Pod Insights Short History Of... Introducing: Fidel Castro - Real Dictators About this episode This is a taster episode of the Fidel Castro story. To hear episodes 2-10, head over to Real Dictators and hit follow.
Fidel Castro - a revolutionary turned strongman dictator, beloved by his supporters and loathed by his enemies. The bête noire of the United States who pushed the world to the brink of annihilation. The ultimate political survivor who evaded hundreds of barely believable assassination attempts. We scroll back to the early years of the one they would call El Loco. It all begins on a farm in the east of Cuba - an island paradise with dark undercurrents swirling beneath the surface…
Real Dictators is a Noiser podcast production, narrated by Paul McGann. Find the rest of the Fidel Castro story on the Real Dictators feed.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hi listeners. Today, we wanted to bring you a taster episode from our sister show, Real Dictators. The hit podcast recently returned with a new season. This is part one of the Fidel Castro story. If you enjoy it and want to hear the rest of the episodes, head over to Real Dictators and hit follow.
0:21 Speaker 01 It's July the 26th, 2006. Sunrise, in the city of Bayamum, Cuba.
0:32 Speaker 01 In the Plaza de la Patria, something special is stirring. At this early hour, it would normally be all but empty. This morning, it's full to bursting.
0:45 Speaker 01 100,000 people fill every inch of the plaza and the surrounding streets. Many are dressed in patriotic red t-shirts. Almost all are holding tiny Cuban flags.
0:59 Speaker 01 They're here to commemorate events that took place on this very day 53 years earlier, when a gang of rebels attacked the Moncada Army barracks.
1:10 Speaker 01 To many in the country, this is a cherished event. The opening sally of the Cuban Revolution.
1:19 Speaker 01 It was also the first time that most Cubans had ever heard the name of the rebels leader. A name they would never forget. Fidel Castro.
1:39 Speaker 01 As the sun fills the plaza with daylight, an elderly man with a patchy gray beard, dressed in military green, shuffles onto a stage.
1:50 Speaker 01 It's the headline act, the one they're all here to see.
1:55 Speaker 01 It's Fidel himself.
1:59 Speaker 01 There's a roar from the crowd, chanting of his name. Then Fidel begins his speech, a lightning-quick one by his standards, just two and a half hours.
2:12 Speaker 01 It's very much a greatest hit set. The evil of Yankee imperialism, the eternal truth of the revolution, Cuba as a beacon of hope in a world benighted by capitalism.
2:26 Speaker 01 There isn't a person in the crowd who's not heard all this before. But still, they applaud and bellow as their leader reaches his denimal before he slopes offstage.
2:45 Speaker 01 And yet, things are not quite as they used to be. Nobody here dares say it, but Fidel is no longer Fidel. He's sallow, listless, ailing, and suddenly very old.
3:06 Speaker 01 In the days following this public appearance, Fidel, the ubiquitous presence in Cuban life, becomes conspicuous by his absence. Hushed rumors swirl.
3:20 Speaker 01 But in a country where nothing is official until Fidel says so, nobody knows what's truly going on.
3:27 Speaker 01 Then, on July 31st, earth-shattering news arrives.
3:37 Speaker 01 At 9:00 PM, a young writer and photographer, Orlando Luis Pardolasso, is at home in Havana, Cuba's bustling capital city.
3:49 Speaker 01 Orlando sits in his apartment with the TV on. Suddenly, a middle-aged man in glasses, dressed in white shirt sleeves, appears on screen, sat in front of a Cuban flag. Orlando leans forward. Head down in a flat monotone voice, the man on the TV begins to read from a piece of paper. "Fidel is exhausted and seriously ill. Surgery is required. There will be a temporary transfer of power."
4:25 Speaker 01 Orlando can barely believe his ears.
4:28 Speaker 02 I called many friends and many friends called me like, "How are you? How are you?" Because we thought Fidel was going to die. Fidel was kind of immortal, it was not conceivable. And I noticed, probably for the first time of my life, a feeling of collective fear. I felt in my body that fear. Is the military going to raid the city? Are they going to be chasing people that are well-known to be dissidents? What are they gonna do?
4:57 Speaker 01 After fifty years of revolution, war, bravado and brinkmanship, not to mention hundreds of assassination attempts, it is Fidel's own body that has brought him low. It's the beginning of the end. And what the people of Cuba are asking themselves is, what comes after the end?
5:22 Speaker 01 Fidel Castro came to power with the Cuban Revolution of 1959, ousting the dictator Fulgencio Batista. In so doing, he constructed his own dictatorship, one quite unlike any other before or since. For the next fifty years Castro was constant, immovable, omnipresent. He occupied every square inch of the island over which he ruled.
5:54 Speaker 03 He saturates the public discourse with his own voice. And that's one means by which he becomes the revolution. A one-face, one-man kind of a revolution through Fidel.
6:08 Speaker 01 His great foe, the United States, dreamed up innumerable ways to eliminate him.
6:15 Speaker 04 There were poisoned cigars, poisoned diving suits with fungal spores that would create a skin disorder and kill him, a poisoned aqua lung that would squirt contaminants straight into his mouth.
6:26 Speaker 01 None of them succeeded. He was the ultimate political survivor. Debate still rages as to whether Castro's dictatorship was communist, nationalist, or something else entirely.
6:42 Speaker 03 I don't think that Fidel was a communist from day one. I do think he was an authoritarian from day one.
