Blowback - S2 Episode 2 - "Lo Hicimos"

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

A long short history of Cuba’s relationship with the United States, climaxing with the Cuban revolutionaries’ war to liberate the island from the dictator Batista and his backers in the United States.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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. And I remember that he was interested about Cuba. And I explained the real objective needs Cuba had to operate to operate a series of social changes. I remember that Nixon looked very young.

The listen to me was 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.

Speak about this last sign. Speak about this love sign. Welcome to blowback. I'm Brendan James. I'm Noah Colwyn. And this is episode two. Loisimos. Now, last episode was really more of a prologue.

We introduced you to a lot of the characters that are going to be important in 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 1959 and, of course, everything that's going to come after it.

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 irony guys. Yeah, exploited by European irony guys for centuries. We're going to 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 U.S., 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 Fulhencio Batista,

who ran Cuba until he was deposed by the Cuban rebels in the end of the 50s. He's the first boss in this season. Yes, he's the first castle that we have to go in. Exactly. So we'll see how Batista's government allied with the U.S., 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 50s, 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 edition which could ever be made to our system of states. The United States ought, at the first possible opportunity, to take Cuba.

Here's something Stephen Douglas, U.S. Senator and Abraham Lincoln's one-time opponent for president, said in a speech in New Orleans in 1858. 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 entrails. 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 16th 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 Guanayetebe 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 Atouet, 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 Atouet as an example of Cuba's history of this. 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. 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 19th century, Cuba sees slave rebellions, an abolitionist movement, and also a growing independence movement, inspired by the Venezuelan, pan-American revolutionary Simone Bolivar. So by mid-century, there was this complex mingling of, of the independence 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 fairly constricted to the North American continent. And obviously, the U.S. stood to gain by supporting Spanish colonial independence movements.

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 by whatever means possible. In fact, in 1848, Americans offered $100 million to buy Cuba from Spain. So 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, U.S. capital has been buying up

property and land for bargain basement prices. And so as the 19th century is wrapping up, the United States already has its claws inside of Cuba. Now, they owned nickel, they owned iron, but most importantly, the money

was pouring into sugar, do, do, do, do, do. Oh, honey, honey, do, do, do, do, do, do, too, you are my candy. Let's talk sugar. Last season, we, of course, saw how the oil under Iraq's 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 production that developed in these colonies like Cuba. So for months on end, workers would hack away in the cane lands on these 12-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 stocks into these grinders to get the juice out. And very often, you would catch your arm in one of the rollers, the grinders, and there were 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. So that a pure and perfect product of uniform quality can be produced 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 going to 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 1895, the Cubans, after, you know, centuries of emiseration and performing this kind of backbreaking labor, rise up against the Spanish once again. And this was the moment, sort of the coming out party for Jose Marti, who, as he had said, had been, quote, living inside the beast inside the U.S., 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 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 19th century. So this final war for Cuban independence against

Spain kicks off in 1895. But just three years later, it's in a stalemate, basically. And that is when a third party enters the ring. 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 in 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 8, 1898, the USS Maine, a second-tier U.S. naval cruiser, explodes and sinks while docked in Havana's harbor. This kills around 260 people.

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 it as a pretext to kick Spain out of Cuba. The phrase, you know what it is? Remember the main, and the hell was 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. Well, muttering, actually, that Spain had already said that it was open to negotiating Cuban independence and maybe even cessation to the U.S.

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 blew up that boat now, do you? 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-Hurst, run the propaganda mill in favor of the war. And the U.S. disguises its ambitions here with an amendment to its declaration of or disavowing any sovereignty over Cuba once the war is over. And this was really the moment in world history

where U.S. 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 overseas and marks the commencement of a new era in our relations with the world. 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, protectorates of the United States. Others would be just that, if not in name. And certain rebel leaders, for understandable reasons, had welcomed the U.S. into the war to break the tie between them in Spain. but 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 20th century, is that America is sort of, I guess, pioneering and developing new forms of what empire can look like.

