S2 Episode 2 - "Lo Hicimos"

In Havana this year, we talked to Fidel Castro about the irony of his 1959 trip to the United States. A friendly CIA encounter in New York, but an ominous meeting in Washington with the American vice president. And I was invited to talk to Nixon. About an hour and a half or so. That he was interested about uh Cuba. Yeah. Субтитры создавал DimaTorzok A series of social changes. I remember that Nixon looked very young to listen to me with attention. And then we said, why?

Later on I found out that immediately after our interview was over Nixon sent a memorandum to Eisenhower. Telling him that I was a communist and that I had to be eliminated.

Welcome to Blowback. I'm Brendan James. No a call. Yeah. And this is episode two. Lo hicimos. Now last episode was really more of a prologue. We introduced you to a lot of the characters that are gonna be important in uh this season's drama, and we front loaded some of the spicier bits.

of trivia. But this is the episode where we're really going to get started and dive into this season's story. This episode is about the Cuban Revolution, but much like we did with Iraq in season one, we're going to trace the relationship between Cuba and the United States a bit further back so that we can understand the chain of events that leads to the revolution in nineteen fifty nine and of course everything that's gonna come after it. Right.

Right. And the way that we're going to get there is by telling the story of how this small island in the Caribbean, you know, exploited by European I uh European irony, guys. Yeah, exploited by European irony guys for centuries. We're gonna see the story of this.

small island in the Caribbean that's going to be exploited for the most part by Spain and then by the US, which after the Spanish American War leaves behind this neocolony of its own in Cuba, and how all of that is going to lead in a straight line to the rise of Fulgencio Batista, who ran Cuba until he was deposed by the Cuban rebels in the end of the fifties. He's the first boss in this season. Yes, he's the first castle that we have to go to.

Exactly. So we'll see how Batista's government allied with the US, its military, its capitalists, and its mafia. How he ruled through a term called gangsterismo. We'll look at the resistance to this that simmers and starts to boil up in the years leading up to the revolution in the late fifties, and then bam, we will see the revolution itself. Which liberates the country and sets it on a collision course with the United States.

In 1820, Thomas Jefferson said this. Cuba is the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of states. The United States ought, at the first possible opportunity, to take Cuba. Cuba. Here's something Stephen Douglas, US Senator and Abraham Lincoln's one time opponent for president, said in a speech in New Orleans in eighteen fifty eight. It is our destiny to have Cuba, and it is folly to debate the question. It naturally belongs to the American continent.

And here's Jose Marti, godfather of Cuban nationalism, a man who'd once lived in the United States, and here's what he said of the country. Quote. I have lived inside the monster, and know its entrance.

Before the dirty Yankee ever set his sights on Cuba, the island had fallen into the dominion of an older empire, Spain. The Spanish fully arrived in the sixteenth century, and much like we think of the history of the colonies in North America,

The Spanish conquered and virtually wiped out the indigenous people, the Taino and Guanayatebe inhabitants of the island. Recent scholarship actually shows their heritage was not completely wiped out, but this was not for lack of trying on the part of the Spaniards. And really there's a whole deeper history of resistance to the Spanish colonizers by the indigenous people of Cuba at this time. Figures like Chief Atue, a Taino chief who was the first.

Of a whole line of people to struggle against the invaders. Fidel Castro would, decades after the revolution, cite Atuay as an example of Cuba's history of this. And our story focuses on the modern timeline, but it really does begin all the way back as soon as the conquistadors got there. Spain initially used Cuba as a kind of a launching pad to other parts of the New World. It really wasn't a rich colony in and of itself at first.

But as the 18th century became the 19th century, French migrants started to pour into Cuba because they were fleeing the Haitian Revolution that was happening next door. And so these were members of the colonial upper crust. Of another imperial outpost. And these entrepreneurial guys turned Cuba into basically an agribusiness with huge plantations of slave labor supplied by the Atlantic.

slave trade. And Cuba would become, in the words of one historian, quote, the greatest slave importing colony in the history of the Spanish Empire. So in the nineteenth century, Cuba sees slave rebellions. And also a growing independence movement inspired by the Venezuelan pan American revolutionary Simon Basil.

So by mid-century there was this complex mingling of the Indian Movements and the abolitionist movements, but all of it created a real problem for the Spanish overlords who ended up having to put down a war for Cuban independence in the middle of the 19th century. Right, and by this point we see the looming hand of the Yankee. Yes. The American Empire by this point has been, you know, fairly constricted to the North American continent. Yeah.

And obviously the US stood to gain by supporting Spanish colonial independence movements. Yep. Because that meant that they were eliminating a rival European power. from being able to influence the Western hemisphere. So like we heard in those quotes earlier, American politicians were deeply interested in, you know, acquiring Cuba, um, by whatever means possible. In fact in 1848, Americans offered a hundred million dollars to buy Cuba from Spain.

By the end of the 19th century, Spain still is holding on to Cuba, but the war of independence and the struggles around it have left. A large part of the Cuban countryside in shambles, and all throughout that time, US Capitol has been buying up property and land for bargain basement prices.

And so as the nineteenth century is wrapping up, the United States already has its claws inside of Cuba. You know, they owned nickel, they owned iron, but most importantly, the money was pouring into Thank you.

Well let's talk sugar. Last season we of course saw how the oil under Iraq ground marked that country out for a century of exploitation by Western companies and the governments at their disposal. This season we will see how Cuba's fertile soil and subtropical climate will be turned against its people. by the one crop sugar economy. Two-thirds of Cuba's income comes from one crop, sugar. So sugar, sugar cane, originally got to the New World via Columbus.

But fast forward to the 19th century where we are, and Spain is really pumping sugar out of this little island. Cuba would become the largest sugar exporter in the world. But what goes into making all that sugar? Many peasants must live for the entire year on money earned during the harvest season.

You know, sugar cane gets chopped down and then ground and pressed or pounded to get all of the sugar juice out. And then you boil the sucrose and when it evaporates, you get these, you know, super saturated crystals. All of this required, especially back in the day, a deathly labor process, a hybrid of agricultural and industrial.

developed in these colonies like Cuba. So for months on end, workers would hack away in the cane lands on these twelve foot stalks, two inches thick, the sun's beating down on you, take that chopped up cane to the mills. And then workers there would have to feed stalks into these grinders to get the juice out. And very often you would catch your arm in one of the rollers of the grinders and

Axes that were around the mill for easy access, if this happened, and you just hack off the arm, save the product, save the machinery. So at every stage this was a rather intense twisting and turning of the human body, performed first by slaves. and then a more modern agrarian proletariat. A pure and perfect product of uniform. at the minimum cost to the consumer.

All in all, development of the sugar industry in colonies like Cuba became a key part in the development of capitalism as a whole, and we know how this. Story goes, you know, a colony produces staple commodities, they get sent back to Europe, sold for the benefit of European businesses, meanwhile, nothing of any real benefit is given back to the colony. And what's more, We're gonna see that Cuba's sugar economy, control over it, rights to it, will be a key tool in America's plan to run Cuba.

And so by eighteen ninety five, the Cubans, after, you know, centuries of immiseration and performing this kind of backbreaking labor, rise up against the Spanish once again. And this was the moment, um sort of the coming out party for Jose Marti, who as he had said had been quote, living inside the beast inside the US

and alongside two other generals, he fought and died in the push to liberate Cuba against Spain. And the war in which he died, I think, probably provides the best evidence for that, given the insane brutality that the Spanish resorted to. as they kind of realized that their days were numbered. Right. They started putting civilians into concentration camps. Which is actually it is from this time that the word the phrase concentration camps comes. Yeah. And, you know

Many people starved to death in Cuba. This was, you know, Fidel later called this something like the Vietnam of the nineteenth century. So this final war for Cuban independence against Spain kicks off in eighteen ninety-five. But just three years later, it's in a stalemate, basically. And that is when a third party enters the room.