6:49 Speaker 01 To cling to power, he was ruthless and brutal, especially to those he deemed a threat to his own supremacy.
6:56 Speaker 02 There was a lot of physical violence. No, you don't have the right to live a life without worshipping the supreme leader.
7:04 Speaker 01 For decades, Castro commanded global attention.
7:09 Speaker 05 He transformed a moderate-sized Caribbean nation into a world player.
7:24 Speaker 01 But in so many ways, Fidel Castro remains profoundly unknowable, both to those who admire him and those who curse his very name.
7:34 Speaker 04 I was denounced by my own neighbors.
7:39 Speaker 06 Fidel's work is gospel. The cruelty was psychological more than anything.
7:45 Speaker 04 Fidel was a person that changed my life. For me, he was a teacher. He taught us how to think.
7:53 Speaker 06 I remember seeing poems that displayed a poster. "Fidel, esta es tu casa." "Fidel, this is your house." They didn't know he was going to take that literally.
8:12 Speaker 01 From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Part One of the Fidel Castro Story.
8:19 Speaker 01 And this is Real Dictators.
8:51 Speaker 01 The island nation of Cuba sits in the Caribbean Sea, roughly ninety miles from Florida. Its natural beauty and all-year-round sunshine have shaped the culture of the island and its people. Cuban writer, Orlando Luis Pardolaso.
9:09 Speaker 02 Cuba is a very, like, a solar nation. We like light. We like music, we like food, we like dancing, we like speaking very loud. So we are very open, extrovert. It's a stereotype, yes, but it constitutes part of our nature as a country.
9:27 Speaker 01 Indeed, to many outsiders, Cuba has seemed like a paradise. When Christopher Columbus arrives here in 1492, he's dazzled. Glittering beaches, towering mountains, lush tropical plant life. He declares the island the most beautiful that eyes have seen, and immediately claims it for the Spanish crown. Columbus is convinced that it's the gateway to Asia. It won't be the last time a great foreign power fails to understand Cuba. The Spanish transform the island. They introduce enslaved people from Africa,
10:09 Speaker 01 Christianity, sugarcane, and disease. According to some estimates, violence, exploitation, and illnesses such as measles and the flu kill off an extraordinary ninety percent of Cuba's native population in the first few decades of colonial settlement.
10:33 Speaker 01 Professor Carlos Ayer of Yale University grew up in 1950s Cuba. At school, he was taught the familiar tales of Spanish rule.
10:45 Speaker 07 I was taught that Cuba could have been the Garden of Eden. And we were told the story of colonization that all North Americans were also taught. Europeans had come and tamed these natives who were uncivilized and improved their lives. But at the very same time, we were taught about the cruelty of the European colonial takeover.
11:09 Speaker 01 In 1511, a leader of the native Cuban population named Artway leads an uprising against the colonizers.
11:18 Speaker 01 As punishment, he's captured and burnt at the stake. So the legend goes, Artway resists Spanish authority to the end.
11:28 Speaker 07 And before the fire was lit, a priest was trying to get him to convert. Said, "Don't you want to go to heaven? If you don't convert, you can't go to heaven." He asked, "Do the Spanish go to heaven?" And the priest said, "Of course they do." Says, "Well, then I'd rather not go to heaven."
11:45 Speaker 01 For four centuries, Cuba is under foreign rule. Then, in the late 19th century, a formidable independence movement emerges.
11:55 Speaker 01 The emblem of the struggle is the writer Jose Martí.
12:01 Speaker 01 Lilian Guerra is professor of Cuban and Caribbean history at the University of Florida and the author of "The Myth of Jose Martí."
12:10 Speaker 03 So Jose Martí is something of a unique figure, not just for Cubans, but for all of Latin America. He was, from a very early age, an opponent of Spanish rule of Cuba. He was this extremely energetic, extremely committed activist. And he succeeded in fusing together what was by then a very large exile community of pro-independence Cubans in the United States with the military on the island.
12:40 Speaker 01 In February 1895, Cuban rebels begin a war of independence. Martí joins the fight and is martyred in his first battle.
12:50 Speaker 01 But Cuba's thirst for independence cannot be killed.
12:55 Speaker 01 The war is attritional. With grim irony, it's now Spanish soldiers who are ravaged by disease. Among them is Angel Castro, a nineteen-year-old peasant from Galicia, northern Spain.
13:13 Speaker 01 Angel falls ill repeatedly: typhus, malaria, rheumatism. Somehow, the boy survives. Conflict grinds on until 1898, at which point the United States intervenes, tipping the balance in the rebels' favor. After four hundred years of colonial rule, Cuba is free at last.
13:40 Speaker 01 Well, sort of.
13:44 Speaker 01 After assisting Cuba in defeating Spain, the US is keen to assert itself as a regional power and to protect the financial interests of American landowners, such as the United Fruit Company, who possess vast swathes of the island and its wealth.
14:02 Speaker 01 The US occupies Cuba for several years and meddles in Cuban affairs for decades afterwards.
14:09 Speaker 03 The United States, it had a kind of standing, self-authorized right to intervene whenever US investments were jeopardized, or as US officials would have put it, "when Cubans jeopardize their own democracy."
14:22 Speaker 01 For ordinary Cubans, this is naked imperialism and a source of enormous resentment.
14:30 Speaker 01 But the Spanish at least have been sent packing. Among them, young soldier Angel Castro. Though it won't be long before he's back. Strangely, for Angel, the island that very nearly finished him off turns out to be the making of him.
