel and his friends were dead. And they were producing a body. This was going on for some months. So initially word went back to havana that fidel wanted to get an interview going. So they contacted the New York Times, there was a representative in havana. She didnt want to go up to the mountains but she got another guy, Herbert Matthews, the great Latin Americanist of his day. He knew cuba very well. He flew down to havana. So the agents said well send someone from the New York Times up there. And the agent is kind of frail, in his late 50s, well send someone, right . Matthew said im going myself. And i couldnt quite believe him but matthews didnt decide to do it. He and his wife got were driven by agents out to the east pretending to be planation openers and he hikes up into the mountains and fidel meets him. Its an extraordinary thing. One of the great turning points of history. Because without this the revolution would have expired. Fidel meets him, hes still only got 20 people 20 guys and in ragged uniforms but he tells his brother raul to get the men to walk back and forth around and around and change outfits so it looks like hes got a lot more people than he does. They had to walk sideways sometimes so you wouldnt see that the backs of the shirts were torn open. It was a rag tag army. And fidel says he has 200 or 300 soldiers which matthews buys. Decides to print. So he had this extraordinary thing where fidel ends up on the front page of the New York Times. Its a glowing report. And its a very romantic revolution and matthews had been in the spanish world war himself. He thought it was a youth rebellion against the sinister dictator. And against all odds, robin hood sort of thing. This is the image that sort of continues for throughout the revolution. And in many ways its right. These guys they didnt really have any terrible political agenda other than getting rid of bautista. That was the goal they could all get behind. Now a lot of the political stuff we associate like communism for example came much later. Fidel didnt think of himself as a communist, che was a communist and raul as well. But fidel basically just wanted power. Someone said he tried to make fidel communist and he laughed and said id be a communist if i was stalin. And refused to discuss it any further. In any case, in his early days at the same day that Herbert Matthews meets him, cilia coming up shes one in the middle there and the other is santa maria. And shes there to meet fidel for the first time and here he is showing off his favorite rifle. And turns out she loves shooting, she loves fishing. She loves the great outdoors. Shes a huge political devotee. Totally devoted to the revolution and its a romantic connection that begins. One of the great romances of revolution. A lot has been written about between fidel and che and che and fidel which is quite extraordinary. But the union between sell ya and fidel is the motor of the revolution. She puts them into action. She sort of translates them into something thats practical and could actually happen. So we have this extraordinary thing that fidel, hes on the front page as the face of the cuban resistance. So its like an extraordinary thing. Thats so inspiring to people that to cbs news decides to go up there as well. We have robert tabor and he knows how to stage things as well. He said well do on the top of the mountain, the highest one in cuba, with the spectacular view of the you know the unformed coastline. Theres a bust of the independence hero, jose mati and its broadcast to 50 Million Viewers across the United States. So suddenly fidel is a huge presence there. Despite the fact that, you know, he still only has a handful of people, handful of followers. Now today you can actually go up to the Sierra Maestra and its a poor place. The other reason theyre able to survive, the local farmers decided to help them out. They had long felt isolated from the rest of the country. They had been left out basically in cuba. They were basically exiles within their own land. They gave food, support. They told fidel when the army was coming in. And when not. So in early phase, we have the amazing sort of like a secondary army helping them with out supplies. Theyre wandering around in the mountains like for months really. Theyre changing camp every night and its an exhausting time for the revolution. One of the favorite discoveries theyre writing the old diaries. This is the platoon leader and he wrote a diary as well that was never published. Now he was sort of a romantic. He had a girlfriend he left back in mexico. He didnt particularly like hardship. He didnt like being rained on. He didnt like trudging around. He didnt like blisters. But he was devoted to the revolution. He was also a very lonely character. He missed his girlfriend. He writes this down in the diary. There are the marvelous accounts that he falls in love with every woman he meets in the mountains. Shop girls, farmers daughters, guerrilla volunteers and he writes the lovely poems about it. He does end up in one romantic liaison and dallies so long and the platoon had to go get him. But it ends when the girl opens up the locket and sees the photograph of his girlfriend in mexico and he writes its all for the best, although one doesnt believe him. He was a character. Theres some water. So heres the extraordinary insights into the very sort of amateurish do it yourself revolution. One of the great things that i found out was that after the Herbert Matthews story was published in the New York Times a lot of people a lot of americans were inspired to come down and join the revolution. Three kids from Guantanamo Bay decided to disappear from their families and join fidel and fidel and frank