No rival empire was more interested in Spain's demise than the US of A. As we've talked about, they've been buying up their land. They've been thirsty for Cuba for a long time, either by conquest or purchase. And actually the dream of American annexation of Cuba was shared by many in the white Cuban upper class, including one exile whose cousin was the guy who came up with the phrase

Manifest destiny. So, with this stalemate and the war of independence, a new bigger war was devised, in which the United States would take over Spain's empire in both the Americas. and the Pacific. On february eighth, eighteen ninety-eight, the USS Maine, a second-tier US naval cruiser, explodes and sets. While docked in Havana's Harbor. This kills around 260 people. Now historians tend to say that this was either an accident or an ongoing mystery, but of course the U.S. wasted no time in using.

Да. Hell with Spain. By April, President McKinley writes to Congress that war is basically inevitable. We have to intervene in this conflict between the Cubans and the Spanish. Muttering actually that uh Spain had already said that it was open to negotiating Cuban independence and maybe even cessation to the US. Yeah, he barely mentions that because everyone's ready to go to smash and grab inside of Cuba. You don't really think those people believe. Blew up that boat now.

And so the Spanish American War begins. Teddy Roosevelt leads his rough riders across the tropical battlefields in Cuba. While his comrades across the world rinse our imperial rival in the Spanish holdings of the Philippines and Guam. All the while, back home, media magnates like William Randolph Hearst run the propaganda mill in favor of the war. And the US disguises its ambitions here with an amendment to its declaration of war, disavowing any sovereignty over Cuba once the war is over.

And this was really the moment in world history where US Empire turned from the North American continent, where it had wrenched land from the Native Americans and Mexico, Toward the wider world. A military official, later a general, Leonard Wood, wrote to his wife. This is the first great expedition our country has ever sent oversea and marks the commencement of a new era in our relations with the world.

And and I like how John Hay, who was the Secretary of State at the time, put it. The Spanish American War was, quote, a splendid little war. So four months later, the war is over. Spain has to give up Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Some of these would become official, you know, uh protectorates of the United States.

Others would be just that, if not in name. And certain rebel leaders, for understandable reasons, had welcomed the US into the war to break the tie between them and Spain, but uh most, if not all of them, would come to regret it very soon.

Part of what's happening at this point, I guess, at the beginning of the twentieth century is that America is sort of, I guess, pioneering and developing new forms of what empire can look like. Because, you know, the like the the actual colonial era, the the era of formal

colonial administration is no longer in vogue. It's sort of it's it's it's beginning to wind down. And so the Americans are beginning to offer something in its stead. And I think that Cuba at this moment in time, you know, nineteen hundred, nineteen oh two, offers a pretty good example of what that model looks like. Yeah, this is good old fashioned American innovation. Because despite swearing off any imperial intent before entering the Spanish American War.

After defeating Spain, America went right to work, turning Cuba into a US protectorate. For the first couple of years, until nineteen oh two, America occupied Cuba and the economy was placed, quote, securely in American hands.

As Richard Gott puts it. And as we already discussed, the US owned vast tracts of Cuban sugar land, tobacco land, mines, and as the years would roll on, you'd see Goodyear, Procter and Gamble, Swift, Texaco, all these types of American companies would move in. So that was the economy on the political front. They were elitist and racist.

election rules drawn up to the designs of Cuba's neighbor to the north. And since Cuba was to be a neocolony, the US stopped short of establishing a real national army after the war with Spain, but it did create an obedient paramilitary. Which America made sure was racially segregated. Most infamously, the US formalized its right to intervene in Cuba at any time it freaking felt like it, with the Platt Amendment, which was

a legal nicety that was ratified both at home and then jammed into the Constitution of the new Cuban Republic, which again was created officially in nineteen oh two. And one black Cuban delegate at the Constitutional Convention Saw the next sixty years of US Cuba relations coming like Christmas. He said only those Cuban governments will live which count on the United States' support and benevolence.

So American troops for the first time. left Cuba in nineteen oh two, leaving behind everyone's favorite naval base, Guantanamo Bay. The Marines, however, would be back in four years in nineteen oh six, and again in nineteen twelve. And again. in nineteen seventeen. And these visits were to either police political disputes among the Cuban elite and or protect US sugar plantations. In nineteen oh six there was electoral chaos.

In nineteen twelve there was a crisis following the massacre of thousands of Afro-Cuban citizens, and in nineteen seventeen there was a revolt over a fraudulent election. From the very beginning, this government of the Cuban Republic, from 1902 to 1925, it was just a lackey government for American corporate and imperialism. interests. That's right. And so the American lackeys in charge in Cuba

They gave off public works contracts, land concessions, you name it, as favors, both among each other and among their patrons to the north. Most importantly, the US cut tariffs of sugar coming from Cuba and U.S. goods going into Cuba. And the sugar industry did boom. Yes. Americans overhauled it, and you know, some of this was on American Capitals Dime, and some of it was on Cubans.

Brand new machinery was shipped in, workers from Jamaica and Haiti and elsewhere were also brought in as cheap labor, and in a pattern we know very well. Small planters and mill owners, they were obliterated. All this was even further juiced after World War I, when Europe's beet sugar fields were in ruins, the demand for sugar was up, and Cuba saw its prices go from five cents a pound to twenty two and a half cents a pound for a period. This was known as the Dance of the Millions.

But by the summer of nineteen twenty, the sugar prices were shaking and then they collapsed, and as happens in a monocrop economy, Cuba's wealth collapsed along with it. But this was a big deal. And the Cuban Republic appealed to the United States, who sent a longtime Cuba viceroy who we have to just pause to acknowledge. His name was Bert Crowder. Now, Justified fans out there know full well whose voice I'm hearing when I think about Bert Crowder. I am the outlaw.

Is my world. Burt Crowder was sent down there to, as we put it these days, restructure. Cuba's economy following this financial crisis. So in nineteen twenty one he literally parks a US cruiser, the the Minnesota, in Havana Harbor and lives there dictating orders from this floating palace. This boy had crowders place, isn't it? Amen. Well, it says Johnny's on the sign out front, but I do believe Mr. Crowley's the man in charge.

As one American living in Cuba put it, the average Cuban's life is, quote, determined for him in a director's room in New York. As Richard Gott puts it,

Cuba had become a colony in all but name. And as the one time American ambassador to Cuba, Earl T. Smith, later told Congress, this is the American ambassador. Quote The US until the advent of Castro was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba that the American ambassador was the second most important person in Cuba, sometimes even more important than the President of Cuba. That is because of the position that the US played.

As we've discussed, the string of Cuban presidents in the Republic since the US quote liberated the country was a series of scumbags who rigged elections and enriched themselves, their friends, and of course their American patrons. Around nineteen twenty five, we meet a particularly nasty customer named Herardo Machado. Machado established, quote, a business like administration, especially devoted to the business class of Cuba, according to journalist Robert Taber.

When Machado visited the US in nineteen twenty seven, the New York Times reported that a JP Morgan banker expressed hope that the Cuban people will find some way to keep Machado in power indefinitely. Yeah, Wall Street loved him, but back home he was just your classic image of a tinpot dictator. Throughout the twenties and the early thirties, He cracked down on labor leaders, student protesters, and uh well, of course, the burgeoning Cuban Communist Party.