Because, you know, the actual colonial era, the era of formal colonial administration is no longer in vogue. It's sort of, 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, 1900, 1902, 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 U.S. protectorate for the first couple of years until 1902, America occupied. occupied Cuba, and the economy was placed, quote, securely in American hands, as Richard Gott puts it. As we already discussed, the U.S. own vast tracks of Cuban sugarland, tobacco land, mines, and as the years would roll on, you'd see Goodyear, Procter & Gamble, Swift, Texaco, all these types of American companies would move in. So that was the economy. On the political front,

there 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 neo-colony, the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 1902, and one black Cuban delegate at the Constitutional Convention saw the next 60 years of U.S.-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 formally left Cuba in 1902, leaving behind everyone's favorite naval base, Guantanamo Bay. The Marines, however, would be back in four years in 1906, and again, in 1912, and again, in 1917. And these visits were to either police, political disputes among the Cuban elite and or protect U.S. sugar plantations. In 1906, there was electoral chaos. In 1912, there was a crisis following the massacre of thousands of Afro-Cuban citizens.

And in 1917, there was a revolt over a fraudulent election. From the very beginning, this guy. government of the Cuban Republic, from 1902 to 1925, it was just a lackey government for American corporate and imperial interests. That's right. And so the American lackey's 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 U.S. cut tariffs of sugar coming from Cuba and U.S. goods going into Cuba. And the sugar industry did boom. Yes. Americans overhaul it, and, you know, some of this was on American capital's 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 beat sugar fields were in ruins. The demand for sugar was up, and Cuba saw its prices go from 5 cents a pound to 22.5 cents a pound for a period. This was known as the dance of the millions. But by the summer of 1920, the sugar prices were shaking, and then they collapsed. And as happens in a monocrop economy, Cuba's wealth collapsed along with it. This was a big deal. And the Cuban Republic appealed to the United States, who sent a long

time 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, and this is my world. Bert Crowder was sent down there to, as we put it these days, restructure Cuba's economy following this financial crisis. So in 1921, he literally parks a U.S. cruiser, the Minnesota, in Havana Harbor, and lives there dictating orders from this floating palace. This boy at Crowder's place, isn't it? Well, it says Johnny's on the sign out front, but I do believe Mr. Crowder's 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 U.S., until the advent of Castro, was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba that the American ambassador, 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 U.S. played. As we've discussed, the string of Cuban presidents in the republic since the U.S., liberated the country, was a series of scumbags who rigged elections and enriched themselves, their friends, and, of course, their American patrons. Around 1925, we meet a particularly

nasty customer named Herrardo Machado. Machado established, quote, a business-like administration, especially devoted to the business class of Cuba, according to journalist Robert Tabor. When Machado visited the U.S. in 1927, the New York Times reported that a J.P. 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 tin pot dictator. Throughout the 20s and the early 30s, he cracked down on labor leaders, student protesters, and, 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 1929, the Great Depression.

And we come to the latest jewel in Cuba's crown, the imposing capital, larger and more beautiful than our own capital in Washington. Now, Machado 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. In the center of the group coming down the steps is ex-president Machado, leaving the capital for the last time. In the armored car, you see, he was rushed to the airport when she flew into exile forever.

And after a brief period of post-Machado chaos in which thousands of Machadoites 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 Fouencio Batista. Victory has gone to the leader of the 1934 revolution, the former corporal Batista. Jesus Christ, his hat is like twice the size of his head. Yeah, he loved big hats. Why did he like big hats? He's such a small head.

I don't know. 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 wasn't that stupid of a guy. He understood that he couldn't hit the gas and go full, blatant military dictatorship right away.

True. Remember last season when we talked about the Iraqi general who ruled in the 50s, Kassim, he brought on communists into his government in order to take advantage of the social influence that they had in their organization. And Batista did something similar in Cuba for a time. Yes. The constitution of 1940, you know, which came about under him, was chockful of progressive measures, you know, minimum wage, limitations on 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

Mr. Meyer Lansky. Lansky turned a natural genius for numbers into a multi-million dollar gambling empire. High rollers made and lost fortunes at his casino tables. 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 America. businessmen on both sides of the law. I mean, Meyer Lansky, probably the most notorious Jewish bobsder 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. Some of the finest people of the United States patronize these places. also your big charity boards were held there Havana in particular was like a free zone

for gambling drugs, all the vices that these guys were peddling and the beauty of Cuba in its music and its culture Afro-Cuban music in particular was sort of utilized by the gangsters to form a picture of this paradise and enticed 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 thing with Luciano was he was not only looking to get in the regular gambling

and numbers stuff in Cuba, but was apparently, according, you know, we like to take federal sources for what they're worth, but the head of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, which is wiretapping Luciano, claimed that Cuba was, quote, to be made the center of all international narcotics operations. Luchiano 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 heroin juncture for his empire. So Luciano actually lived in Cuba for a time in Hotel Nacional after World War II. And during the war, Luciano was working with the American Office of Naval Intelligence. Yes, supposedly to protect the harbors, but really, I mean, there's a whole other story there.