14:49 Speaker 01 Jonathan Hanson is senior lecturer at Harvard University and the author of Young Castro: The Making of a Revolutionary.
15:00 Speaker 07 He was from a dirt poor family. Things were so bad for his family in Spain that he took his chances and returned to Cuba thinking that there would be a lot of opportunity to make a life for himself amid all the rebuilding that would have to be done after the war. First, he worked as a contractor, cutting down forests, carting sugarcane, working for the big planters in eastern Cuba. He made a business for himself. He bought an inn for himself. And then eventually was able to buy a sugar plantation and then expand it so that eventually he committed a sugar plantation of 42 square miles in some of Cuba's most valuable cane-growing farmland.
15:43 Speaker 07 So it's an unusual story of literal rags to riches.
15:52 Speaker 01 At 35, Angel marries Maria Luisa Argutereus. They have five children, two of whom die in infancy. Angel lives to work. As the years pass, he spends more and more time at the Castro farmstead. Maria Luisa doesn't care for country life. The marriage breaks down. Angel's eye now turns towards his 17-year-old housemate, Lina Rus Gonzalez. Estranged from his first wife, though still married to her, Angel fathers seven children with Lina. Another child, Angel's 13th in total,
16:36 Speaker 01 is born from a liaison with a local woman. The third child he has with Lina, a son they call Fidel, is born on August 13, 1926. The boy's childhood is fraught with illness and incident. A bout of sepsis nearly kills him. At the age of four, he comes close to drowning. These are the first of the many near-death experiences that will form a crucial part of the Castro legend of indestructibility. Privilege and luck is how Fidel himself characterized the circumstances of his upbringing. Privilege because of his father's wealth, luck because the wealth had been earned,
17:21 Speaker 01 not inherited. Being a rich man's grandson would have made him spoiled, so Fidel reckoned, unable to be a man of the people as he claimed to be.
17:35 Speaker 07 His early days were on his parents' vast plantation, and he hung out with the local kids who worked for his father in the sugar industry. He was ecumenical in his friendships. There were a lot of poor Latin peasants on his father's farm, as well as black Haitian laborers and their kids on his father's farm, and Castro just didn't see color or class as a boundary.
18:02 Speaker 01 But any nascent sense of the future revolutionary isn't encouraged by Fidel's parents. The only thing that matters to his father is getting on in the world.
18:13 Speaker 07 Fidel didn't grow up very ideological. His dad wasn't even much of a nationalist. Fidel became an ardent nationalist, but his dad didn't talk a lot about politics. This guy was strict, he wasn't fun, he didn't play with his children. The ideology was work hard, be disciplined, just get out of poverty.
18:35 Speaker 01 Money provides the Castro children with things their parents never had, including expensive educations in Cuba's big cities. Fidel is dispatched to a Jesuit boarding school in Santiago. Here, he excels academically and on the sports field. He is precocious and impudent.
18:57 Speaker 01 When Franklin D. Roosevelt wins a historic third term as US president in 1940, a 14-year-old Fidel writes a letter to congratulate him and asks the president to send him a $10 bill. To his annoyance, the cash is not forthcoming. The boy cannot stay out of trouble. He's a risk taker, the class rebel, a magnet for conflict. There are stories of fistfights with other classmates and reckless displays of adolescent machismo.
19:35 Speaker 01 Michael Bustamante is associate professor and director of Cuban Studies at the University of Miami.
19:42 Speaker 02 Castro was kind of an outsider. There's this sense of a guy with a chip on his shoulder. His father had done quite well for himself, but he wasn't from the city either. So I think because of that, he always wanted to impress everybody around him.
19:56 Speaker 01 Such as the time when Fidel claims he can fly.
20:00 Speaker 02 He went up to the second floor and jumped to prove that he could fly and came crashing down. So that says something about kind of him being willing to, one, he had to lie, but on the other hand, sort of go to the mat to try to prove a point, right? Somebody who took sort of disputes personally.
20:21 Speaker 01 At 16, Fidel enters the Colegio de Belén in Havana, the most prestigious school in the land. The building is stunning, a jewel of neoclassical architecture. Walking the marble corridors are the sons of oligarchs. Eduardo Saya Spasan was a first-year pupil at Belén when Fidel was in his final year.
20:48 Speaker 06 I suppose my family would be described as a member of the old oligarchy in Cuba. I come from a family of politicians. I have two grandparents that were senators and my father was a senator also. Fidel is nine years older than I am. But I remember while playing on the campus of Belen, seeing a lot of senior athletes practicing and what have you. And I know that Fidel Castro was one of them. A dear friend of mine remembers hunting with Fidel Castro with a shotgun
21:29 Speaker 06 full of salt and hitting some of the Haitians that were working at his father's plantation. I mean, they were 12 years old kids to that type of thing. But he had a wild streak all of his life.
21:47 Speaker 01 His teachers tried to stamp out this wild streak. Order, discipline and mission. These are the Jesuit values.
21:58 Speaker 01 A slither of Fidel Castro will forever bear the mark of his schooling.
22:08 Speaker 01 Alex von Tunselmann is the author of Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and the Cold War in the Caribbean.
22:17 Speaker 04 One of the real keys to understanding Fidel is that he was deeply Jesuit at some level. Now, of course, when he became a communist, he of course became an atheist, like all good communists would. But I think those Jesuit principles of simplicity, self-denial and very strong dedication to his beliefs. That was something that sort of really helps explain some of his psychology. This kind of deep commitment to his causes and so on. And much as his particular ideas could flex, I don't think he ever lost this incredible tenacity.