Summing up the mood of the moment, it was actually a young communist activist who christened Machado, quote, tropical Mussolini. So you had dictatorship, terror, and then after nineteen twenty nine, the Great Depression. We come to the latest jewel in Cuba's crown, the imposing capital, larger and more beautiful than our own capital in Washington.

Namachado had tried to run a New Deal type administration, but ultimately his job was to make money. So in 1933, his racket. Falls apart. People rose up all across the country, and Machado's guys chose to meet them with bullets, assassinations, raids. This only sparked further resistance. The United States, for its part, realized that this was not good for business, it couldn't go on, so they negotiated Machado out of office and out of the country. the center of the group coming down the steps.

It's President Machado leaving the capital for the last time. In the armored car you see, he was rushed to the airport, whence he flew into exile forever. And after a brief period of post Machado chaos, in which thousands of Machado Whites were lynched, one army stenographer. stepped up to lead Cuba, leading what was called a sergeant's revolt of non commissioned officers in a coup d'etat. Here he is. This is who we've been waiting for. Sergeant Valencia Batista. Продолжение следует...

Jesus Christ, his hat is like twice the size of his Yeah, you love big hats. Why did he like big hats? He has such a small head.

A self made man, son of a sugar worker, Batista was the classic image of a pragmatic, business like cadillo or strongman. As one historian put it, quote, as a non ideologue head of state, Batista did not wish to propel Cuban society in any particular direction, He wished merely to preside comfortably over it. You can hear the board members in New York sighing in relief already.

But Batista wasn't you know, he was he wasn't that stupid of a guy. He understood that he couldn't hit the gas and go full blatant military dictatorship right away. Remember last season when we talked about the Iraqi general who ruled in the fifties, General Qasim? He brought on communists. Into his government in order to take advantage of the social influence that they had and their organization. And Batista did something similar in Cuba for a time.

Yes. The constitution of nineteen forty, you know, which uh came about under him was chock full of progressive measures, you know, minimum wage, limitations on uh big land holdings, the right to strike, women's rights, minority rights. But none of this would ever really come to pass for Cubans. It was PR. for a government whose real constituents were North American capitalists, including people like mister Meyer Lansky.

Lansky turned a natural genius for numbers into a multi-million dollar gambling empire. Hi Roll. and lost fortunes at his casino table. The Batista era was really the golden age of gangsterismo, rule by gangsters. Batista would generate wealth not through a radical new development of Cuba's economy, but through investment from American businessmen on both sides of the law.

I mean Meyer Lansky, probably the most notorious Jewish mobster in American history, he was one example of somebody who, you know, took to Free enterprise in Cuba. In exchange for a free hand in Havana, guys like Lansky would build, as the historian Jack Calhoun puts it, quote, a colony of casinos, hotels, and nightclubs in Cuba. And of course, they would cut Batista's government in. Sure.

Some of the finest people of the United States patronized these places. Also, your big charity boards were held there. Uh Havana in particular was like a free zone for gambling, drugs, all devices that these guys were peddling. And the beauty of Cuba and its music and its culture, you know, Afro Cuban music in particular was sort of utilized. by the gangsters to form a picture of this paradise and entice tourists and gamblers to come to their tropical vice city.

And Lansky was joined in Havana by criminal luminaries such as Lucky Luciano, who was the most powerful head of the New York mob's five families.

Yeah, the uh the the thing with Luciano was he was not only looking to get in the regular gambling and and numbers stuff in Cuba, but was apparently according you know, we we like to take federal sources for what they're worth, but the head of the US Bureau of Narcotics, which is wiretapping Luciano, claimed that Cuba was quote, to be made the center of all international narcotics operations.

Luciano had already become friendly with a number of the high Cuban officials through the lavish use of expensive gifts, so he wanted to turn it into a heroine juncture for his empire. So Luciano actually lived in Cuba for a time in Hotel Nacional after World War Two. And and during the war, Luciano was working with the American Office of Naval Intelligence. Supposedly to protect the harbors, but really I mean there's a whole other story there. There is a

Been working with the mafia. Yeah. Yeah, and and there's this fabled Havana Conference, which is, you know, this this council of doom of all the mafia bosses in the Western Hemisphere that is said to have taken place at the Hotel Nacional in nineteen forty six. These are wonderful things that we've achieved in Havana. And there's no limit to where we can go from here. This kind of government knows how to help business to encourage it.

In fact, gangsterismo blossomed even when Batista took a sabbatical from ruling Cuba in nineteen forty four. He uh he took a break, moved to Daytona Beach in Florida. And his hand picked successor lost the election that year to a supposed reformer. This guy ran on cleaning up the nation after a decade of Batista style politics, but he actually couldn't stop his own government from consorting with gangsters from New York and and elsewhere and it was

through a threat from the United States to cut off medical supplies to Cuba that uh Luciano was given up. Back to Italy in nineteen forty seven. We spoke with Raul Roaky, former Cuban diplomat. About these years of gangsterismo and the mafia and their relationship with the Cuban government at the time. control all the uh hotels and the casinos and the prose and prostitution and so on in in Havana it was uh tremendous business to to the mafia in the United States.

the allies of Batista because they supported his dictatorship and in this sense they became part of the Structure which existed the power structure which existed under Batista Here is Rafael Hernandez, editor of the Cuban magazine Tamas. Talking about the ways that gangsterismo was a very basic way to control politics on the island. Well I I would say that not only uh foreign gangsters but national gangsters were uh very much associated. The nineteen forties politics, human politics

was very violent. Ghosts and gangs were very common in all those years. The Cuban governments became very corrupt. We had democratic elections, but we had a lot of corruption. Corruption associated with the use of power. to make money but also with the use of gangster groups. The right and Politics.

In 1951, Eddie Chibas, a well-respected opposition figure in Cuban politics, told his listeners over the radio to quote, take up broom, and sweep away the thieves in government. He then shot himself on air. Chibas died eleven days later in the hospital. One of his many admirers sitting in the hospital with him was reportedly Fidel Castro.

a young lawyer in his early twenties. And it was around this time that it began to dawn on young Fidel that perhaps traditional politics were never going to be enough to change things in Cuba.

As we've mentioned, Batista took a leave from ruling Cuba in nineteen forty four, with his supposedly liberal successor promising a new era of hope and change. This almost immediately degenerated into yet another chapter of corruption. under development and rule by gangsters. The next president after this guy

Carlos Prio, a one time anti Machado activist and politician whose brother reportedly cut him in on a coke operation he was running. And he is said to have taken around ninety million from the Cuban Treasury while president. So This is just the state of things apparently forever. Batista or no Batista. Right. Oddly enough

It's Fayencio Batista who takes advantage of everyone's discontent in nineteen fifty two when he comes back from Daytona Beach and runs for president again. The problem for Batista in nineteen fifty two, however, is was that he had lost that love and feeling. He had lost this public support from a decade earlier and was projected to lose big. His solution to this was very simple.

Police patrol excited crowds in Havana who found that while they slept, behind the scenes strongman General Batista had overthrown the constitutional regime of President Carlos Prio. The Constitution of 1940, and Carlos Prio is reported to have fled the presidential palace so fast he forgot a stash of Oh. The present coup was accomplished in only 77 minutes, but Cuba's political freedom is ended as Batista cancels the June 1st election. Uh the US, for their part, had not planned for this.

As they had the first time Batista carried out a coup. But after Batista assured the United States and Secretary of State Dean Acheson that Cuba would be safe for private capital and dangerous for communists, the United States recognized his new government. Right. Batista says he is a friend of the people, as his soldiers patrol the streets to establish what he calls disciplined democracy.