decide it was a good pr thing. So they let the three American Kids join. And then they write a letter, an open letter to the u. S. Government saying, you know saying that they love the revolution, its like the Founding Fathers all over again and published in the New York Times again. Its very much calling for the americans to stop supplying bautista, the dictator, with arms. A lot of bautistas planes were refuelling in Guantanamo Bay, the americans were training the secret police. It was not an ideal situation. So the three kids are there, but fidel eventually decides one of them couldnt really hack the mountain life. But fidel initially decides its too dangerous having them there, if one gets killed or wounded its a pr disaster. So one is sent back to the u. S. To do fundraising speeches because they have set up an office in new york, right near Colombia University and all of the students are turning up to volunteer for the revolution and only for the summer holiday, they want to be pack for the classes in the fall. Theres Great Stories of kids in berkeley who steal their parents car and try to drive to miami to get to go down to join the revolution and fail dismally as well. We have a rare early photo of che guevara. He was a medic. He wasnt really initially that important but it turned out he had an extraordinary talent for guerrilla warfare. He was also quite an extraordinary character. Austere, committed, etheerl in many ways and he loved the dogs. They would be gathering around him and one of the saddest stories is that he and his group with were one of the favorite dogs and the army patrol is going by and the dog starts to make the noises so che is like, we have to get rid of the dog. So the guy who owns the dog has to strangle the dog as the army is going by. This is one of the weird anecdotes that che later obviously, he was a good writer as well. Sort of a poetic soul as i said. And quite good looking. He was sort of like became the poster boy of the revolution later. But there are some amazing photographs. More and more i mean, it was probably the historys most photogenic revolution in many ways because the chinese and russian revolutions had paintings and statues, but there were american photographers that would find their way into the Sierra Maestra and look for a time. You know all of the extraordinary magazines that many of them no longer exist. But they would do the beautiful photo spreads. The guys were in paris match at one stage. Kind of an extraordinary thing and this is first execution of the revolution. They had a trial a series of trials that lasted for 12 days. A guys were impersonating them and telling them that they were revolutionaries. That they were then stealing stuff. Which was alienating a lot of the farmers so they put them on trial and so their ring leaders are executed. The photographer actually captures the execution. Kind of an incredible image. But this again, in the early days when theres a hundred of them floating around. And 1957 at this stage. I was trying to figure out how they did it and they would do things like they had a good support base in the cities. They were trying to convince people to start burning the sugar plantations. To sort of undercut the economy. So they put out the helpful leaflets. They send the rodents into the sugar cane fields or using a slingshot and then it would burn. And they sent it into field to start the conflagrations. Again, sort of making it up as they go along. Whether it worked or not, nobody knows. But theyd do other things as well. The army was bombing all over the Sierra Maestra, so a lot of the bombs wouldnt go off or if they did go off it was no damage, because it was jungly. The viet cong found out it just gets absorbs in the mulch. So they would find the unexploded bombs. Get them and take them apart and create their own sort of booby traps out of condensed milk cans and using shrapnel. They figured out how to explode them from the distance. You know, again, one of the sort of extraordinary sort of things. Condensed milk, it was their favorite food so they had tons of cans. They would get them up from the low lands, smuggled up. It was the nectar of gods because it was sweet and thick. Raul did one where he he called it chirizo, sausage guerrilla style. He would get a spicy hot dog, chop it up, saute it in one tablespoon of lemon, one of rum and one of honey and serve that up. That was his favorite dish. And often it would be one sausage they had a night. Che found one tin of sausages and he said it was the greatest feast in his life. Food was a big obsession for them. They managed to make it through to the end of 1957. Just by hanging around they were sort of winning in a certain way. They would take photographs. Here its che, who had gone after a breakoff camp with his men. He said happy new year, 1958. He took this photograph and its distributed around, sort of a mocking photograph. He had the whimsical sense of humor. As you see at this stage hes wearing a farage cap instead of the famous beret. Because he was so sentimental one of his comrades had been killed so he decided to keep the cap. Only many months later he loses it and hes heartbroken. So we have the guys hanging out in the mountains but over in havana very little is changing. Havana is sort of the sin city of the western hemisphere. If you have seen godfather 2, theyre running the beautiful art decoe casinos that are still there. Prostitution is rife. Its one of the Great Centers of vice and gram green loves it. He goes to the theater to see superman, the details i wont go into. But its the live sex shows and an extraordinary sort of decadent place but theres an underground growing there as well. The support is at the