22:51 Speaker 01 Fidel arrives at Berlin in 1942, halfway through the presidency of Fulgencio Batista.
22:58 Speaker 01 A sly, pugnacious army veteran. Batista has been a dominant force in Cuban politics for a decade. The muscle propping up a series of presidents, always with the approval of Washington, who see him as a man they can do business with, a check against Cubas far left. In 1940, the US-backed Batista comes to power, the first man to win the presidency under a new liberal constitution.
23:29 Speaker 01 It's the promise of a new dawn.
23:32 Speaker 01 But any high hopes are soon dispelled. Corruption infests Batista's government.
23:40 Speaker 01 The constitution forbids back-to-back presidential terms. So in 1944, Batista leaves office. For now.
23:53 Speaker 01 Things aren't any better under the man who replaces him, Ramon Grau. Corruption continues to soar.
24:03 Speaker 01 Havana is becoming a playground for the rich and high-rolling, especially Americans wanting to hide from either the law or morality. Frequently both.
24:15 Speaker 01 The capital's nightclubs, casinos, and brothels do a roaring trade and give the US mafia somewhere to launder their ill-gotten gains. Organized crime stretches into every part of public life, as Fidel, a freshman law student in 1945, now discovers.
24:37 Speaker 07 Arriving at Havana University, he was treated as a hick. Even though he'd been to some pretty superior schools, he thought at first that his athleticism would sort of carry him into the important social circles, but he learned very quickly that in fact he wasn't a truly world-class athlete, and there were many in Cuba. And so he would have to try his hand in politics. And politics was really the game at Havana University. And anybody who was anybody in Cuba had come through Havana University and played the game. Political game, and it was a rough-and-tumble game. It was a lethal game.
25:12 Speaker 01 Violent gangs dominate student politics and even infect university administration. With links to police and government, gangs can manipulate grades and influence recruitment.
25:27 Speaker 01 When university staff displeased them, the gangs exact the ultimate punishment.
25:34 Speaker 01 In the 1940s, numerous university employees emerged for simply doing their jobs. There are no safe spaces on this campus.
25:44 Speaker 07 There were one group of students allied against other group of students, some of them conservatives, some of them liberal, some of them tied to the military, some tied to the government, all tied to power. And Castro was trying to figure out a way to sort of use this to propel himself. He was interested in power himself, figuring out how to propel himself into influence among these people who had parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles were all involved in the power politics of Cuba.
26:13 Speaker 01 Ambitious, rambunctious Fidel takes to gang life like a doctor water, and he's not shy in showing his worth as a man of arms.
26:24 Speaker 01 As Fidel enters his second year, a new student begins to ruffle feathers. Leonel Gomez is a young man in a hurry. He boasts about his intention of seizing the top student jobs in Havana. Positions Fidel and his allies fancy for themselves. Verbal warnings are given. Gomez is told to keep humble, don't start conflicts you cannot finish.
26:51 Speaker 01 The kid rolls his eyes. He has no intention of coming to heal. So Fidel decides to send him a message he can't ignore.
27:05 Speaker 01 It's December the 10th, 1946. The start of Cuba's dry season, when Havana is at its most beautiful.
27:14 Speaker 01 The strains of Son Cubano music tumble from open windows. The streets buzz with young people, enjoying the fresh, brilliant sunshine. Among them is Leonel Gomez, off to attend a football game on the outskirts of his campus.
27:32 Speaker 01 He doesn't know it, but he's being hunted.
27:39 Speaker 01 Leonel makes his way into the stadium to enjoy the match. Meanwhile, Fidel and his fellow gang members prowl the area, armed with guns.
27:51 Speaker 01 About two hours later, the final whistle blows.
27:56 Speaker 01 The crowd begins to file out. And as Gomez leaves the stadium, Fidel pulls the trigger.
28:07 Speaker 01 He's an excellent shot. He's had years of practice hunting on the family estate. The bullet finds its target. Gomez is shot in the back, though his wounds are not fatal. Fidel flees the scene.
28:25 Speaker 01 He rushes to the home of a friend and comes straight out with it: "I just shot Leonel."
28:32 Speaker 01 It's a brazen act, committed in broad daylight.
28:37 Speaker 01 But Fidel faces no repercussions from the law. The cancer of corruption and conspiracy seized to that.
28:49 Speaker 07 Fidel was often accused of shooting this person or that person in this period of his life. But because of the power politics and the way that the student university gangs were connected to the government gangs and the government was connected to the police, nobody ever investigated that shooting.
29:07 Speaker 01 It's been suggested by his son that Fidel is intending a warning, rather than an assassination attempt. But if he's just trying to put the frighteners on Gómez, it's a hell of a risky way to go about it. What makes the shooting of Lionel Gómez even more remarkable is that it occurs at the very point that Fidel is attempting to make a name for himself as an anti-corruption activist. In speeches and manifestos, he rails against the influence of gangs, government corruption, and US imperialism. Like many young Cubans, Castro sees America's gigantic business interests on the island as the root of his country's ills.
29:52 Speaker 01 In making his arguments, he constantly invokes the lodestar of Cuban nationalism, the sainted Jose Martí.