Batista outlawed the Communist Party, broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in a move that, you know, the US was enforcing Latin American countries like you know, all over the hemisphere to do the exact same thing. Yes, and if you were a really good boy, you would even get a very special visit from Vice President Richard Nixon, who in nineteen fifty five visited Batista, toasted him, compared him to the

Abraham Lincoln, and then urged him to actually crack down even harder on the left inside of Cuba. A couple months later, Alan Dulles, head of the CIA, swings by, instructing Batista in setting up the Bureau for Repression of Common. Communist activities. In 1953, not long after Batista took over, U.S. military aid to Cuba was around 400,000 a year. By 1958, it will have shot up.

American domination of the economy, of course, was left alone. Here's a snippet from the US Department of Commerce itself in 1956. Quote, the only foreign investments of importance are those of the United States. Were stated just as plainly by the Under Secretary of State in a memo to Eisenhower, quote, Batista outlawed communism in Cuba in nineteen fifty three, he favored American investments in Cuba, and this country generally found bilateral relations with Cuba more satisfactory.

while Batista was in bow. Badista also went about fixing things up with the mafia. His successors, after he had left for Florida in nineteen forty-four, had gotten really sloppy. There had been no new hotels built since his first turn as leader, and Havana was losing its reputation as party city too.

Mexico's Acapulco. The FBI reported that Batista had asked Meyerlansky to send an influx of his men to Cuba to quote operate gambling. The sergeant president passed a hotel law, which then turned the entire industry into an ATM. Uh by the late nineteen fifties, on the eve of the revolution, three hundred thousand tourists would come to Cuba each year, generating, you know, mucho revenue for the mafia and for Batista.

Wise guys from all over New York, Jersey, Philly, Chicago, Florida. You could find people from all over in Cuba. Lansky set up the crown jewel of his empire there, the Hotel Riviera, half of which was subsidized by Cuban banks, the other half came from Mabasa. And this is a business enterprise which has been set up and running.

By the same racketeers who shared hard-earned Cuban pesos and American dollars with a number of Cuba's government officials for the privilege of providing such services to the vacationing public. Even higher up in the mafia chain was Santo Traficante Jr., a Florida mob boss who controlled his own kingdom of casinos and nightclubs.

The biggest and baddest being the Tropicana, but he also owned the San Suchi nightclub, the Hotel Capri, and the Salon Rojo Casino. Many a Batista Crony had a stake in or worked at these joints, and they were crawling with wise guys straight out of Central Castle. One such guy was Johnny Rosselli. Rosselli managed the Sansucci nightclub in Havana and represented the interests of American gangsters such as Sam Giancana, a Chicago capo. Rosselli was reportedly friendly with the.

So Batista had American industry, had the American mafia, he of course had the Cuban military, he even had the official trade union network of Cuba at his disposal. And while Batista may have been a partner of Mafioso's

The biggest racket on the island was the Cuban government itself. Just like the mob, he would put out no show jobs. His government would issue fake invoices, skimming extra costs off the top. And Batista himself plundered the public treasury. The former head of the largest private bank in Cuba at the time said that the Batista regime stole something like 500 million pesos from public works budgets. Um, you know, of 800 million pesos total.

And the peso was the same thing as the dollar at that time. Right. And so which means that, you know, when Batista is himself said to have gotten something like four hundred million pesos, that's today worth, you know, several billion dollars. And underneath the surface, underneath this, you know, shiny image of Havana as the Las Vegas of the Caribbean, there was a country of people who were underfed, overworked, exploited, treated like dirt.

A speech given in nineteen fifty-three does a good job of summing up the lives of ordinary Cubans.

Eighty-five percent of the small farmers in Cuba pay rent and live under constant threat of being evicted from the land they till. More than half of our most productive land is in the hands of foreigners. We export sugar to import candy. We export hides to import shoes, we export iron to import ploughs. Four hundred thousand families in the countryside and in the cities lived cramped in huts and tenements without even the minimum sanitary requirements.

Two million eight hundred thousand of our rural and suburban population lack electricity. If the state proposes the lowering of rents, landlords threaten to freeze all construction.

In any small European country there are more than two hundred technological and vocational schools. In Cuba, only six such schools exist, and their graduates have no jobs for their skills. The little rural schoolhouses are attended by a mere half of the school aged children, Barefooted, half naked, and undernourished, ninety percent of the children in the countryside are consumed by parasites which filter through their bare feet from the ground they walk on.

Public hospitals, which are always full, accept only patients recommended by some powerful politician who, in return, demands the votes of the unfortunate one and his family. so that Cuba may continue forever in the same or worse condition. This speech was given in a courtroom by a 27-year-old Fidel Castro, who was on trial for an attack on the Moncata Barracks.

in the east of Cuba. With his brother Raoul, Fidel had led an insurrection to take control of this key military outpost and spark a popular uprising against Batista. But this failed. And Fidel and his comrades, those who were not shot by the military, were put on trial. Up until this point, Fidel had balanced the

A streak for adventurism with more traditional liberal politics. He was one of seven children of a well to do cane grower, and his father sent him away at a young age, so he grew up in a series of boarding schools and Jesuit academies. He was an insatiable reader as a kid, but he tended to enjoy sports more than going to class. As he grew into a young man, he was a mainstay at every kind of protest in and outside of Cuba against police violence.

One of his socialist friends was assassinated against inequality, against corruption. Fidel navigated a world of activism, organizing, and in the Cuba we've been describing that he grew up in political violence. Fidel was reported to pack heat while on campus as a young organizer. In nineteen forty seven he had his first brush with real revolutionary action, an aborted plot to overthrow Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Now eventually Fidel goes for a law degree at the University of Havana, where ever the activist he organizes a discrimination committee to stop black students from being barred from sports teams. Once a lawyer, he defends primarily workers and

poor farmers, political prisoners, the socially outcast. And at six three, he cuts that figure of a larger than life, you know, man of the people. He marries a rich girl, Myrta Diaz Balard, whose parents Find him to be a scruffy ne'er doel who associates with too much riffraff and never pays his bills.

But still, Fidel holds on to that respectable side and taking after his mentors like the politician Eddie Chibas, who we mentioned earlier, uh Fidel tries to hack it as a politician and runs for Congress. in the 1952 election. He's projected to do well, but of course, Batista's coup puts an end to all of that.

outraged at the military takeover of his country, he marches to the courts a week after and demands that they condemn Batista or resign themselves. Of course they do not, and at this point he realizes There's probably no beating Batista by protest or politics as usual. The only avenue left. Was revolution. And this is what Fidel Castro had tried and failed to pull. at the Moncada Barracks. On july twenty sixth, nineteen fifty three.

After this attack on the Moncata Barracks in nineteen fifty three, the authorities were looking to arrest Castro. At least that's what they told the public. In fact, marching orders were to shoot him on sight. So when Fidel was eventually captured, It took one Lieutenant Saria to end up saving Fidel's life. He whispered to Castro, Don't say your name, so that he wouldn't be killed by soldiers in the moment, and at least turned over to the law in one piece.

Couple months later, at a courthouse in Santiago, one hundred and twenty two prisoners, those who hadn't been murdered already, were brought to trial for the assault on Moncata Barracks. Soldiers with machine guns posted up for six miles leading to the courthouse, and all the prisoners were brought in in buses, except Fidel. He was transported there in a Jeep Handcuffed. kept escorted by heavily armed soldiers on every side.