There is a whole... Government working with the mafia. Yeah. And there's this fabled Havana conference, which is, you know, 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 1946. 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 1944,

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 elsewhere. And it was through a threat from the United States to cut off medical supplies to Cuba that Luciano was given up back to Italy in 1947. We spoke with Raul Roa Kori, former Qaeda.

Cuban diplomat about these years of gangsterismo and the mafia and their relationship with the Cuban government at the time. Well, the mafia wanted to control tourism and wanted to control all the hotels and the casinos and the prostitution and so on in Havana. It was a tremendous business 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... the structure which existed, the power structure which existed under Batista. Here is Rafael Hernandez, editor of the Cuban magazine Temas, talking about the ways that gangsterismo was a very basic way to control politics on the island.

Well, I would say that not only foreign gangsters, but national gangsters, were very much associated. The 1940s politics, human politics, was very violent. Guns 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.

to divide and control politics. In 1951, Eddie Chibas, a well-respected opposition figure in Cuban politics, told his listeners over the radio to, quote, take a broom and sweep away the thieves in government. He then shot himself on air. Chibas died 11 days later in the hospital, and one of his many admirers sitting in the hospital with him

was reportedly Fidel Castro, a young lawyer in his early 20s. 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 1944, with his supposedly liberal successor promising a new error of hope and change. This almost immediately degenerated into yet another chapter of corruption, underdevelopment, and rule by gangsters. The next president after this guy was 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 90 million from the Cuban treasury while president.

So this is just the state of things, apparently forever, Batista or no Batista. Oddly enough, it's Foncio Batista, who takes advantage of everyone's discontent in 1952 when he comes back from Daytona Beach and runs for president again. The problem for Batista in 1952, however, 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, strong man, General Batista, had overthrothed. the constitutional regime of President Carlos Prio. Batista suspended the Constitution of 1940, and Carlos Prio is reported to have fled the presidential

palace so fast he forgot a stash of Coke. The present coup was accomplished in only 77 minutes, but Cuba's political freedom is ended as Batista cancels the June 1st elections. The U.S., 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 Atchison, 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 U.S. 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 1955 visited Batista, toasted him, compared him to 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 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 to $3 million a year. American domination of the economy, of course, was left alone. Here's a snippet from the U.S. Department of Commerce itself in 1956. Quote, the only foreign investments of importance are those of the United States. Things were stated just as plainly by the Undersecretary of State in a memo to Eisenhower.

Quote, Batista outlawed communism in Cuba in 1953. He favored American investments in Cuba. and this country generally found bilateral relations with Cuba more satisfactory while Batista was in power. Batista also went about fixing things up with the mafia. His successors, after he had left for Florida in 1944, 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 to Mexico's Acapulco. The FBI reported that Batista had asked Meyer Lansky to send an influx of his men to Cuba to, quote, operate gambling.

The sergeant president passed a hotel law, which then, and turned the entire industry into an ATM. By the late 1950s on the eve of the revolution, 300,000 tourists would come to Cuba each year, generating 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.

Meyer 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 Mob Associates. And this is a business enterprise, which has been set up and run 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 with 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 Suci nightclub, the Hotel Capri, and the Salone Rojo Casino. Many of Batista crony had a stake in or worked at these joints, and they were crawling with wise guys straight out of central casting. Yes, in fact, one such guy was Johnny Raselli. Resselli managed the Sansucci nightclub in Havana and represented the interests of American gangsters

such as Sam Giancana, a Chicago Capo. Resselli was reportedly friendly with Francio Batista and would soon be very friendly with the CIA. 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. 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, you know, of 800 million pesos total. And the peso was the same thing as the dollar at that point. Right. And so, which means that, you know, when Batista is himself said to have gotten something like 400 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 1953 does a good job of summing up the lives of ordinary Cubans. 85% 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 plows. 400,000 families in the countryside and in the cities lived cramped in huts and tenements without even the minimum sanitary requirements.