30:01 Speaker 03 Without Martí, we don't have a Fidel Castro, and we don't really have any politician who would have been worth, you know, his weight in sugar, because there was no other figure in the Cuban political landscape as important, even though he was dead. And Fidel steps very much into an imitation of Martí.
30:23 Speaker 01 To his delight, he begins to receive press coverage. Fidel Castro is suddenly a rising star. He is an impressive orator: stern, self-righteous, yet passionate and charismatic. He's a striking figure too: tall, handsome and powerfully built. But Fidel's burgeoning identity as a moral crusader turns old friends into enemies.
30:54 Speaker 07 In order to then make a name for himself as a politician, he had to break away from some of the more corrupt, more violent, more self-serving student leaders/gang leaders in Havana University. And not everybody liked the direction which he was headed. Often, his very life was in peril, whether from the Cuban government or from the gangs themselves.
31:16 Speaker 01 On numerous occasions in the coming years, he's hauled in by the police in connection with other crimes, including the murder of an officer. When Manolo Castro, a senior figure in a prominent gang, is gunned down upon leaving a cinema, his namesake Fidel is the prime suspect. Whatever the truth behind these allegations, the twin interests of idealism and violence are becoming the central pillars of the Castro brand.
31:54 Speaker 01 Roughly 150 miles southeast of Cuba lies the Dominican Republic, ruled by its president Rafael Trujillo.
32:04 Speaker 01 Trujillo is seen by many Cubans as a Yankee-made monster. He was originally trained by the Marines during an American occupation of the Dominican Republic in the 1920s. When he tortured and murdered his way to power in 1930, Washington chose to recognize his US-friendly government. Ever since, he's been a lightning rod for anti-American sentiment throughout Latin America.
32:31 Speaker 04 Rafael Trujillo ran an incredibly repressive, violent, horrific regime. He was very good at manipulating American diplomats and presenting himself opportunistically as a great anti-communist. At one point, he actually set up a fake communist party, had it run against him in an election, and then executed and got rid of the people he had paid to run it. He was really seen as this completely horrendous figure who was working with the worst of American power and the most corrupt, violent, appalling dictator in the region. So, young people like Fidel Castro in the 40s were violently against him.
33:15 Speaker 01 Hi, listeners. I hope you're enjoying this taste of the Fidel Castro story. To hear more, after you've finished this episode, search "real dictators" in your podcast app and hit follow. Episodes 2 to 10 are waiting for you now. In the summer of 1947, Fidel hears about a force being put together in Cuba, a brigade known as the Caribbean Legion.
33:39 Speaker 01 Its goal is to invade the Dominican Republic, overthrow Trujillo, and strike a blow against US influence. The legion is an eclectic bunch: Dominicans, Cubans, Venezuelans, and Costa Ricans.
33:56 Speaker 01 Officially, this is a renegade operation. Behind the scenes, it's secretly funded by members of the Cuban government. The whole thing is a mishmash of righteous cause and naked self-interest. The perfect fit for a young Fidel Castro.
34:19 Speaker 01 In July, Fidel makes his way to a training camp, set up in the city of Holguin. Fifteen hundred men thrown together, preparing for an invasion.
34:31 Speaker 01 In addition to boots on the ground, the brigade has a small fleet of military aircraft at its disposal, as well as naval vessels needed to carry the invaders.
34:44 Speaker 01 Before long, Fidel and his new campaneros set up on Cayo Confites, a sandy barren patch of land, where they prepare for their attack.
34:58 Speaker 01 As clandestine operations go, it's a bit of a joke. By early August, it seems half of Latin America, including Rafael Trujillo, knows about the expedition.
35:11 Speaker 01 Back on the Castro family farm, even Fidel's parents get wind of it. And that their thrill-seeking boy has joined up.
35:21 Speaker 01 Fidel's mother Lena is distraught when she hears the news. If those gangsters don't kill her son, then Trujillo surely will. Lena sets off for Cayo Confites. She'll drag the boy back by the ears if she has to. When she arrives, Fidel is astonished to see her. His dear old mother in her daydress and smart shoes, rubbing shoulders with hardened revolutionaries. Lena lays it on thick. She appeals to his heart: "Think of your family." And to his head: "It's madness. It won't even work."
35:58 Speaker 01 But Fidel is unmoved. Only dead will I desist in my plan to go. Lena departs, almost certain that she will never see her son again. But as the weeks pass, pressure grows on the Cuban government to stop the expedition. The White House is concerned that if Trujillo is toppled, he might be replaced with a communist, a prospect Washington cannot countenance. In September, the Cuban government buckles. It's all too messy and risky. The Invasion Party is ordered to disband immediately.
36:41 Speaker 01 Fidel urges that they ignore this and press ahead. Yet it would be folly to continue, especially as the Cuban navy has been sent to intercept their ships. The game is up. Now, Fidel senses danger. If the whole thing's off, he had best disappear. Making his escape, he has no choice but to swim ashore with a machine gun strapped to his back. Soon the story will be wildly embellished, that the swim was nine miles, sharks nibbling at his toes, Fidel the action man.
37:26 Speaker 01 The expedition is a washout, but a formative part of the Castro mythology is taking shape.
37:33 Speaker 04 I think you have to understand Fidel Castro within a Cuban culture that's very much centered around machismo and masculinity. Fidel had great physical prowess and also kind of this machismo to an almost ludicrous extent. There's a story that he once rode a bicycle, a full face on into a wall just to prove he could. He was someone who was not at all afraid to put himself in situations of grave danger. What's extraordinary is that he survived all of these. He was already beginning to build his legend as this kind of Superman.