weakest in havana. In any case, the up in the mountains fidel is getting hes preparing for a five or ten year war. He decides to get a permanent base. They have about 300 men at this stage. He decides you know instead of going around hermetically they have to have somewhere they can all hole up. So celia in and designs this camp. You go up this trail and you can still go there today. All the huts are still there. Go up the goat trail, clamoring up. Then you finally trudge along and it suddenly opens up there. But this is what it looked like in 1958. This was like the main plaza for him. He would hang out there. You know, read the newspaper. And meet people that would come up. And sort of carve out plans. As you can see he started to grow his beard early on. They had all decided they had thrown their razors overboard anyway. They decided to keep growing their beards until the revolution was won. So all of them become known as the bearded ones. To distinguish them from everyone else. So sort of getting the character. And fidel is wearing his kippy, his farage cap and getting a distinctive look that will become world famous eventually. This is the hut that celia made for herself and for fidel. Its there by a babbling brook. It doesnt compare to the chinese hut, its up in the mountains, very breezy and very dreamy. Very cool. You can lie there and the kitchen is still there and they have the fridge that was finally brought up. It still had the bullet holes in it that the air force made when they strafed the mule train. Now, you can still go up there and the guide will sort of show you around. Its also barricaded off, but the guide warned us off at one stage. I thought ill climb over and get in the bedroom. The mattress is still there and i decided to lie down on fidels bed to see if i could get some of the machismo coming through. But you can lie there. And theres this gorgeous window propped open and filled with flowers. You know, very lavish, tropical scene. Its such a poetic place and it was here that he started you know, act as if he was already president of cuba. He was sort of like beginning orders and coming up with plans. So people who came trudged up there were incredibly impressed that he had the sense of authority. He was also joined by others. At this stage, more and more women are starting to join the revolution. They had been working in the cities but they were often the suspicion was starting to fall on them. Initially the cuban male police didnt couldnt conceive of the idea that women had political ideas at all. They never bothered the women so they would build their own petticoats to smuggle in food and guns for the revolutionaries and then people started to figure them out. And the celia is writing there and the woman vilma who was an mit graduate. She spent a lot of time in the states and she became the major operative in santiago. She was one of the organizing all of the stuff because frank peace had been plugged twice in the head for a 3,000 bounty. He was 22. So vilma is there. Shes organizing it until finally suspicion is falling on her and she manages to get out in the nick of time. She goes up to the mountains as well. At about the same time as the paris match photographic turns up. So he does a spread of all the guerrilla gals looking like flower children. Sexy the sexy look thats the counterpart of the handsome guerrilla guys. A lot of other women were going up. Some were relegated to sewing uniforms. But others would join they were wanting to fight and eventually fidel starts a womens platoon. Which is like something of a world first. At least like 25 years before west point. So they had they their own platoon. Like a dozen who go out into combat the whole time. Meanwhile, im cracking along here. We have a lot of revolution to get through. But meanwhile, it became more and more women so they would drift into villages. It was sort of like a party. It would be like a fiesta. Theyd crack out the beer. Give them food or whatever. Until the summer of 1958 when bautista decides he has to get rid of these guys because just by hanging around as i said, theyre sort of winning in a sort of strange way. Theyre showing how weak he is so he gets 10,000 soldiers and sends them up into the mountains. The operation, the end of operation end of fidel. So they all get to the mountains and fidel gets word of it because he has spies in the army. So they set up and they set booby traps along the mountain trails. He has 300 men so being a classical scholar its like the stand of the spartans, which didnt end well for the spartans, but that was his idea. And it was just the overwhelming odds were there. They didnt they had all sorts of contingency plans but in the end like they would theyre able to terrify the recruits so much that they start to lose their morale. They give up. Start surrendering en masse. And he has a brilliant idea of treating them extremely well, feeding them, giving them medicine and then sending them back and so the guys all go back. Then they say, hey, we gave up. Theyre quite decent. Theyre not hurting us. So the other everyone else in the army starts to realize, why are we dying for 35 a month for bautista who not who is obviously is corrupt. Hes raping the country. So they started to lose faith as well in the struggle so eventually the whole assault fizzles out and bautista gives up and they decide to leave fidel in the mountains. But fidel has other ideas. Within weeks of this sort of incredible victory, incredible survival he decides to send che and camilo on the right there is the other great leader. Still extremely popular in cuba so he decides to send them into the low lands on what seems like a Suicide Mission to trudge across the open terrain