Real Dictators - Fidel Castro Part 2: Shipwrecked in the Swamps

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Castro wrestles with Marxism and begins another affair. Attempting to reignite the revolution, he swims naked across the US border. At a get-together in Mexico City, he strikes up a rapport with a scruffy Argentine known as “Che”. Together, in a battered old boat, they will set sail for Cuba - to bring the fight to Batista… A Noiser podcast production.Narrated by Paul McGann. Featuring Michael J. Bustamante, Carlos Eire, Lillian Guerra, Jonathan Hansen, Irene Lopez, Alex von Tunzelmann, Eduardo Zayas-Bazan. This is Part 2 of 10. Written by Edward White | Produced by Ed Baranski and Edward White | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design & audio editing by George Tapp | Assembly editing by Dorry Macaulay and Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan | Recording engineer: Joseph McGann. Get every episode of Real Dictators a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How can you get even more of everything you love about Porter with the new BeMo VI Porter MasterCard? Enjoy more freedom, more flexibility, more rewards, more of all the things you love. Need I say more? Get your ticket to more with the new BeMo VI Porter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash VI Porter to learn more. It's September the 1st, 1956. Another beautiful day at the Casa de Palmas,

an upscale hotel in McAllen, Texas, on the border with Mexico. Amid the colonial era's surroundings, waiters bring drinks to guests lounging by the pool. Elsewhere patrons shelter from the sun within the cooling colonnades or beneath the stretching palm trees. In one of the hotel's superior suites, a smartly dressed man waits expectantly. It's Carlos Prió, the exiled former president of Cuba. Back in 1952 he was turfed out of office by Fulgencio Batista, the military strongman who's been the island's dictator ever since. For four and a half years, Prio has been dreaming of exacting his revenge.

Today he's meeting someone who might be able to do the dirty work for him. At length there's a knock on the door. Prio's guest has arrived. Priya's guest has arrived. Into the room walks a young man. He looks every inch at Texan, crisp blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a Stetson. He's tall too, well over six foot, with thick dark hair, an unimpressively thin mustache, and a penetrating stare. But this is no son of Dixie. It's Fidel Castro.

Last time you saw him Castro was on the run, hiding from the catastrophe that was his botched attack on the Moncada military barracks. Back in Cuba, there are constant rumors that Fidel is dead, but here he is, in the flesh, very much alive. For the past 14 months he's been living in Mexico. This morning he stripped naked on the southern banks of the Rio Grande and swam to the other side across the U.S. border. From there he was picked up in a truck, and now he stood face to face with a man he detests. It isn't all that long ago that Castro publicly lambasted Prio for his lavish lifestyle and corrupt practices. Prio has no time for this Castro boy either, but in this moment they're bound together

in a common cause. They both want Batista gone. Videl has lost none of that astronomical self-confidence, none of his messianic bravura. He insists that this time he's got the perfect plan, but it's going to cost. Priya hands over a package. Inside there's an enormous wad of cash. Years from now there'll be competing recollections of the sum involved. There are also suggestions via the KGB that the money comes not from Prio's back pocket, but from the CIA. Who knows?

In the filthy business of war and Cuban politics, alliances and allegiances come and go with the changing of the wind. Fidel certainly has no qualms. Without this cash, his plans are in ruins. Pinching fifty thousand dollars from a son of a bitch isn't theft, he tells a friend. It's a good deed. Money in hand, Castro leaves the hotel. He's back in business.

But in 12 weeks time, he will be tested as never before. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is part two of the Fidel Castro story. And this is Real Dictators. Let's wind back. It's three years earlier, and Fidel's grand plans to liberate his country have hit a major snag. He's now trudging his way up the Gran Piedra mountain in eastern Cuba. Earlier today, July 26, 1953, he led 150 followers in an attack on the Moncada military barracks on the outskirts of the city of Santiago de Cuba. Things could barely have gone worse. Castro and his men were easily repelled by the barrack soldiers. The lucky ones fled to their rural hideout. Others were captured,