2,800,000 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 200 technological and vocational schools. In Cuba, only six such schools exist, and their graduates have no jobs for their sons. skills. The little rural schoolhouses are attended by a mere half of the school-aged children, barefooted, half-naked, and undernourished. 90% 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, except 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. 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 Mankata barracks in the east of Cuba. With his brother Raul 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 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 1947, 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, poor farmers, political prisoners, the socially outcast. And at 6.3, he cuts that figure of a larger than life, you know, man to the people. He marries a rich girl, Myrta Diaz Ballard, whose parents find him to be a scruffy near do well 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, 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 off at the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953. After this attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, 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 site. 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. A couple months later, at a courthouse in Santiago, 122 prisoners, those who hadn't been murdered already, were brought to trial for the assault on Mankata 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, 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 700,000 Cubans without work, the 500,000 farm laborers inhabiting miserable shacks, the 400,000 industrial laborers who retirement funds have been inborn, 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 Raoul were sentenced to 15 years in prison. But luckily for them, at this point, point, the attack on the Montcada 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 26th movement. Exactly. And so through this kind of popular pressure, Fidel and company were actually released in 1955. So the Castro 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 and underground of July 26th revolutionaries in the towns and the cities. But in Mexico, the Castro brothers will be setting up the military wing of the revolution. Commander Castro, why are you leading a revolution? I am leading a revolution because the legal government of my country was overthrown by the army led by Batista. Now, when they got to Mexico, Fidel and Earl 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 Fidelista's training in Mexico was run by a colonel Alberto Bayo, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, and Fidel soon met Bio'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, 1956, after a year of training and plotting their guerrilla campaign, a troop of 82 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 Manzino, the Fidelistas would now be riding high with, you know, confiscated arms and ammo, and Fidel would, you know, go out to the hills of the Sierra Maestra, a mountainous base in the southeastern tip of the island,

and he would call for a general strike and watch the people toppled 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 82 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. In the morning light, we're 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 split up and make a break for the Sierra Maestra. still serving mainly as a medic in these early days, writes this and his reminices 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 82 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 reached 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 slipped 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. 1957 would be the first year of guerrilla war in Cuba.

There was Batista in one corner and in the other the barbidos, the bearded ones. Fidel says in his oral biography, 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 Barbados. It has his 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 1957, Che writes, quote, we were making contacts, exploring new regions, and spreading the revolutionary flame and the legend, of our barbutus 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 Fidelistas 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 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 enemy. 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 breathless. The road 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 campasinos, with the peasants.

You know, they were finally seeing some justice for the foremen who were blackmailing them into giving them whatever they wanted, for the bandits who were making their lives a living hell. They get money to finance the revolution by forcing sugar plantation owners to pay for progress. We spoke to Raul Ruella a bit about the, as he put, a tremendous weight that the countryside meant for any kind of successful revolution. The Cuban population at the time was mostly rural. 60% of the population was rural and only 40% was 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 exploited workers in the country. They earned very little money, sugar and cane colors, for example, earned 25 cents a day or something like that.

They earned nothing, and this was only for a small season. 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 for the revolutionary movement, which it was, because, as you know, the rebel army was constituted around 85 or 90 percent were peasants. So let's get a sense of the timeline here. The months of March and April and 57 are basically restructuring, regrouping, and training people to join the rebel army.

The men learn 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 Uverro, 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 rebels call it their biggest victory. Up to now, the tactics have been to Harris and terrorize government troops. Now, at last, they have won a battle. By the fall of

1957, 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 the suicide mission into the fun house of horror. Right. The rebels. who had initially been 12 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. Yes, however, though it was true that by the end of 1957, Batista's army couldn't really crack the Sierra Maestra and get those rebels, it was also true that the rebels could not yet leave the Sierra Maestra and start to wage their battles across the rest of the island.

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 and 56?

They needed diversionary uprisings all across Cuba. 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. My father had always been a Marxist and a revolutionary. My father was very well known in Cuba at the time, and my father was actively against Batista in the Klanjistan movement, and so was my mother. And I also participated in the struggle of Cuban students against Batista and the dictatorship.

That is how I became involved. What did your participation in the struggle as part of the student movement look like? Well, my participation is not a, you know, it's not really, something extraordinary, but I was in the student movement. We participated in demonstrations and so on. And I wrote one of the most important newspapers in Cuba at the time. I wrote every Sunday an article whenever I could. I wrote against the dictatorship.