and to set up bases into the island. If you go around now its extremely beautiful but quite exposed. So they were often strafed. They found that the people in the low lands werent that helpful. They werent that friendly. All of them all the propaganda that went out said they were communists, they shouldnt be supported. This is where che loses his farage hat and decides to wear a beret. With the cavalry crosses with the red star. But hes going around on a mule, because he has terrible asthma. He couldnt walk, he had to be carried so, you know, for days the guys would be lugging him around. Yelling at him, you argentine, you argentine, get moving. And dragging him physically. He seemed more like of a liability at many stages than as an asset. But he sort sort of perhaps because of the asthma, he has this incredible endurance. He goes to some mountains he sets up the pace there. Sort of organizes all of the antibautista forces. In this project he meets alaina march, 26 years old from santa clara. Sort of a you know, like shes a former teacher. She had joined the revolution, been burned as they say and fled up to the mountains. After an initial they didnt like each other to begin with, but she at one stage hes driving by in a jeep. He sees her by the road, and she said, jump in. She hops in and in a sense she says in a sense she never got out of the jeep. She ends up working as the aidedecamp for che and they get married and they have four children. In fact, i was just in havana hanging out with the oldest of their four children who does motorcycle tours in cuba. He is also named ernesto. Meanwhile, che is taking the interviews and sort of organizing things until in november he starts to gown to the low lands as well to try to take the fight to the bautista army. Its going on in the east, be new the center of the island che decides to attack the main town called santa clara. Where all of the railroads intersect. Sort of the great basically the heart of cuba. And theres alaina behind him, hes giving orders on the outskirts of santa clara. None of the guerrillas had ever taken a city before. Let alone with a hundred of a hundred men. But they creep in, sort of fighting door by door and the soldiers start giving up. Then he comes up with this other sort of very simple but sort of brilliant idea. Through the whole struggle up and down cuba, theres armored train had been going back and forth, carrying troops. Carries hundreds of guns, carrying bombs. Hand grenades. Sort of moving arsenal and its sent to santa clara so che he does an attack and they start to retreat with the train. He got a caterpillar you know from the agricultural school. He got them to like tear up the tracks so the train comes barrelling down at full speed and is derailed and, you know, it wrecks and all the guys jump in. The ones who dont, they throw in molotov cocktails. It was very easy to make, very cheap. Women used to carry them around in cocacola containers for them and then the supporters would make the molotov cocktails for them and pass them out the windows so they could be used. So this happened the 30th of december, 1958. News sort of filters out that they have managed to seize this train and ches men go. In like aladdins cave. They have machine guns, they have mortars and bazookas. It was an extraordinary thing. And word filters back to havana on new years eve and the dictator who had sort his main worry at this stage there would be a military coup or hed be arrested or put on trial and he decides to cut and run. He has a regular new years party and if you saw godfather 2, its pretty accurate. He holds the party and he has chicken and rice and then a cup of brandy and he says hes about to leave havana, abandon cuba and there are three dc4s wait on the airstrip and then everyone its disbelief and then people start running to the airplanes that are sort of idling away. The pilots have no idea where theyre going. They go in there and they do the list of names. Some of the military rush off trying to get money and bautista has sent his money already over to the swiss bank accounts. They all pile into the three planes and head off. Two go to florida. Not miami which was extremely pro fidel at this stage. They go to jacksonville. And palm beach. But the other one the dictator of the americans had finally decided a couple of weeks earlier they could no longer support bautista. And not only that they wouldnt let him into the country. And so he flies to the Dominican Republic where theres a right wing dictator who welcomes him with open arms but suddenly theres a sort of word starts to filter out on new years day, you know, the state radio doesnt announce it. They just play beethoven 9th over and over again and then people start to take to the streets and the cadres or the supporters of fidel come out with guns and they take over the streets of havana. Theres some shooting but fidel himself is over in the east in a farm. And he hears about it on the radio. He has no idea that the guys are coming in. Wow, at first he thinks its a military coup and then he realizes he better do something. So he goes to santiago where he gives its a rousing speech on the evening of new years day. Where he claims the victory for the revolution, but he makes sure to do it in the place where the spanish surrender after the spanish american war. Part of the whole root of the war, they were trying to get rid of the spanish and the United States intervened at the last minute, and saved the day but they decided to occupy cuba for three years with military occupation. They dont allow the cubans to come into the surrender ceremonies which were in santiagos main square. It was considered one of the great historical insults and the