tortured and executed by the regime of Fulgencio Battista, the dictator Castro is striving to oust. Now Castro and nineteen of his followers are escaping into the wilds of Oriente province. The journey is punishing. One of their number falls by the wayside with injury and fatigue. Leading the way is a young boy, a local kid who knows every inch of this mountain, its steep rugged terrain smothered in dense green foliage. Dusk descends. They take shelter in a peasant shack. On a spluttering, static, clogged radio, the latest news is being broadcast. Batista is branding the Moncada attack as a failed coup attempt by antique Cuban communists. For numerous reasons, this is very wide of the mark. Michael Bustamante, associate professor at the University of Miami. When Castro starts his insurgency, Cuba's Communist Party, which was then sort of underground,

publishes a note in the newspaper of the US Communist Party that calls Castro and his merry band the perpetrators of a bourgeois hutch. So, during the course of the insurrection in the 50s, there was no love lost necessarily between Castro, his 26th July movement, and sectors of the Cuban Communist Party. Fidel had hoped to kick off a revolution, but it'll take more than a single bungled attack to unite Batista's various enemies. Harvard University's Jonathan Hanson. There were dissidents throughout the island in labor unions, in women's groups, in teachers' colleges, in clinics, in automobile garages,

in secondary school institutions, in Congress itself. And so there were a lot of different people trying to figure out what in the world should we do. If you oppose Batista, you have to ask some natural questions, right? What's the goal of this movement? Is our goal to restore the status quo, meaning the constitution is the goal revolution. What does revolution require? Fidel's madcap scheme at Moncada answers none of these weighty questions. Instead, it gives Batista the perfect excuse to stamp down on civil liberties even further. His military and his secret police force, known as the SIM, punish any perceived troublemakers with extreme violence. And now the hunt for Fidel is on.

Across the country, dozens of people, even vaguely associated with Castro, are apprehended and beaten, in many cases killed. In addition to the violence, Batista pushes through some staggeringly stringent anti-propaganda measures. Laws are introduced that criminalize news stories deemed to be harmful to the Cuban economy, even if they happen to be true. Though what is true in Batista's Cuba isn't always easy to identify. At the Moncada Barracks, reporters are allowed to witness the scene of Castro's crimes. They're shocked to see numerous corpses strewn around. But instead

of laying in pools of dry blood, the dead appear to have been freshly positioned there. It's immediately obvious what has happened. The bodies of rebels tortured and killed elsewhere have been dumped here to make it appear like they were shot in the conflict, to cover up Bautista's summary justice. Two of the reporters take photographs and smuggle them out of the premises, but no editor in Cuba will touch these explosive images. Not yet, at least. It will be more than five years before that day comes.

Three days after the attack, and Batista is raging, Fidel is still at large. Then, on July 29, there's a breakthrough. In Oriente province, the police pick up a young man whose identity cannot be confirmed. The following day, a travelling salesman immediately recognizes him. It's not Fidel Castro, but his brother Raul. The younger Castro had managed to flee the scene of the attack undetected. For three days he's been walking seemingly toward the family farm in Piran, a good fifty miles from Santiago. Quite how he thinks this was going to save his bacon is unclear. It's irrelevant now, though. One Castro brother down, one more to go.

Up in the mountains things are looking bleak for Fidel. Of the nineteen men he left with, only two remain by his side. The others have decided to take their chances and turn themselves in. Exhausted and starving, Castro and his remaining companions settle down for the night in a mountain hut. As they sleep, B Batista's forces close in. At dawn, in the half-light, sixteen armed soldiers burst into Castro's hut. With guns aimed at his head, Fidel raises his arms in surrender. at his head, Fidel raises his arms in surrender. Cuba's public enemy number one is in handcuffs. His martyrdom can now begin.

Taken back to Santiago, he's interrogated and thrown in a cell to await trial. In total, 122 people are to be tried, many of whom surely had nothing to do with Fidel's uprising. If found guilty, each defendant faces between five and twenty years in prison. The first five days of the trial are a disaster for the Batista regime. Castro, a qualified lawyer, is allowed to conduct his own defense. From the first moment, he raises objections and points of order, fingers jabbing, chin jutting upwards. Fidel won't stop talking, and he frequently makes excellent points. The government actually summarily executed many of the perpetrators of the Moncada attack, many of Castro's peers.