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 Paiz, the picture of the tireless, charismatic organizer, a figure just as beloved as Fidel. And he was the organizer of the revolutionary movement in Santerra, Cuba, the eastern part of the country. He had an enormous importance

in supplying weapons and medicines and other things to Fidel in the Sierra Maestra, which was decisive because this was actually what helped Pidel to 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 Espin, 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 were going to join Fidel and the guerrillas in the Sierra. 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 26th 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 bring back 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 they collected information. There was a lot of women telephone operators in the 1950s, like in Santiago, for example, who collaborated with the movement. And they would eavesdrop on, you know, police 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, identified with the police and needed, um, either to travel up to the Sierra, to the rebel army, or just hide and try to get into an embassy and seek refuge somewhere. They visited prisoners. A lot of times, men would be caught thrown in prison, men who belong 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. information under questioning, and then they would take that information back out to the leaders of the revolutionary movements and the urban underground. So women did a lot in the urban underground, and people don't know as much about it, but it was important work. Outside of the July 26th movement, the most influential radicals were the Communist Party, the Partido Socialista Popular. But at this point in our story, in 1957, the communists are still pretty standoffish toward the July 26th 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 26 guys. And in a year from now, in 1958, both the communists and the July 26ers will be under the same umbrella. The communists will start 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, as a guerrillas won that major offensive at El Uverro, 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 57, 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, other parts of Oriente. Police shoot down Frank Pais, boss for the rebel underground, as he pleased 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 Achevorea, leader of the students, organizes an attack on the presidential palace. They reached the second floor. But Batista escapes, and the student leaders are shot, leaving 25 bodies. Police looking for the instigators shoot down Jose Echavaria,

who prematurely screamed over a radio station, the tyrant is dead. The killing of Frank Paise 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 going to have to figure out pretty soon what they felt about these Fidelistas, least of all, the United States of America. In Venezuela, the news concerns the vice president of the United States and his wife, arriving by plane at Caracas to conclude a tour of South America.

In a visit to Caracas, Venezuela in 1958, 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 made it through nearby countries with tolerable protests, but this was a genuine brush with danger. Several in the party are injured as both the vice president and Mississippi. as Nixon's cars are pelted and spat upon. But always the vice president reflects calm rather than concern after his turbulent experience. Unlike the speed well, 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 Jacobo Bar-Benz. So every dent in Nixon's car, was a different Venezuelan protesters way of saying, we know what you're all about. Upon learning of this attack on Vice President Nixon's motorcade, Admiral Arley 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, 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. 3,000 semi-addos, 15,000 hand grenades, 5,000 mortar grenades, machine guns, armor-piercing cartridges, howitz or bombs, rockets, tanks. Perhaps this is why 1958, second year of Cuba's civil war, began with yet more success for the Fidelistas, still numbering no more than 400 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 our store. Others were adventurous mercenaries, and some were just opportunists, like some of the mob-connected

characters we've been talking about, and basically hedging their bets, supporting the rebels in case they won, and favors could be cashed in later. Also, in the meantime, why not make a buck selling them some guns? 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. In 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 Pais Segundo Frente, named after the fallen Revolutionary.

On March 12th, 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 1933. 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 rebel's momentum and crack down as hard and fast as possible.

Fidel and his camp, however, were essentially outvoted, and he supported his comrade's 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 retreat. 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 pardons 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 Castro. Fidel called in for reinforcements from commanders Camillo Sienfuegos and Juan Omeda, and in time, they managed to stave off the encirclement. He sends in bazooka teams, which Castro's men capture and turn

against Taborneous tanks. Castro records his broadcasts for the rebel radio. His men now will come down from the mountains and fight on the plane. 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 26th 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. Che Guevara and his column turned toward the plains of Camagouye,

the territory between them and the center of the country, Las Vias. 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 200 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 30th, 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 in. 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.

Camilla Cienfuegos's 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 Camerway, another cyclone. And this is from Camila's reports, quote, I will tell you that since we left the zone of Caltoe westward bound, we have traveled without resting a single night for 40 days, many of them without guides with the coastline for our orientation and a compass for direction.

In the 31 days that the trip through Cammy Way dragged on, we ate only 11 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.