He then defended himself with that speech that we quoted from earlier, in which he spoke for the seven hundred thousand Cubans without work, the five hundred thousand farm laborers inhabiting miserable shacks, the four hundred thousand industrial laborers whose retirement funds have been embezzled.

Yeah, and he proposed a revolutionary program. This is from his speech. A revolutionary government with the backing of the people and the respect of the nation after cleansing the various institutions of all venal and corrupt officials. would proceed to immediately industrialize the country and

Solve the land problem. Despite his skills in the courtroom, Fidel and his brother and co-conspirator Raul were sentenced to fifteen years in prison. But luckily for them, at this point, the attack on the Moncata Barracks. had made folk heroes out of the men and women who participated. Right, and they had come to become the faces of what was called the july twenty sixth movie.

movement. Exactly. And so through this kind of popular pressure, Fidel and company were actually released in nineteen fifty five. So the Castor brothers get out, but they are under round the clock surveillance. They have no way of actually

pursuing their cause, let alone challenging Batista in any real way. So they slip out of the country to Mexico. They leave behind them in Cuba an underground of July twenty sixth revolutionaries in the towns and the cities. But in Mexico, the Castro brothers will be setting up the military wing of the revolution. Come on. And the cast. No. Why are you leading A revolution. I am leading a because the legal government of my country Walk.

Now when they got to Mexico, Fidel and Raoul recruited a small group, only those who they felt were truly ready to die in the muck taking the fight back to Batista. They trained and collected funds. Batista actually had spies in Mexico. In fact, they were arrested several times by Mexican police paid off by the dictatorship and had to start from scratch.

The Fidelistas training in Mexico was run by a Colonel Alberto Bayo, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War in the nineteen thirties, and Fidel soon met Bayo's top student, a young doctor from Argentina who had lived in Guatemala during the CIA's overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz. A professional communist from the Argentine named Ernesto Che Guevara joins Castro. He worked with the Reds there and in Guatemala. He met Castro in Mexico City and is an expert in guerrilla tactics.

So by late November nineteen fifty six, after a year of training and plotting their guerrilla campaign, a troop of eighty two men, lugging guns, ammo, medicine, and food, all cram into a dilapidated yacht.

called the Grandma, set for a landing near Santiago in the east of Cuba. Now this was the plan. On November 30th, the grandma was supposed to land and connect with a comrade bringing vehicles, men, and other material. They would then motor up the coast and connect with even more rebels and attack the army at Manzanillo. Rebels across the island would then create diversions in cities with bombings and other general unrest.

After taking the army outpost at Manzanillo, the Fidelistas would now be riding high with you know confiscated arms and ammo, and Fidel would, you know, get up to the hills of the Sierra Maestra, a mountainous base on the southeastern tip of the island, and he would call for a general strike and watch the people topple Batista. None of this happened. The grandma landing was a disaster.

For one thing, the yacht was a jalopy. It was only supposed to hold about eight crew members, and of course this was a gang of eighty-two men, not to mention their backpacks, their guns, their ammo, supplies. One guy fell overboard. They didn't even make it to their destination until December 2nd. At which point, several of the diversionary uprisings had already happened.

When they finally did get there, the bottom of the ship hit seabed, which forced them to wade through the swamp between them and the shore. Everyone had to leave their heavy ammo behind, as well as food and medicine. When they finally got ashore, they didn't have a good idea of where they were, and the morning light was starting to approach, so Batista's aircraft were whizzing overhead, and the army was already headed their way to put them out of their misery. Fidel orders his recruits to

to split up and make a break for the Sierra Maestra. Che, still serving mainly as a medic in these early days, writes this in his reminisces on the Cuban Revolution. Almost the entire troop was suffering open blisters on their feet. Eating our meager rations, half a sausage and two crackers, we heard a shot.

Within seconds, a hail of bullets. At least that's how it seemed to us, this being our baptism of fire. They descended on our group of eighty-two men. I felt a sharp blow to my chest and a wound in my neck. I thought for certain I was dead. Despite the intense pain I dragged myself into the cane field. Such was the beginning of forging what would become the rebel army.

This was the ambush at Allegro del Pio. The rebels who escaped went on, starving and thirsty, eating snakes and cactus for breakfast and drawing water from stones and hounded by mosquitoes every minute. By the time the rebels reach safety in the Sierra Maestra in the south of the island, Only a dozen of the original 82 men were left. And the story goes that when this small band of rebels regrouped, Fidel asked.

Do we still have some rifles? Someone said, Yeah, we got a couple. And Fidel says something like, Well now we have won the war.

In December 1956, Castro and a handful of followers slip back into Cuba from a base in Mexico. He has pledged to overthrow the tyrant Batista or die. Castro sets up rebel headquarters in the rugged Sierra Maestra Mountains of Oriente Province. 12 hungry men against a modern army of 40,000. Nineteen fifty seven would be the first year of guerrilla war in Cuba. There was Batista in one corner, and in the other, the Barbudos, the bearded ones. Fidel says in his orobiography.

The story of our beards is very simple. It arose out of the difficult conditions we were living and fighting under as guerrillas. We didn't have any razor blades or straight razors. That turned into a kind of badge of identity. For the campesinos and everybody else, for the press, for the reporters, we were Los Barbudos. It has its positive side. In order for a spy to infiltrate us, he had to start preparing months ahead of time.

He'd have had to have a six month growth of beard, you see. Once in the Sierra, Fidel and his dozen beardos regrouped and hungered down. Slowly but surely they had begun to actually ramp up recruitment, chiefly among poor peasants who were in the area surrounding the Sierra Maestra.

And by the May of nineteen fifty seven, Che writes, Quote, We were making contacts, exploring new regions, and spreading the revolutionary flame and the legend of our Barbudos across the Sierra Maestra. The new spirit was communicated far and wide. Peasants came to greet us without so much fear, and we also feared them less. Now there are several reasons why the Federalistas were starting to see such a successful comeback after the disastrous landing. One is

They were in the Oriente. This is the eastern part of Cuba. Particularly they're in the south in the Sierra Maestra. This is home to mostly landless rural workers who outnumber the hated owners and tenants who they work for three to one. It's an excellent social base for creating revolutionaries. Another reason that the rebels are probably doing well is that they treat the campesinos, the peasants, humanely. They scrupulously pay for supplies in cash.

Fidel attempts to enlist the sympathy of nearby peasants. His rebels set up schools in Cuba's backcountry and teach the peasants to read and write. Castro promises social and economic reform. On the other side of things, the peasants liked that the Fidelistas were tough on their enemies. You know, these were people who were used to a rural guard, that's to say

peasants who had turned on their own for money or prestige, small traders, or prosperous farmers with local privileges to kill, rape, and pillage. These rebels, on the other hand, seemed to genuinely practice a code of justice. And it was a harsh code of justice. There was execution of traitors, of bandits, of rapists. This was the kind of stuff that certain American magazines would soon be reporting on somewhat breathlessly.

Broad of the revolution exports terror, imports guns, new recruits, and leaders who turn out to be even more pro-communist than anti-Batista. But the executions were, simply put, popular with the campesinos, with the peasants. You know, they were finally seeing some uh justice for the foremen who were blackmailing them into giving them whatever they wanted, for the bandits who were making their lives a living help.

They get money to finance the revolution by forcing sugar plantation owners to pay for protection against their nightly raid. To Raul Roa a bit about the, as he put it, tremendous weight that the countryside meant for any kind of successful revolution.