And then they lied about it. Castro just totally discredited the government's accounts. From the perspective of the Batista regime, this can't go on. In a desperate bid to shut Castro up, two doctors suddenly conclude that he's too ill to participate in the trial. The next day a medical certificate is presented to the presiding judges. As they scan the document, one of the defendants, Melba Hernandez, stands up and requests to speak. As she approaches the judges, she pushes her hand beneath her headscarf and pulls out a

piece of paper. It is a letter, apparently in Castro's own hand, explaining that the doctors are lying. He is fighting fit and eager to have his day in court. For the prosecution this is a highly embarrassing turn of events. The judges are in a tricky position. After much humming and hoeing, a ham-fisted compromise is reached. Fidel will appear in court, but only after all the other defendants have been tried and sentenced. Presumably the decision is intended to save face of both the court and the regime. Yet, inadvertently, the judges have just turned proceedings into a circus, one in which Castro is now the ringmaster.

one in which Castro is now the ringmaster. On October 5, 1953, the first set of trials ends. Of the 29 rebels convicted, Raul Castro is one of five men given the lengthiest sentence, 13 years behind bars. Eleven days later, Fidel's trial begins, though the judges rule it will not be held in a courtroom, depriving the accused of the chance to play to the gallery. Even so, six journalists manage to squeeze into the hospital room where Fidel is the star of his own one-man show.

The prosecution's speech lasts for two minutes. When Fidel's turn comes, he speaks without pause for more than two hours. Over the next 60 years, such behavior will become very familiar to the people of Cuba. Castro will often dominate opponents not through the power of his arguments, but through their sheer length. Historian and author Alex von Tunzelmann. Fidel Castro was not a man of brevity. He was somebody who, once he started on a speech, he could just carry on for hours sometimes. And he really could summon up that sort of demagoguery, which, you know, was absolutely an early sign he was a dictator. When Fidel was imprisoned with his brother, Raoul said afterwards, I've heard enough of Fidel to

last a lifetime. I'm sure sharing a cell with him was pretty hard work. His defense speech is the complete Fidel Castro experience, his rhetoric full of moral indignation. He liked the performance. Cuban politics was performative, no question about it. He not only refuted the prosecutor's charges, but then laid out his revolutionary platform. And, you know, it included things like land reform, profit sharing, a diversification of Cuban agriculture, eradicating corruption, confiscating misappropriated wealth. He doesn't so much defend himself as put Batista on trial, cataloging some of the dictator's most egregious transgressions.

One of the specific cases he cites is that of Mario Cuchilán Sol, a journalist and satirist who was beaten as punishment foruchilán's niece. I am so proud of him. He was so brave. He had this TV program that was called Cuchilán TV, which is Cuchilán Sees You, and then it was TV, you know, so he played with that. He was a joker like me. And he was fighting Batista.

He was saying everything he didn't like. And of course he had some mobs attacking him, beating him, but nobody could silence him. Like so many from Cuba of this time, Irene's story is shot through with a chilling irony. Many years later, after Cuchilán's death, Irene will herself become a victim of violent repression, this time at the hands of Castro's state security services. But her uncle would never have a bad word said about Fidel. It's a fault line common among many Cuban families. He loves Fidel. He always thought that Fidel was not communist. He just liked power.

We were very defined in our views and I respect that he couldn't change. He needed an idea. Back in his hospital room, Fidel's mammoth self-defense finally comes to an end. As he insists, history will absolve me. History, of course, is yet to come. For now, only prison walls await. He was really quite happy to be banged up in jail after that because this confirmed his opinions of himself as this sort of martyr for Cuba. Castro is a long way from being the only advocate of revolution in Cuba, but his notoriety propels him to the top of the pile. In short order, he will become the leading

light of what is referred to as the 26th of July movement, or M267 for short, the date of the failed Moncada attack. Abject failure is turned into moral victory. Fidel is sentenced to fifteen years behind bars. Along with the other rebels, he will serve his sentence in a prison on the Isle of Pines, an island roughly one hundred miles south of Havana. A sense of camaraderie builds among the prisoners. Soon the Isle of Pines is turned into an Academy of Revolution. Adele, it's there with this whole crowd with which he launched the Moncada attack. 80 or so prisoners occupied this large hall in which they set up what they called the Abel Santa Maria University, which was dedicated to a friend of his who died in the

Moncada attack. And they just got books. The head librarian isn't on the Isle of Pines at all. It's Naty Rivalta, the woman who helped fund the Moncada attack and whom Castro was brought into his inner circle. From the outside, Nati sends stacks of books, all of which are intended to fertilize the minds of the rebels behind bars, especially the man who is now seen as the leader of the so-called 26th of July movement. The library is just stupendous, and he began to read, and he read everything. He's autodidact, and he is absolutely voracious. Among the books Nati sends him are the works of Engels, Marx, and Lenin.