38:11 Speaker 01 It's a similar story a few months later in the city of Bogota.
38:17 Speaker 01 In April 1948, Fidel travels to the Colombian capital as part of a student delegation for the Pan American Conference. But the event is subsumed in violence and chaos.
38:31 Speaker 01 The liberal candidate in Colombia's upcoming presidential election is gunned down in the street. A crime that shocks the nation and instigates 10 days of furious rioting.
38:46 Speaker 01 Fidel is keen to state his own role in the frenzy. "I joined the people. I grabbed a rifle in a police station when it was rushed by the crowd. That experience led me to identify myself even more with the cause of the people." If this sounds like deliberate myth-making, perhaps it is.
39:07 Speaker 04 I think there's a pretty huge amount of myth-making around the Bogotazo generally. There were stories later that he'd killed six priests during the Bogotazo and all this. Well, no priests were killed during the Bogotazo, so that didn't happen. But what did seem to happen very consistently was that wherever trouble was, there was Fidel in it, somehow mixed up.
39:31 Speaker 01 Back in Havana, Fidel finds a new vehicle for his populist zeal. He joins an emerging political party, the Otoxus, founded and led by a charismatic liberal democrat by the name of Eddie Chivas.
39:49 Speaker 03 Eddie Chivas was most famous for having a radio program on Sunday nights, and everybody tuned in. He was an incredible speaker, always taking these morally righteous positions.
40:00 Speaker 01 And Fidel is becoming something of a radio personality himself. Jennifer Lamb is Associate Professor of History at Brown University and the author of "The Subject of Revolution: Between Political and Popular Culture in Cuba."
40:17 Speaker 03 As we had into the late 40s and 50s, there are some very famous radio politicians, including Eddie Chivas, who is kind of running on an anti-corruption platform. Castro becomes a kind of acolyte of Chivas. And that combination of media savvy and lawyerly persuasion is very much a characteristic of Castro's media personality as well.
40:43 Speaker 03 See, that was kind of a carbon copy of Eddie Chivas. Literally, his radio program followed Eddie Chivas's program every Sunday night. And it's effectively censored. I mean, I tried to get copies, but it's very unlikely that the Cuban government would ever approve your ability to hear him from those years, because of course, he was in favor of democracy elections and sounded very much like he was imitating his mentor Eddie Chivas.
41:13 Speaker 01 In the 1948 presidential election, Chivas performed strongly. But the victor is Carlos Prio, the candidate of the autenticos, the party of the departing president Ramón Grau.
41:29 Speaker 01 For the next two years, corruption rolls on unabated, as does Chivas's appeal to the masses and Fidel Castro's commitment to Chivas's cause. Fidel makes a first run as an autodoxo delegate in his home province of Oriente. At party events, Fidel does what Fidel does. He's bombastic, self-important, self-righteous, and captivating in preaching the gospel according to José Martí. Chivas can't fail to take note.
42:05 Speaker 01 That is, until August 1951, when Eddie Chivas's career comes to a shocking end.
42:16 Speaker 03 These radio appearances that he made often took the form of indictments. So he would come, present an accusation that someone in the government was guilty of corruption in some capacity. There's obviously a dramatic and a theatrical quality to all of this. But one day, he presented such an accusation that it turned out he could not defend and ended up kind of theatrically shooting himself in the course of that broadcast, a wound from which he eventually died. I think most scholars today believe that he did not intend that to be the endpoint of that broadcast, that it was accidental, that this was designed to kind of bring a dramatic flourish, but obviously, of course, one that went tragically wrong.
43:03 Speaker 01 Whether Chivas's death is a wildly romantic political gesture or simply a terrible accident, its effect on the public is huge.
43:13 Speaker 03 There was a massive, massive funeral procession. Fidel Castro was a pallbearer. My mother lived very close by, and so she went to the funeral of Eddie Chivas. And there were a million people there. The photographs are extraordinary.
43:28 Speaker 01 The death of Chivas is a disaster for his supporters. But for any ambitious up and comers, it also provides impetus. There is now a vacancy for an idealistic Cuban nationalist prepared to pick up the mantle of Martí and Chivas. Cometh the hour, cometh Fidel.
43:56 Speaker 03 A lot of his power came largely from the historical context in which he lived, which he exploited to his advantage. Great expectations that had been building for decades for Cuba to be the kind of democracy that children had grown up thinking that it should have been. And so a lot of what got invested in Fidel Castro was Cubanidad, you know, Cuban identity and Cuban aspirations.
44:24 Speaker 01 Amid the chaos of the last few years, Castro has made some concessions to ordinary life. At long last, he's got his degree and can start earning a crust as a practicing lawyer and wean himself off a very generous stipend from his parents. He's also got hitched. The lucky lady is Mirta Diaz Ballart, a beautiful polished young woman from a prominent conservative family who also happens to have first-rate political connections. On the surface, the young couple are a picture of Cuban bourgeois happiness. They even have a luxurious honeymoon in the United States. In 1949, a son is born:
45:08 Speaker 01 Fidelito, little Fidel. It's all a very long way from Castro, the gangster and gun-toting revolutionary. In fact, even Fulgencio Batista, former president and symbol of government corruption, demonstrates his approval of Fidel's union.
45:27 Speaker 06 Mirta's father was a kind of pro-Batista guy, and Batista sends them a wedding gift.