Ah, yes. 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 Pino de 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 Inche, 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 Fuencio 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. Alan 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 and Afhtali and Jack Cohn both right. 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 has 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 could end up on top in Cuba. 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 95% of the Cuban population by this point was supporting Castro. I saw an interesting thing happened today. A rebel was being arrested by the military police. 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, John? Those rebels, you know, they're lunatics. Maybe so. But it occurred to me. The soldiers are paid to fight. The rebels are. What does that tell you? They 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 58, one by one, The lights are going out. The only light left that matters is right in the middle of the island. Santa Clara.

Guevara will now lead the troops against Santa Clara, capturing many towns. They press on toward the provincial capital. Batista's chief of staff sends an armored train to Santa Clara. 400 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 Che wanted to take it. He had made it to Santa Clara, and it was game day.

Che piles gasoline tank trucks on the track near the Capiro 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 $1 million worth of ammo in rebel hands. The Che Guevara goes to the troops that attack at Santa Clara. Toma much pueblos and they're closer to the capital of the province. Santa Clara was now a free fire zone, regular civilians, use their cars as barricades. Batista's Air Force strikes back.

Women are manufacturing gasoline bombs. Even without air cover, Castro's men attack 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. As Christmas Day, 1958 approaches, Che Guevara orders the final assault. December 29th, 1958, the rebels take Santa Clara's train station. Gavara'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 Tawarnaeer throws into the fight, correctly surrender to the hard-bitten gorilla. Until Santa Clara belongs to the revolutionaries. In every meaningful sense, the war is now over. December 31st, 1958. Vroencio Batista, one-time sergeant, still current president of Cuba, enjoys a New Year's Eve party with his family, friends, and advisors.

They hear news that the revolutionary forces all over the island are rising against Batista. 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 Montcada. Battista seized the handwriting on the wall and please the country. 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 $300 to $400 million into bank accounts in New York, Florida, and Switzerland. of Fidel Castro sweep triumphantly through the Cuban capital, hours after their rebellion had toppled the regime of Fulgencio-Bautista.

A general strike called for by Fidel after the military victory secures the revolution, preventing it from becoming yet another coup or yet another changing of the guard. Red and black banners of the July 26th movement go up across Cuba. Quote, Havana enjoyed a prolonged fiesta. humming with life and color. One Italian journalist writes, every so often scattered here and there, you come across bearded guerrillas, complete with pistols and submachine guns,

lounging on big chairs in front of public buildings, guarding against the enemy. The first truckloads of Italistas 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, smashed parking meters and threw them into the streets.

The news spreads through Havana. Batista is finished. Crowds briefly battled with police until July 26th militias settled in and prevented anything from getting out of hand. In Cardenas near the northern coast, thousands of people ran through 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 party that was thrown in Havana were the people who owned the casinos. Seven of the 13 casinos in Havana suffered extensive damage, including the gaming rooms of the Doville, Plaza, and Sevilla-Biltmore hotels. Slot machines were stolen from Traficante's San Suci Club, and revolutionaries decided to make the Havana Hilton their new headquarters.

The crowd turns on the gambling casinos, run by Meyer Wamski and other American food rooms under Batista Protection. On the outskirts of Havana, people were so closely packed together that it actually took hours to get into the city in every passing call. was hailed as if it carried Vidal Castro himself. Castro would actually not reach Havana for another week, but after arriving in Santiago, on January 2nd, he gave a speech the following day. This is what he said.

This will not be like 1895 when the Americans came and took over, nor will it be like 1933, when the people began to believe that the revolution was going to triumph, and Mr. 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, while those who did assume power proved 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, military headquarters. Castro speaks quietly. A white dove perched on his shoulder. Santo Traficante told his lawyer, quote, Castro's not going to be an 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. Che Guevara wrote down that all eyes, those of the great oppressors and 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 big creditor. Alan Dulles, head of the CIA, said, quote, we do not believe Castro is in the pay of

or working for the communists. His brother is more irresponsible. And this fellow Che Guevara, the Argentinian who has been fighting with him, We are rather suspicious about him. Camilo Sienfuegos simply stated what was obvious, yet unbelievable. We did it. Meyer Lansky also kept it simple.

He contacted the FBI and said, The entire Cuban government will soon be communistic. And Meyer Lanskyy also kept it simple. offered the U.S. government some help.