root of much enmity. So fidel makes certain to do this to actually do the declaration with all of the cubans and guerrillas there and instead of flying straight to havana he comes up with the idea of going overland with a caravan of victory and giving speeches. His skill as an orator now comes out. The endless two hour speeches begin, and you know, the cubans love him and he gets more and more support. Until finally he comes into havana. This is the famous mallacon. He sent che ahead and they have 5,000 soldiers throwing down their arms to each of them and one of the observers there said it was enough to make you burst out laughing. They couldnt quite understand there was no resistance at all. They were completely giving up. And the cia even couldnt understand. They thought there should be a negotiated opposition. But as fidel gets closer and closer to havana it is obvious he has basically 99 support of the population. He arrives in havana and he goes to the main military base right in front of the place where the new years eve, legendary new years eve occurred and he gives an incredible speech of the revolution has finally triumphed. As he does, the women in the front row hes these doves, symbols of peace and good fortune. And they land on the podium. One is on his shoulder. For the rest of the speech, theyre sitting there. And giving sort of a divine aura, sort of benediction and in santeria as well its extremely good luck. So in the following weeks, the main magazine has a portrait of him with an obvious halo. So he was considered a strangely christ like figure which is difficult to believe but he was considered the great savior of the island. Camilo of course, you know, is also extremely popular. He is from havana. You know, good looking dude. Hes sort of like a real bon vivant. He was described as a more like a rumba dancer than guerrilla. He was looking like jesus christ on a spree. Meanwhile, che and alaina decided to get married. They had kept it very chaste 1950s relationship as they traveled around in the mountains. Most of time they were too dirty, too exhausted or too tired to have a romantic relationship. But finally in havana, things start to progress. And its one of the first revolutionary marriages. Raul and vilma get married. Celia and fidel dont. Fidel took up with random admirers, and we dont know what she thought about it, but she sort of backs out. She stays the great organizer, but they have a suite in the havana hilton. But the romantic side of it starts to slide. Meanwhile, the guerrillas keep their distinctive look, keep their uniforms. They keep their long hair. They keep their beards. Theyre like the prototype hippies. To make it a complete contrast with the very staid eisenhower era mad men sort of look of the time. And one of the things i found very interesting was if you look at the magazines of the period, the contrast between the guerrillas and the gals and the advertisements that are there in american magazines, particularly striking. You know, the guys are in those short you know, suits and ties. The men in the gray flannel suit. Theyre going off to work. You know, polishing their shoes. The women are all you know, doing the ideal housewife. Theyre cooking for the kids. You know, very doris day looking so the contrast was very striking. In a sense the 60s as we know them and refer to them in shorthand were beginning in 1959. Sort of the idea of this rebellious Youth Movement was sort of already brewing in the United States in the time where especially in young people theres a lot of dissatisfaction growing. And fidel was regarded you know, james dean sort of character. Marlon brando. A rebel with a cause. Meanwhile, fidel is having a blast. Hes hanging out with Ernest Hemingway the most famous ex pat there. And this period 1959 and its winding down now, in case youre wondering. Sort of the final period. Its what i call the honeymoon of the revolution and its the time that everyone loved fidel. Everyone loved che. They were heroes. In the United States as well. And so in april fidel and the gang were invited up to speak in washington to the American Society of editors and that they all fly up. And then theyre very popular here, but when they go to new york theyre mobbed. 20,000 people meet them at penn station and fidel is carried on the shoulders to the hotel. He climbs the empire state building, goes to the bronze zoo. Again, all of the press coverage is very laudatory. Reincarnation of one of the Founding Fathers. Its as if americans were recognizing their own better selves, you know . Sort of the sense of a small group who managed to overthrow an evil empire. Like, you know, also popular amongst the africanamericans saw in cuba overnight they got rid of the segregation laws. So he writes a thing, suddenly all of the hotels and everything is out in the open. Its not as easy as that. Theres a lot of other things but officially segregation is gone. The struggle in the United States is, you know, only just beginning. Here we have fidel and che, you know, and che is starting to wear the star as he becomes more radical and the evolution takes the drift farther and farther to the left. And then after the trip to new york things go awry with the United States, because the washington visit was not successful as well. In public it was an amazing thing, everyone loved them. It seemed like a huge success for fidel and the gang, but it turned out that eisenhower was miffed that it wasnt an official visit. Fidel was just turning up. So he made sure that he was out of washington playing golf for the whole time fidel was here. Instead, he sends richard nixon, Vice President , and nixon and fidel hate each other on sight. They had a 90 minute meeting