45:35 Speaker 05 He gave them a beautiful set of alabaster vases, one of which Fidel smashed when he told Mirta at one point that they were not going to go live in Paris, which was a promise, something that they must have talked about when they were, you know, in love and on the beach. But then in fact Castro was going to dedicate himself to becoming a politician, run for office, and rise through Cuban politics to become a leader. And Mirta collapsed in tears: "Oh, Fidel, you promised us we would go to Paris." And Fidel said: "Coni, Mirta", and smashed one of the Batista vases on the floor.
46:15 Speaker 01 Since leaving office in 1944, Batista has largely been out of the picture, twiddling his thumbs in Daytona Beach, Florida, ruminating on his own dashed hopes. Elections are scheduled for June 1, 1952.
46:33 Speaker 01 With just weeks to go until polling day, Batista’s campaign for the presidency is floundering. Democracy isn’t giving him what he craves, so he tosses it aside.
46:47 Speaker 01 Exploiting his army connections, Batista takes control of the military.
46:55 Speaker 01 He claims that the corruption and incompetence of the current president, Carlos Prio, is steering Cuba into a national emergency. Only he, Batista, can pull the country clear of disaster. And anyone who dares to disagree is met with violent repression.
47:13 Speaker 03 In large part, I would argue that he was bored sitting in Daytona Beach. He was out of power. Then, boom, he’s back with a military coup in 1952. There are a thousand officers who are arrested, thousands of opponents flee into exile, and he rules through his own 183-person fake council.
47:39 Speaker 01 As Prio is forced out of office, Batista cancels the upcoming elections and suspends various constitutional guarantees.
47:49 Speaker 01 Democrats across the island are appalled. Conservatives, liberals, socialists, united in revulsion for Batista.
48:03 Speaker 01 A schoolteacher named Ube Matos is in the classroom when a colleague brings the news to him.
48:10 Speaker 01 Speaking many years later, Matos recalls his response.
48:17 Speaker 07 I went out into the streets with the young people of different schools. We felt we'd been slapped in the face. Nearly 6 million Cubans have been slapped in the face. We had to say no, because it made no sense. With less than 3 months to the general elections, a candidate who the polls were predicting had no chance of winning uses military force to cancel the elections and pronounce himself as president by force. I said, "Cuba has sunk. Cuba is finished." I also thought that this fight would take over my life.
48:55 Speaker 01 For Fidel too, the Batista coup is the moment everything changes.
49:01 Speaker 05 Castro ran around the city of Havana and elsewhere saying, "Who's going to stand up to this guy?" At first, he thought he was alone, but he wasn't alone. And so, he began to conceive of the idea of a violent revolution, while others, many of his friends, were insisting that the non-violence was the way to go. So that became a real divide in the groups of his peers, who were all committed to change.
49:25 Speaker 01 Fidel's resolve is only increased when the US recognizes Batista's government. Proof, in his mind, that Cuba is a plaything of US imperialism.
49:39 Speaker 01 The men and women who sign up for Fidel's secret scheme are drawn from what is dubbed "The Movement", a disparate group of young people, angry, impatient, and intent on toppling Batista. The rhetoric is unmistakably Cuban. "Marti's Dream of Cuba Libre", "Free Cuba", as yet unfulfilled. Fidel decides that the revolution will begin in the east of the island, with an attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago. Soon, training gets underway. Though, as it is often the way with Fidel, revolutionary zeal outweighs thorough preparation.
50:22 Speaker 01 Clay pigeon shooting at a Havana firing range is about the limit for most of Castro's brothers in arms. Some don't even get that. They're taught how to handle guns, but not actually shoot them.
50:38 Speaker 01 Information about the plans is strictly rationed. Beyond Fidel and his brother Raul, barely a soul knows any of the details.
50:50 Speaker 01 One of those chosen few is Natty Revuelta, a striking, sophisticated young woman from the top drawer of Havana society. If Fidel's wife Mieta is staid and dependable, Natty is instinctual and adventurous, a rebel by nature.
51:10 Speaker 01 Natty is infatuated with Fidel. In time, she becomes his lover and his financier.
51:19 Speaker 01 Ill-conceived as it is, the insurrection plan is not cheap. Fidel's father may have deep pockets, but there's no chance he'll pick up the tab for a harebrained suicide mission. Natty, however, is swept up in revolutionary fervor. She's only too pleased to bankroll Fidel's fantastical ambitions. By pawning pieces of her jewelry, she raises $6,000. Natty has put her money where her mouth is, and so Fidel entrusts her with a special mission. It will be her job to deliver Fidel's manifesto to reporters, diplomats and politicians, the key players in Havana, whom Fidel expects to rally to his cause.
52:06 Speaker 01 The manifesto is light on practicalities, heavy on stirring nationalistic rhetoric. "The revolution is born in the soul of the Cuban people, of young men seeking a new Cuba."
52:21 Speaker 01 There's nothing close to a mention of the likes of Marx or Lenin. On that front, Fidel keeps his powder dry and his options open.
52:38 Speaker 01 The date for the Moncada attack is set. July 26, 1953.
52:46 Speaker 01 The timing is symbolic. The year is the 100th anniversary of Jose Matti's birth.
52:53 Speaker 01 Plus, the day before the attack, it's carnival in Santiago. The perfect cover for a load of young visitors to arrive in the city.
53:04 Speaker 01 Fidel also concludes that the soldiers at the barracks will either be on leave, partying, or hungover, and in no condition to repel an attack.