The Cuban population at the time was mostly rural. Sixty percent of the population was rural and only forty percent was um urban. So the countryside had a tremendous weight in everything that happened in our country and of course they were the most exploited of the Perfect. workers in the country. They earned very little money. Uh sugar cane cars for example earned twenty five cents a day or something like that. They they earned nothing and this was only for a small season.

And therefore they went out of work at the time and they had to live however they could. So this was the situation in the countryside was terrible. And therefore that is why Fidel always thought that taking to the mountains And fighting with the peasants would be a great support. ¡Suscríbete al canal! eighty five or ninety percent. We're presents.

So let's get a sense of the timeline here. Uh, the months of March and April and 57 are basically restructuring, regrouping, and training people to. The men learned guerrilla fighting literally from the ground up. Now ready to attack.

By late May, there's a major offensive at an army outpost at El Uvero, right by the coast in the south of the island. And this was a well planned attack by the rebel army that shouldn't have probably been a victory, but was because of the guerrilla tactics they were starting to employ.

Bob and Weave, hit and run, not only using to their advantage the terrain of the Sierra, the maze of mountains and valleys, but also using the size and supply lines of Batista's army against it. It was a tough Way to fight for those who were fighting it, but it was even tougher for those on the other end of it. The rivals call it their biggest victory. Up to now, the tactics have been to harass and terrorize government troops. Now, at last, they have won a battle.

By the fall of nineteen fifty seven, Batista's army had simply given up on trying to crack the Sierra Maestra to stamp out the rebels there. It was like the guys in the raid. You know, you're being asked to go on this suicide mission in into the fun house of horror.

Right. The rebels, who had initially been twelve survivors of a disastrous landing on a dilapidated fishing yacht, were now holed up with guns, ammo, and a well disciplined growing army with support from all of the locals. It's a hell of a turnaround.

However, though it was true that by the end of nineteen fifty seven, Batista's army couldn't really crack the Sierra Maestra and get those rebels, it was also true that the rebels could Along the road of the revolution, Fidel Castro's couriers maintained contact with the outside world. Now what was going on on the rest of the island? Because in fact

The guerrilla movement in the Sierra at this stage was one piece in a galaxy of opposition to Batista. If these rebels in the Sierra represented the military arm of the July 26th movement, Then the cities and the towns across Cuba contained the civilian arm. This was a network across the island of activists. They fought the regime through things like strikes, clandestine activities.

spying, sabotage, things like that. You remember when Castro and the rebels were coming to Cuba from Mexico in fifty six, they needed diversionary uprisings all across Cuba? Well this network and their leaders and their cadres were the ones responsible for pulling stuff like that off. We asked Raul Roa, whose family was a part of the clandestine movement, what it was like when he got involved in the revolution.

been a a Marxist and a revolutionary. My father was very well known in in Cuba at the time and my father was actively against Batista in the uh Klandistan movement and so was my mother and I also participated in this trouble of our Cuban students against Batista and their dictatorship. That is how I became involved. What did your participation in the in the struggle as part of the student movement look like?

My participation is not a you know, it's not really uh extraordinary but I was a um in the student movement we participated in demonstrations and so on and I wrote one of the in um newspapers in in uh Cuba at the time, I wrote every Sunday uh an article whenever I could. I wrote against the dictatorship. Uh may sometimes in general terms, sometimes in specific terms, it depended because there was censorship.

One of the most important leaders in this revolutionary underground was a guy named Frank Pais, the picture of the tireless, charismatic organizer, a figure just as beloved as Fidel.

And he was he he was the organizer of the of the revolutionary movement in San Telo de Cuba, the eastern part of the country. He had an enormous importance in supplying weapons and uh medicines and and other things too to Fidel in the Sierra Maestra, which was decisive because this was actually what helped Fidel to uh advance politically and militarily.

The underground at this point is also where you would find many of the women who would come to dominate the revolution. These women included Heidi Santa Maria, Vilma Espine, and a revolutionary we've discussed in the first episode. Celia Sanchez. This is where they had been organizing for the better part of a decade, and soon many of them are going to join Fidel and the Gorillas.

in this era. We spoke with Professor Michelle Chase, author of Revolution within the Revolution, Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, about this side of the revolution. So there were women in the urban underground who collaborated with some of the major revolutionary organizations like Fidel Castro's organization, the twenty sixth of July, and others, and they did everything from

transporting weapons and ammunition, purchasing weapons and ammunition. Some of them traveled to other countries to purchase and and bring back uh weapons and ammunition. They played a big role in producing propaganda, like pamphlets and flyers and stuff like that. They were the ones who really drafted that stuff, printed it, stored it, circulated it, right? They were there were a lot of women involved.

They also did other stuff like the collected information. There was a lot of women telephone operators in the 1950s, like in Santiago, for example, who collaborated with uh the movement. And they would eavesdrop on um, you know, police and and army generals and just kind of try to figure out who had been identified or where a bust might occur and then try to get that information out. They operated safe houses.

Right, for men who were underground, who had been burned, uh identified with the police and needed um either to travel up to the Sierra, to the rebel army, or um or just hide and and try to get into um an embassy and seek uh refuge somewhere. They visited prisoners. A lot of times men would be caught, thrown in prison, men who belonged to the revolutionary movement

And they would go under the guise of kind of a humanitarian gesture of maybe bringing them food or visiting them, bringing them letters perhaps from family members. But they were also doing the important work of identifying who exactly had been captured.

whether those men had given up any information under questioning and then they would take that information back out to the leaders of the revolutionary movements and and uh the urban underground. So women did a lot in the urban underground, um and people don't know as much about it, but it was it was important work. Outside of the july twenty sixth movement, the most influential radicals were the Communist Party, the Partido Socialista Popular.

But at this point in our story, in nineteen fifty seven, the communists are still pretty standoffish toward the july twenty sixth movement. They did not really go for this idea of an armed vanguard in the mountains causing the revolution to happen. They had a more traditional doctrinaire concept where the revolution would be won through mass action and strikes that would culminate

in a worker-led uprising. However, even in 57, local communists like those in Santiago were already working pretty closely in some situations with the July 26th guys. And in a year from now, in nineteen fifty eight, both the communists and the July twenty sixers will be under the same umbrella. The communists will to appreciate the armed struggle more and the July 26ers will start to appreciate more addressing the demands and the needs of the working classes.

These urban revolutionaries really weren't any safer from Batista's regime than those in the Sierra. In fact, one that major offensive at El Uvero, organizers in Havana were taking down the electrical grid of that city in an act of sabotage, and they were slaughtered.

over the next week in plain sight. And most significantly, in July of fifty seven, the Santiago police murdered the much beloved urban revolutionary Frank Pais. And his death sparked a massive general strike first in Santiago, but then through its spreading and also more police violence nearby, uh other parts. Oriente.

Police shoot down Frank Pays, boss of the Rebel Underground, as he flees from a hideout. His funeral in Santiago disturbs the government because of the size of the crowd and its temper. Women with great emotion chanting, vengeance, vengeance! This did not, however, topple the Batista government, which then proceeded to turn the whole thing into a bloodbath. And there were several other big setbacks in 1957 for the anti-Batista movement as a whole.

Jose Antonio Echivaria, leader of the students, organizes an attack on the presidential palace. They reach the second floor, but Batista escapes, and the student leaders are shot, leaving 25 bodies police looking for the instigators shoot down Jose Echevaria who prematurely screamed over

The killing of Frank País in the summer of 57, and then the moral victory of the Fidelistas in the fall cracked the image Batista's government had been trying to project both inside and outside of Cuba, that everything was under control. Through the press and just word of mouth.