but it doesnt go well at all. Nixons convinced that fidel is extremely naive. Fidel calls nixon a son of a bitch and an opinion that others have shared i suppose. But dislikes him and realizes that things might be going awry. Might not go as well as he had hoped. He wanted to commune to the american people. He used to leap over the barriers and start shaking hands with americans, hugging them. You know, yelling out i need to meet my people, i want to meet my people. So sort of like a rock star. But, you know, at one stage he sort of thinks hes getting his message through and hes in the hotel room. They describe him doing a little dance. Theyre starting to understand us. Theyre starting to understand us. They couldnt figure out why the americans were so obsessed with the communism and why they didnt understand fully sympathize with the main goal of independence of cuba. They wanted an independence unfortunately also it was basically economic independence and america ran everything. The best land, they owned the best electric companies and the telephones and there was a crash course that was ahead. And naively you know the but america and cuba were thinking it could have been avoid. Things started to go awry as 1959 progressed. Towards the end of 1959 eisenhower authorizes the assassination of fidel. They Start Talking about an invasion plan. By 1960 fidel comes back to talk at the u. N. , he is snubbed an vilified and the hotel guys accuse them of plucking chickens and cooking them in the hotel room and then they go to harlem. This hugely popular with the africanamerican community. Malcolm x goes to visit and one of the other visitors is khrushchev who had been offering economic aid and from now on much more as well. The russians are sort of hanging around in the wings and they offer to buy the whole lot, inflated prices. It goes from bad to worse. One of the great historical accidents that cuba is like a pawn in the cold war and russia is in the wings. The idea, you know, during the revolution that there should be missiles based in cuba. It was in a couple of years it would have been like science fiction. But meanwhile, so here we have the sort of the iconic image of che. The original iconic image taking at a rally when things are going south with the United States. Thats a huge explosion of the freighter in the harbor and everyone in cuba is convinced was staged by the cia. The cia was doing enough other stuff and here he is, he starts to stand in the distance and a photographer takes a couple of snaps of him. One vertical and a couple horizontals and they publish and they forget about it. But he crops it and hangs up in the studio until after after che died in the United States in bolivia in 1967 an italian fashion designers sees it and asks to borrow it. He takes it back to italy and does the screen prints of it. It becomes one of the worlds this is 1967. By 68 one of the worlds great images and its now sort of familiar in many ways thats all people can remember of the revolution. So that story, i dont know what time it is because i havent got a watch. But 7 51, is that right . Is it time for questions . Time for questions . Okay. In the front there. I went to cuba in 1951 and im curious about your Research Process in cuba. What was your process in cuba and did you have government minders, government officials who shepherded you around or not or were you fairly free to do the kind of research that you wanted . What was my process, what was my process and was i followed . You know, cuba had changed a lot. The obama years there was sort of a window of opportunity. Not only was it the first commuting book actually, but i was able to go zip back and forth to cuba, stay for a week and then come back. I could go into the archives and make a request, think about it for a month which is often what they like to do. But theres one place that celia set up. Shy she got everything to do with the revolution and put it in one repository. It is still there. You can go in and make requests. You have to get special permission. You have to get the academic visa. Which is it became very difficult unfortunately after in the trump era because they basically america and the cuban sector, its hard to get a visa of any kind thats not a tourist visa. But i did manage to get an economic visa and i would go in there. I would sort of explain what i was doing and they were they were very helpful. But a friend of mine named nancy stout had written the first biography of celia. And theres sort of the glowing thing. But not a real biography. She spent a lot of time down there, meeting people. She hang out there and she had a translator who had worked at the office. So she became sort of friends with them. When i went down, she introduced me to the translator. So that translator introduced me to the guys and i had the entree of going in there. Its very personal. Its very hand shakes and whatever. I would hang around there. At a certain point it didnt hurt that i was australian. So ied what i had a more objective view in theory. If you hang around its easier to give him stuff than have him come in every day. They would bring me things, show me the letters. One of the funny things about it, they have a catalog. What do you want to see and id be like, what have you got . No, you have to ask for something specifically. So, you know, then i would sort of you know, id ask for the diaries, id ask for certain letter. And then these letters, other things would come up. By the end, i took the guys who work there i took them out for lunch. Around the corner there was a swiss restaurant. Which is absolutely indistinguishable from any other cuban restaurant and they had heineken beer. So i would buy them heineken