53:17 Speaker 01 In mid-July, a small chicken farm is rented, a few miles outside Santiago. In dry wells and outbuildings, Fidel's deputies hired a huge cache of weapons and army uniforms.
53:32 Speaker 01 With a few days to go, the rebels convene. Fidel himself leaves late on the 24th, less than two days before the action begins. It's a long drive from Havana, 550 miles. Halfway through, Fidel identifies a problem. He's left his glasses at home.
53:55 Speaker 01 In the town of Santa Clara, he finds an optician's and buys a new pair.
54:01 Speaker 01 Fingers crossed, they're the right prescription.
54:10 Speaker 01 It's late in the evening of the 25th by the time he reaches the farm.
54:18 Speaker 01 The attack is scheduled for dawn.
54:25 Speaker 01 Most of the others are there waiting for him, on edge and still in the dark, metaphorically and literally. To keep a low profile, the lights are switched off. By 4:00 a.m., everyone is present. Uniforms and weapons are handed out. But still, Fidel doesn't divulge the plan.
54:48 Speaker 01 Suddenly, a shot rings out.
54:52 Speaker 01 Gun flash briefly illuminates the pitch-black room. A nervous rebel has accidentally squeezed the trigger of his rifle.
55:04 Speaker 01 Cuando Fidel finalmente revela el plan, es un clásico actuación de Castro.
55:11 Speaker 01 “Si todo va bien”, dice, “están en y fuera en diez minutos. Esos soldados desesperados no sabrán qué les ha tocado”. La confianza en su pecho se envenena, aunque no todos están a salvo. Dos pequeños grupos de rebeldes se alarman. Para ellos, esto suena como una misión kamikaze.
55:35 Speaker 01 Con tristeza, expresan sus preocupaciones. Uno de ellos revela que no tenía idea de que se le pedía que hiciera algo ilegal. Castro se asombró. Tanta negatividad, tanta despierta. Los hombres están colocados bajo guardia armada y llevados a una habitación trasera. Una vez que los otros se han desplazado, estarán libres de ir. No habrá retribución de Fidel. Presumiblemente, una vida pasada en la vergüenza de su cowardía es considerada la pena suficiente. Para todos los demás, está a punto de empezar la carrera de las barreras de Moncada.
56:24 Speaker 05 Él pensó que Moncada era una forma de despertar a la nación. Planificó lo que realmente es un esfuerzo de cerebros, pero creo que esperaba enviar un mensaje, mostrar al mundo que los hucuns no eran pasivos, que no eran, en su forma, muertos intelectualmente, moralmente.
56:46 Speaker 01 Antes de levantar el sol, Fidel hace su discurso final. Intenta encender a sus heróicos de la infancia: César, Napoleón, Alexander el Grande, y, por supuesto, José Martí. “Si ganas, las aspiraciones de Martí se realizarán”, promete. “Somos nosotros los que darán el primer grito de libertad o muerte”.
57:17 Speaker 01 Outside, the sky is still dark. A field of black dotted with shining stars. Fidel's 150 men clamber into 16 vehicles.
57:32 Speaker 01 Headlights switch on, engines growl into life.
57:37 Speaker 01 A kinetic energy charges the morning air. For this happy few, destiny awaits.
57:49 Speaker 01 Very soon, however, problems arise.
57:55 Speaker 01 One car suffers a puncture, two others take wrong turns and get lost. This is more wacky races than the Normandy landings.
58:06 Speaker 01 At around 5:20 a.m., the convoy reaches the barracks. The rebels inside the lead car jump out, disarm the guards, and open the gate for the others to drive through.
58:19 Speaker 01 But the lead car is now sat, blocking the entrance to the barracks. Two nearby soldiers see what's happening and reach for their machine guns. In the car behind, Fidel puts his foot down and plows into the curb. The engine stalls. All around, there is smoke, screaming, a deafening hail of bullets.
58:44 Speaker 01 Fidel has got it all wrong. Rather than there being only a few men with sore heads, the barracks is teeming with alert, armed soldiers. It's carnage. Within moments, numerous rebels lie dead on the ground. Others are injured. With the insurrection in tatters, there's a scramble to the cars. Fidel makes it into the back of one as it screeches away.
59:14 Speaker 01 Other rebels positioned a sniper cover in a nearby hospital, run into the wards pretending to be patients. The ruse doesn’t keep them safe for long. Government soldiers turf them out of their beds. They’re beaten mercilessly, interrogated, and eventually shot. It’s hard to imagine that Fidel’s master plan could have gone any worse.
59:51 Speaker 01 By the afternoon, Fidel himself is back on the chicken farm. Exhausted, but alive. He’s joined by a few dozen others. He appeals to them to keep going. “This is just a momentary setback,” he assures. It doesn’t wash. Shell-shocked, many of the rebels decide to head back to Havana, hoping to evade detection or await whatever Batista decides to do with them. “Suit yourselves,” says Fidel. With nineteen fellow survivors, he begins a trudge deep into the oriental countryside that he knows so well. He has the mountains in his sights.
1:00:34 Speaker 01 For him, the fight has only just begun.
1:00:48 Speaker 01 In the next episode...
1:00:53 Speaker 01 The hunt for Fidel is on. Castro wrestles with Marxism and begins another affair. Attempting to reignite the revolution, he swims naked across the US border. And while in exile in Mexico, he’ll strike up a rapport with a scruffy Argentine known as Che. That’s next time.
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