It was widely known now that guerrilla patrols were harassing government forces for hundreds of miles along the coast, and of course around the Sierra. So as 1958 dawned on Cuba, everybody was gonna have to figure out pretty soon what they felt. About these federalistas, least of all, the United States of America. The news concerns the vice president of the United States and his wife, arriving by plane at Correct.

In a visit to Caracas, Venezuela, in nineteen fifty-eight, Vice President Richard Nixon's car was spat upon, hit with rocks, attacked, you name it. He was on a tour of Latin America and he'd made it through nearby countries with Tolerable protest, but this was a genuine brush with danger. Several in the party are injured as both the vice president and Mrs. Nixon's cars are pelted and spat upon. But always the vice president.

The United States, well and truly known at this point for killing hope in the developing world, had a few years earlier, in fact, awarded a since deposed Venezuelan dictator, the Legion of Merit. This was the same year that it overthrew the Guatemalan president Yacobo Arbenz. So every dent in Nixon's car was a different Venezuelan protester's way of saying, we know what you're all about.

Upon learning of this attack on Vice President Nixon's motorcade, Admiral Arle Burke prepared to stage an airlift of troops from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and send a fleet of ships toward Venezuela for good measure in a mission dubbed Operation Poor Richard. Now inside of Cuba, only a few miles away in fact from where Burke had ordered a mobilization to save Nixon from the mobs in Venezuela,

Cuban campesinos could identify bombs made in the USA, bombs used to kill thousands of Cubans since the year before. They could only have seen the full list of arms delivered from America to Batista, which the State Department. at one point defensively called, quote, modest. Three thousand semi autos, fifteen thousand hand grenades, five thousand mortar grenades, machine guns, armor piercing cartridges, howitzer bombs, rockets, tanks. Perhaps this is why nineteen fifty eight.

The second year of Cuba's civil war began with yet more success for the Fidelistas, still numbering no more than four hundred soldiers, but they had also been acquiring weapons. Some from the army units they had taken prisoner, but also from generous benefactors, a lot of upper class and middle class Cubans who weren't particularly radical. They just didn't like Batista for whatever personal or business related reason and wanted him out.

Arms are gathered in the United States whose policy of non-intervention makes this illegal. Some are confiscated. By devious means some arms get to Cuba and are stolen. Others were adventurous mercenaries and some were just opportunists like some of the mob connected characters we've been talking about. Also, in the meantime, why not make a buck selling them some?

1958, three days after Easter Sunday, Batista orders 12,000 troops into the Sierra Maestra. They stream eastward on every highway in tanks, armored cars, trucks, and jeeps. February rebel forces took one of the remaining army strongholds in the Sierra Maestra at Pina del Agua. By early March, Raul Castro and Commander Juan Almeida had by this point opened up a second front.

In the North Oriente, the quote Frank Pies Segundo Frente, named after the fallen revolutionary. On march twelfth, in fact, Batista suspended civil rights and reimposed censorship Judges in Havana starting to realize that things are getting a little bit too real, go on record that under Batista, there's quote, no habeas corpus, political prisoners are shot, police dying on vice, there is violent death and torture as daily events.

inside of Cuba. Batista's guys are now so desperate for victories, quote unquote, that they would sometimes take prisoners from a jail, for example, kill them and dump them in the streets claiming it was a violent clash with rebels.

What happened next seemed to put everything in jeopardy. For months, a general strike to cripple and then topple the government had been discussed at the highest levels of the July 26th movement.

This was a key factor in the fall of Machado in nineteen thirty three, and it was of course consistent with the principles and idea of the movement. Was it strategically valid, however? Fidel Castro did not think so. Put simply, in Cuba, He did not believe the cities could be won until the countryside was won. Yeah, and if the strike did not topple Batista, the dictator would perceive a key moment to reverse the rebels' momentum and crack down as hard and fast as possible.

Fidel and his camp, however, were essentially outvoted, and he supported his comrades' decision. He announced in a rebel radio broadcast from the Sierra the weakness of the Batista regime and the need soon for a general strike. The government would be prepared. The rebels fight their way across the open plaza against murderous gunfire. The general strike was launched on April 9, 1958.

It failed. Batista wasted no time, not only humiliating the revolutionaries and crushing morale, but unleashing a wave of retaliatory terror. He had finally gotten a break. and prepared a desperate and therefore all the more deadly campaign to truly puncture the rebel army and stamp it out for good. Che writes, Morale fell so much that the enemy army considered it opportune to offer pardon.

and prepared some leaflets dropped into rebel zones. They published photos of people who had turned themselves in, some real, others not. It was clear that the counter revolutionary wave was growing. In Havana, Batista invites the press to his palace. There are sandbags on the roof. And the army sent in 10,000 troops at Fidel's column. It was a real close-up battle for the rebels. The dictator announces that he had ordered a general advance against Castle.

They'll called in for reinforcements from commanders Camillosienfuegos and Juan Almeida, and in time they managed to stave off the encounter. He sends in bazooka teams, which Castro's men capture and turn against Tabernae's tanks. Castro records his broadcasts for the rebel radio. His men now will come down from the mountains and fight on the floor.

Then there was a high-level meeting among the revolutionary leadership. Those who had pursued the mistaken strategies during the general strike took their lumps. Those who were still opposed To working with the Communist Party were also overruled, the Communists now worked as one with the july twenty sixth movement. Fidel was declared general secretary of the National Committee, and so now all major decisions on strategy going forward in the Civil War would go through him.

Despite the blow to the movement after the failed April strike, the hard fighting of the rebels in the Sierra Maestra and the Northern Oriente, combined with Fidel's leadership, turned the defeat into a counter-strike, soundly defeating the army in the Sierra. The last army commander defeated by Fidel, like many others, ended up actually joining the rebels. The surrendered men were, as was the policy, delivered to representatives of the Cuban International Red Cross.

And this turnaround actually gave the rebels the breathing room to organize a final campaign, which was to drive to the center of Cuba and clear the way to Havana. Chegavare and his column turned toward the plains of Camague, the territory between them and the center of the country, Las Villas. This was not going to be, however, a cinematic march to a late summer victory. They are hit not only by brutal attacks from the army forces, but also by terrible hurricanes.

Che had under two hundred men and their feet were so raw and swollen that they weren't actually even able to put on their boots at a certain point. I'll read again from Che's journal. September thirtieth. We advance into the swamp about two kilometers parallel with the railroad and camp with the water up to our knees. We endure two days without food and shivering with cold, drinking this pestilential water that is our only nourishment.

The tortures that we are suffering are terrible. Scouts are sent out who bring us news that the entire railway embankment is a firing line. Now by October, they would make it out of the swamps, though quote, scarcely able to walk because of the weaknesses and the ravages of fungal infection in their feet.

Camilo C and Fuegos' column, also heading westward, ran further north, and they clashed with army units and dodged army aircraft. Then, just as they were getting out of Kauwe, another cyclone, and this is from Camila's reports, quote I will tell you that since we left the zone of Kauto westward bound, we have travelled without resting a single night for forty days, many of them without guides with the coastline for our orientation and a compass for direction.

In the thirty one days that the trip through Kamuei dragged on, we ate only eleven times. Rough times, but things were getting pretty rough for Batista as well. Back in the Capitol, he had, quote, lost all vestige of political power, according to Rob Tabor. He presided over an army and a political system that was hated And a dictatorship that at this point was really nothing more than a naked criminal venture. But hold on. There were quote unquote elections scheduled.