beer. Which i never tasted before. Crystal is a good beer but i became friends with them. I would email back and forth. I would tell them when i was coming and then they started to bring things out. You know, the diary, i was asking did anyone else write these diaries, did anyone do that . Then eventually they brought out rauls which is an extraordinary thing. Because its very clever and witty. He has a great sense of humor, but when you think of him, you know, in his later life, he was kind of like an appealing goofy sort of character. Much more fun than fidel. You couldnt dance. He was obsessed with politics. In mexico city they try to take him out. Theyd line up with dates of people in the movement and fidel would just bore them to tears. Like raul would come in and kick him under the table to stop him doing the politics but he wouldnt. But i digress. There was the thing. Hanging around down there, theyre still quite old i mean, theyre still around. The old you know fighters. The ones that had been very, very young during the revolution so some of the guerrillas leaders are still hanging around. There was one guy who became very famous. And hes still around. He was shuffling back and forth in the archives. I would see him, hes 90 now. Hes in uniform. He has a bundle of stuff under his arms so i introduced myself. I told him what i was doing and he said im writing about the women platoon. We chatted about it and he told me a few stories. You know . That was kind of a break through as well. And a woman guerrilla who game she stayed in the military. I did thing as an annual ceremony on the anniversary of celias death, all of the revolution things are buried there except for fidel. I realized that you know everyone was there. I went around to say hi. Not pressing or anything. Sort of like, you know, maybe i could chat or whatever. So i was sort of they knew i was kind of around. I was interested in stuff. I was taking it seriously. I was doing research in cuba instead of a lot of americans who do it in princeton or they did it in miami or whatever. I was going down there and going to the locations and you know meeting all of the people and i would go out and meet the minor figures the guerrillas. Theyre in their 90s, they dont remember much. The story is hard to follow. And then you sort of but then you see the photographs on the wall. There he is with fidel, there he is with che and then their memories would be jogged. Like in the 70s and 80s they started to write memoirs. So a lot of the stories theyre told are related to the memoirs and you can go back and find the things. A lot of them are only published in cuba. Theres one copy in nyu you might find. Because there was a connection with nyu. So, you know, you can actually go back and find the stuff thats no one has really looked at. Its a time that is not that ideologically saturated. Things change completely obviously in 1959. Theres a big debate about the biggest debate is whether fidel was communist all along and he was lying and keeping it to himself. Theres no evidence of this at all. The communist party and the move. Hated each other. The communists would wouldnt join the insurrection. They were kind of useless. It was at the end of the end that raul has the rolling thing going on that the Cuban Communist Party comes along. To answer your question, you sort of hang around. Things come to you at a certain stage. Any other questions . Down there. What do you see as the future of cuba . Its not looking good, or great in the short term and trump has just tightened the embargo. Which has been going since eisenhower blocked sugar in 1959, 1960. Then jfk imposed the trade embargo. But theres laws passed in the 1990s that could have strangled cuba. But no president has ever enforced the one particular law which allows people to sue companies that are basically dealing with cuba and using any piece of land that was appropriated during the revolution. And thats almost everything. So they can even sue german companies. French companies, whatever. Its dubious whether this has a basis in International Law and its scaring off entirely. When i was in cuba the week before it came into force which is like a the 2nd of may, everyone was freaking out because already shortages were going around. Shipments were stopping. Everyone is worried its going back to the special period of the 1990s. It remains to be seen what effect it will have, but its not auspicious. And i mean, the very day that it was passed it was passed, a family in miami sued Carnival Cruise lines because they were using the dock taken in 1961. Not only do you get the amount, you know, in modern dollars. Its triple damages as well so i think the sum is like 500 million. Theres hundreds of these cases. 3,000 cases that are technically on the books so it remains to be seen what effect this will have on cuba but its not going to be for the best. Its not going to encourage opening up i dont think. Yeah, what were the circumstances that led bautista to leave the country . To leave, what made bautista leave the country. This were all the studies done on that because he had basically 40,000 troops the guerrillas around sort of the part of the low lands, they cut off santa clara but that was one city. A lot of his generals assumed that theyd keep going and plugging along. Fidel thought it would take a couple more years, at least. But theres one book that i sort of i find very interesting, called the war of the flee. Walter tabor joins the revolution after fidel wins, he became a journalist for the revolutionary newspaper and he carries around a revolver. Everyone shakes his hand in the street because everyone knows him from the tv show. So he writes a book studying guerrilla