It's the first time that Castro meaningfully engages with far-left thought. I have his marginalia for Marx's capital in which he's wrestling with the concepts of Marx, like what is the role of the bourgeoisie? Can you rely on even a reform-minded bourgeoisie to make a revolution? What is the role of the proletariat, the urban proletariat versus the rural peasantry? Were you going to take over this state or were you going to destroy a revolution? What is the role of the proletariat, the urban proletariat versus the rural peasantry? Were you going to take over this state or were you going to destroy the state? And it wasn't that he was reading this and just scooping it up. He wasn't. He was reading this and wrestling with it and saying, hmm, what do you do with this? Castro is gobbling this up. These books keep him alive.

up these books keep him alive. Inside prison, Castro's connection to Nati Revuelta intensifies. They begin a passionate relationship through prolific, lengthy correspondence. But all the while, Fidel is still married to Mirta, the daughter of the socially prominent Diaz-Balart family and the mother of their young son Fidelito. His letters to her are devoid of the passion he pours into those he writes to Nati. He involves his wife in the important task of publishing what becomes the M267 manifesto, a transcription of his trial defense speech, written in lemon juice and smuggled out of prison.

Yet beyond that, Castro decides that Mierda has served her purpose. Emotionally, he cuts her off. He could be charming and he could be extremely cold, but that's Fidel. He cuts be mean. He can be nasty. For a while Fidel keeps his developing relationship at Nati's secret. But then he gets careless. When handing over his letters to the outside world one day, he makes a mistake. Sending the message intended for his wife to his lover, and vice versa. Myrta receives the letter, and is crushed by its contents.

Fidel accuses the prison guards of mischief-making, sabotaging his personal life. Perhaps. Or maybe it's just another chapter in the tale of Fidel's martyrdom. Professor Lillian Gera. During those years where he is off-site of the political consciousness of the people, I think he felt he was a victim and I think he became deeply narcissistic if he hadn't already been. From that moment forward, he becomes, I think, increasingly convinced that only he can bring about a moral victory over Batista. The sense of victimhood grows deeper in the coming months.

One afternoon Fidel hears a news report on the radio that baffles him. The reporter says that Mieta is to step down from her position within the Batista government. What lies, snorts Fidel, as if his wife would be working for Batista. He contacts Mieta to tell her to complain about this odious fake news. But it turns out to be 100% true. Without actually doing a job of work, Myetha, whose brother serves as deputy minister of the interior, has been on Batista's payroll. Fidel is livid, his own spouse in the pay of his mortal enemy. To deepen his fury, Myrta has moved back to live with her family. Their son, Fidelito, is now being raised as a member of the Diaz Ballard clan, Batista

loving traitors in Castro's mind, every last one of them. The marriage is in tatters, divorce swiftly follows. One day I'll be out of here and I'll get my son and my honor back, Castro tells a friend. Even if the earth is destroyed in the process. The day of his release comes much sooner than he could have anticipated. To everyone's surprise, on Mother's Day, May 1955, Batista announces an amnesty. The Moncada attackers are to be released, including the Castro brothers. Batista doesn't want tales of the prisoner's noble martyrdom to grow exponentially, and he's confident that with the power of the state and the might of the military in his grasp,

Fidel and his followers will be easy to corral. Serving just a fraction of his sentence, Fidel is once again a free man. Well, as free as he can be in Batista's Cuba. A time and place of wild contradictions. Batista's rule was a really violent time. There were all sorts of murders and bullying and intimidation. At the same time, it was also sort of a splendid time for some of the cities like Havana and for Havana tourism. Batista Cuba wasn't one thing or another. It was like Cuba in history as a whole, several things at once. For Eduardo Sáez Basán, who was educated at the same school as Fidel Castro, Batista's Cuba is in fact a special time.