Yes. Uh these have been postponed and rescheduled a couple times. They finally happened in the fall. Not only were these elections Batista put on a fraud, they were also a failed fraud. You know, he subsidized the campaigns of a controlled opposition, but the ballot was basically ignored. Batista now had the main rebel force creeping up from the south and the Fidelista insurrection cropping up elsewhere now, including all the way west at Pinot Rio.

There were army strongholds separated across the island that were still holding some cities, but that was it. The rebels now controlled all of Oriente up to the very outskirts of the cities. The ripening cane fields. Three quarters of the entire Cuban sugar crop were in territorio libre. Fidel is consolidating things in Santiago in the east. Camilo and Che in the middle of the country at this point make contact with each other. And head toward the prize Santa Clara.

As things slipped further and further from Fencio Batista's grasp, back in Washington, Ike Eisenhower was still trying to get arms to anybody but Fidel Castro, according to a State Department memo. At a national security meeting in late October, quote, the president inquired why Batista had apparently never really made a genuine effort to quash this rebellion. Eisenhower clearly had not really been paying attention. Allen Dulles informed him Batista had indeed tried, but he had failed.

The State Department encouraged the CIA to try to block Fidel Castro's ascension to power, and Timothy Naftali and Jack Cohone both write, on two occasions the CIA met with potential leaders of a new regime that would include neither Batista Nor Fidel Castro. With Che soon advancing on Santa Clara, the Americans dispatch an ex diplomat to try and persuade Batista to resign. Inside the Presidential Palace, in mid December, he is offered a deal.

Hand over power to a quote caretaker government, which will then receive U.S. support. You return to your residence in exile in Daytona Beach. Everyone walks away a winner. No dice. Batista, the old sergeant, was in it to win it. Still, Eisenhower remained hopeful that a quote third force.

But this is just wishful thinking at this point, because as his administration well knew, one official told the National Security Council that something like ninety-five percent of the Cuban population by this point was supporting Castro. I saw an interesting thing happen. Thank you. Thank you. A rebel was being arrested by the military police. Yeah. And rather than be taken alive.

He exploded a grenade he had hidden in his jacket. He killed himself, and he took a captain of the command with him. Right, Johnny? Yeah. Maybe so. But it occurred to me, the soldiers are paid to fight. What does that tell you? I can win. Picture this. In late 1958, in Batista's army HQ, his generals are plotting their movements on a big map of Cuba, this fancy toy with little lights.

that mark every military post still in play. Now in late fifty eight, one by one, the lights are going out. The only light left that matters is right in the middle of the island. Santa Clara. Guerrera will now lead the troops against Santa Clara. Capturing many towns, they press on toward the provincial capital.

Police Chief of Staff sends an armored train to Santa Clara. Four hundred soldiers, a million dollars worth of ammo, two months worth of food. The train was, quote, a mobile fortress, shuttling up and down the railroad tracks to meet any threat. But it was also a steel trap for the soldiers shooting outward from inside. And by the same coin, once again, the bigger backup the government sent, the bigger reward for the rebels if they could take it. And Shay wanted to take it.

He had made it to Santa Clara and it was game day. She piles gasoline tank truck. On the track near the Kapiro district, forcing the train to stop. Before the engineer can reverse and escape, the rebels blow up the tracks behind him. Then the bazookas start firing. Then dynamite. And Molotov cocktails. Suddenly these soldiers who had been sent to Santa Clara in a modern war machine were now a bunch of assholes trapped in a giant tube of piping hot metal.

They surrendered, placing one million dollars worth of ammo in rebel hands. El Che Guevara va al frente de las tropas que atacan a Santa Clara, toman muchos pueblos y se acercan a la capital de la provincia. Santa Clara was now a free fire zone. Regular civilians use their cars as barricades. Women are manufacturing gasoline bombs. Even without air cover, Castro's men attacked houses on the outskirts of Santa Clara.

Everyday people are now trying to help the rebels figure out how to stick it to the army. Christmas Day nineteen fifty eight approaches, Jay Guevara orders the final assault. December 29, 1958, the rebels take Santa Clara's train station. Single file, Gabera's men enter the city. Next they take the city's hotel. While the battle still rages, citizens wait to greet the revolutionary fighters. Then the police headquarters.

Some of the young recruits whom General Tabernia throws into the fight quickly surrender to the hard-hitten guerrillas. Santa Clara belongs to the revolutionaries. In every meaningful sense, the war is now over. December thirty first, nineteen fifty eight. Lorenzo Batista, one time sergeant, still current president of Cuba, enjoys a New Year's Eve party with his family, friends, and advisors. They ring in the new year by boarding several planes and fleeing Cuba for the nearby Dominican Republic.

Five and a half years after the first Moncada attack, Batista sees the handwriting on the wall and... Batista had hoped to go back to his residence in Daytona Beach, but this was no longer an option after refusing a deal with the Americans to give up power earlier. He does, however, Move three hundred to four hundred million dollars into bank accounts in New York, Florida, and Switzerland.

Joyous followers of Fidel Castro. Sweep. Triumphantly through the Cuban capital, hours after their rebellion had toppled the regime of Fulgencio Batista. A general. for by Fidel after the military victory secures the revolution, preventing it from becoming yet Or yet another changing of the guard. Red and black banners of the july fifth. Movement go up across Cuba. Quote Havana enjoyed a prolonged fiesta. It was humming with life. And colour.

Journalist writes, every so often scattered here and there, you come across bearded gorillas. And submachine guns, lounging on big chairs. In front of public buildings guarding against the enemy. Truckloads of Fidelistas arrive. They are in command of Che Guevara. They bring along their captured tanks just in case. The Times of Havana writes young boys with sticks and Streets. The news spreads through Havana. Batista is finished. Crowds briefly battled with police until july twenty seventh.

Danas near the northern coast, thousands of people falling. into the streets to follow rebels on a ceremonial visit to the grave of a student martyr. Some of the people who perhaps did not enjoy this part. Seven of the thirteen casinos in Havana suffered extensive damage, including the gaming room and Plaza and Sevilla built more hotels, slot machines were stolen from Traficante San Succi Club, and revolutionaries decided to make the Havana Hilton their new headquarters.

The crowd turns on the gambling casinos, run by Meyer Ramsky and other American foodlums under Batista protection. On the outskirts of the city. It carried Fidel Castro himself. Castro would actually not reach Havana for another week, but after arriving in Santiago on January 2nd, he Each the following day. This is what he said.

This will not be like eighteen ninety five when the Americans came and took over, nor will it be like nineteen thirty three when the people began to believe that the revolution was going to triumph. Batista came in to betray the revolution. Nor will it be like 1944, when the people took courage believing they had finally reached a position where they could take over power. used to be thieves. We will have no thievery, no treason, no intervention. This time, it is truly the revolution.

even though some might not desire it. That night, a big rally at Camp Columbia, Batista's military headquarters. Castro speaks quietly. A white dove perched on his shoulder.

Santo Traficante told his lawyer. Castro's not going to be in office or power for long. Batista will return or someone else will replace the guy, because there's no way the economy can continue without tourists. It'll blow over. Guevara wrote down. But all eyes, those of the great oppressors and those of the hopeful, are firmly on us, and every step we take is being observed by the ever watchful eyes of the of the big creditor.

Alan Dulles, head of the CIA said that Quote We do not believe Castro. In the pay of or working for the communist. Brother. Is more irresponsible. And this fellow Che Guevara, the Argentinian who has been fighting with him, we are rather suspicious about him. Yet unbelievable. We did it. Meyer Lansky also kept it simple. He contacted the FBI and said Cuban government. It will soon be communistic. And Meyer Lansky offered the U.S. government.