warfare. He comes up with the argument that they dont militarily win in a sense. They create the conditions for collapse. In other words, they weaken the other forces. The morale goes, the soldiers dont want to fight. Things start to crumble internally. Theyre in a pitched battle. You know, open and shut case but the whole things starts to fall to bits and bautista started to worry because he was so disliked. He was so open about his sort of corruption. He was kind of shameless by that stage. He had been quite progressive in certain ways. But as he got older he became more and more cynical. He was you know, Meyer Lanskys men were leaving a brief case full of money on his desk. It was just yeah. Shameless. So he became worried that hed be arrested and put on trial, execute as war criminal so he decides to cut and run and it was the battle of santa claras ches victory there that sent shock waves through the military and convinced bautista, okay, time is up. Yeah. Yeah, he cut and ran like a thief in the night. He got out. Much to the disgust of many of the supporters. I mean, the main police chief in havana said why didnt someone tell me i could have brought my wife and kids, so he had to leave without his wife and children. Others had no way of getting out. Some got on boats. They prepared escape plans but many others didnt get out. So they were like seized and in the end a lot of them were put on trial and some of them unfortunately not the most edifying trials. They were sort of a call for blood because the mothers in santiago went when raul was running santiago said when are we going to get vengeance . They tortured and murdered our children and many of the kids that disappeared it was a terrible time to be a young man. Theyre like teenagers, 14, 15, 16. They just might be ceased, tortured and buried in shallow graves so people are digging up the shallow graves all over the country. So theres a longing for vengeance which unfortunately they didnt carry out in a very good way as well. They mocked the sport they held the trial in the sports stadium and people were howling for blood. They only had a few of the show trials when they realized what a pr disaster they were. But che was put in charge of the trials over in in the spanish fortress and some in the end about 550 of the bautistas men were executed. But it was a big rift with the International Opinion when that happened. Was there another question back there . Have we got time . Another one back there. Whats the state of the cuban Education System and like whats the ideology of the Younger Generation there . The state of the cuban Education System and the ideology there of the Younger Generation, well, i think the Education System is going fine. Its still, you know, the highest Literacy Rate in latin america. You know, there had been other resources. Again, like the hospitals are great. They dont have the medicines. So because because of the various trade problems and they go on. But the younger peoples opinion is its difficult to generalize about the sort of thing but theyre much more jaded about the revolution. Theyre not necessarily about to rise up in revolt against the system. They are just sort of like trudging along waiting for something to change. Waiting for the guys to all die off. Like raul. He cant last too much long sore they had sort of the unusual view of things in my opinion, of my experience, that they regard them as crazy grandparents. You know . They have their sort of you know, they have the ideas, completely out off date. Theyre sort of human offer what. Theres an they have an admiration for the revolution itself and they name the bases, che, fidel, so the heroic nature of that is sort of not denied but its gone so far awry. These changes that everyone is expecting are so slow and theres so many false starts that its you know, theres a sense of, theres a sense of theres not much to do. You know, theres no opportunity. So its a tragic sort of mood and especially now. Under the obama years there was a sense of, you know, incredible optimism. Even more than the obama years it was when the Rolling Stones concert occurred and that was the most symbolic thing. Hundreds of thousands of people converged to listen to the Rolling Stones and they trudged back into havana. A sense is anything is possible and that all fell to bits. You know, the rhetoric is between the United States and cuba is extremely harsh. They appoint the new guy was ex the new president is just a party guy. The reforms they started in the opening up of the economy, there are 200 jobs that people can earn foreign currency on and that was changing things must more than the normalization of relations with United States, making it easy to travel. The United States was significant for us, but i think tourists there a little shocked and disappointed that the place was crawling with japanese and italians, australians and greeks. Tourists everywhere, especially havana. Theres not the sense of forbidden fruit. The world going all the time. They will rely on for income. So the sense of optimism three or four years ago has died so the last times ive been in havana theres a week mood and the young people are like, anyone who can get out is getting out. A flight creating people in a sort of younger people in sort of a sadness. Its always been sort of a melancholy in havana but that moment of optimism has withered unfortunately. Anyway, okay, thats it. [ applause ] thank you. Good evening everyone. It a pleasure to welcome you here tonight for our program. A couple of quick things first. If you could please put away your cell phones, turn them off, silence them, and Electronic Devices we would appreciate it. If you are wondering why there are such