as Fidel Castro. Batista's Cuba is in fact a special time. Life was good. Truly my grandfather, who is a friend of Batista, becomes then a member of the government because he's one of 80 men who becomes temporary legislators. There's an election in 1954 in which my father is elected governor of Camargue and in 1956 I started to date my future wife. I was studying in Havana so I was having a very good time. Cuba was not by far perfect, but we had freedom in Cuba. Even on the Batista, there were opposition newspapers, and if you were not involved in politics and what have you, there was plenty of freedom and economic well-being because

the economy was doing well, even on the Batista. Carlos Ayer was at primary school during Batista's rule. His schoolmates included none other than Batista's own children. Of course, we had guards throughout the premises, and we loved to ask them to show us their guns. And I once, running down the hallway, bumped into Batista's youngest son, who was a grade below mine, and I knocked him over. And I spilled the popcorn he was carrying. And I thought, for sure, that was it for me, one of those men with the guns, come and nab me. But no, instead, the boy got up and offered me some of his popcorn. That's my personal encounter with the Batista dictatorship."

as popcorn. That's my personal encounter with the Batista dictatorship." The kids might be nice enough, but their father is a different story. In Carlos' home in the mid-1950s, there's no love for Batista or the corrupt government over which he presides. "...It was a very politically immature country, and there was a lot of graft and corruption of all sorts. As a matter of fact, during the Batista administration, which was thoroughly corrupt, there were individuals who earned a salary for doing nothing. They were just on the payroll. No one in my family liked Batiste because he was a dictator.

A member of my family was arrested and tortured under Batista. So I can actually claim that I've had family members tortured by both Batista and Fidel. The threat of violence is ever present in Havana, both from Batista and those who oppose him. is ever present in Havana, both from Batista and those who oppose him. When Raul Castro is questioned by police on suspicion of blowing up a cinema, he decides it's time to get out of the country. He heads for Mexico City. His older brother follows soon after. Ahead of his departure, Fidel makes one final visit to his paramour, Nati Ravuelta. At her apartment, they make love.

Nine months from now, Nati will give birth to Fidel's child, a girl named Alina. By the time Castro first meets his daughter, he will be among the most famous and infamous men on the planet. Fidel leaves for Mexico City in July 1955. On arrival he discovers a place unlike anywhere else in Latin America. A magnet for dissidents and dreamers from across the region, its narrow streets and elegant plazas seem to grow busier with every passing day. Amid the columns of colonial-era architecture, modernity bursts forth. Motor vehicles, tower blocks, and sweeping modern highways encroach at every turn.

Thirty years earlier, this city was a place of refuge for the Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Today, the streets still abound with talk of violent uprising. Among the city's frustrated Latin American revolutionaries is Ernesto Guevara, an unkempt twenty-seven-year-old doctor from Argentina, with shaggy dark hair, always dressed in the same ill-fitting brown suit. His habit of calling everyone Che, a Spanish word for pal or body, leads to a nickname, Che Guevara. Informal he may be, warm and friendly maybe not so much, intense and flexible, inexhaustible. Guevara is a committed Marxist with a burning desire to spread revolution across the Americas. Of the Castro brothers, it's Raoul who meets him first.

Bowled over by Guevara's revolutionary zeal, Raoul suggests a meeting with his big brother. On July 26, 1956, the third anniversary of the Moncada attack, Che and Fidel both spend the evening in the apartment of a mutual friend. On this occasion they don't converse. Fidel is holding court in the kitchen, making spaghetti. He says little if anything to Che, who, as is his want, is slunk in the corner, watching. It's not until a few days later at the same friend's apartment that the shabby, windswept Che and the sharply dressed Fidel, his hair slick with oil, are properly introduced.

Fidel is recovering from a virus, but his energy seems undiminished. He squeezes Che's shoulder in greeting, and they fall into a conversation that lasts into the small hours. Fidel, of course, does most of the talking. They discuss the need to topple Batista and to curb US influence in Latin America. Jose Marti and Karl Marx crop up more than a few times. By morning, Che is smitten. If Cuba has produced anything good since Marti, he says to his girlfriend, it is Fidel Castro. I think the effect on Guevara was enormous and sort of immediate.

This was a messianic figure that he'd been waiting for. So he actually wrote poetry about him, about how powerful he was. It's quite extraordinary to read. Che Guevara himself had, I think, some kind of insecurity about his masculinity. And possibly that was one reason why he was such a violent person. He had asthma and he often would have collapses. He'd get frustrated with himself. And that drove him, in a sense, to sort of prove himself more and more to become

this real tough guy. And then there was Fidel, who really was this tough guy. So I think he was impressed by him on a really psychological level. But he also was impressed by him because Fidal was this incredibly uncompromising leader. As the months go by, the two become ever closer. Castro lets Guevara in on the rudiments of his latest plan to depose Batista. It contains elements of his two previous attempts at overthrowing a dictator. As with the aborted 1947 expedition against Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, it will require a seaborne invasion, and,

reminiscent of the Moncada attack, it will feature a relatively small number of combatants, who, after an initial volley of frenzied violence, will disappear into the mountains to build a guerrilla campaign against the government. Over time the Castro brothers recruit a few dozen like-minded young people. Some are devoted Marxists, others are disciples of Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti. All are fixated on liberating Latin America from foreign oppression. The one key sticking point is cash. This time, Nathalie Riveuelta is not on hand to pawn her diamonds.

Other sources of funding are required. Fidel quite legitimately obtained an American tourist visa and he traveled overland from Mexico to Texas and went on a fundraising tour of the US, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida. He was briefly detained by the FBI in Union City, but other than that he just went around with his new slogan, in the year 1956 we will be free or we will be martyrs, and he raised $9,000 in the US. And in Mexico this actually funded these Cuban ex he raised $9,000 in the US. And in Mexico, this actually funded these Cuban exiles to train on a ranch outside the city.

The man charged with turning them into an effective guerrilla army is Alberto Baio, a grizzled veteran of the Spanish Civil War. Ba Bio is unique. Warrior, poet, marksman, and stunt pilot, he's wandered the globe, fighting established authority in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. With a shock of white hair and only one eye, this old man seems an unlikely PT instructor, yet he soon whips them into shape. He screams his way through punishing exercise routines, marches them through the city streets at sunrise, orders them out into the chapel Tepec Lake. Then the really hard work begins. At a ranch, teeming with cacti and poisonous snakes, bio pushes the would-be revolutionaries

to their limits. It was very, very rigorous training. These Cubans were incredibly serious about what they were doing. They were incredibly strict on discipline. So there was a serious incident of insubordination and Fidel and Real Castro called for the person responsible to be killed. That didn't happen. The man was pardoned, but they aren't just playing at being revolutionaries.

They're violent and they're dangerous. According to one rebel's account, an execution does take place on a separate occasion. A spy found lurking amongst them is tried and convicted. The unnamed man is sentenced to death. His body is buried on the ranch. By all accounts, Che is in his element. But there are mutterings of mutiny. Many of the men want this vociferous Argentine kicked out. but there was also a lot of opposition to Che among Castro's group and he tried to squash that, you know, maybe or maybe not successfully ultimately. Internal squabbles are one thing, but an external threat to the group is also growing.

Considering their checkered pasts, the Castro brothers and Che Guevara are all very much of interest to the Mexican authorities, who are in close contact with their Cuban counterparts. One evening in June 1956, Fidel is in an apartment with some of his men in the heart of Mexico City. One of the group glances out of the window and sees two men inspecting their car. Assuming them to be cops, Fidel panics. There's a stash of guns in the boot of the vehicle. With a couple of accomplices, he attempts to flee the area undetected. But his luck is out. As they leave the apartment building, the

police pounce. Fidel again is under arrest. Immediately there are raids on the group's safe houses, dotted around Mexico City. Within just a few hours, all of Fidel's closest conspirators are captured. Then the interrogations begin. Doused in freezing water, the rebels are made to talk. Soon the police know all kinds of details about Castro's plans, and they seize mountains of weapons and cash. Fidel is accused of organizing an assassination attempt against Batista. Even his legendary tongue will struggle to get them out of this one. But then a savior swoops in, Deus Ex Machina. Lazaro Cadenas, a former Mexican president and a leading figure of the Mexican Revolution, intervenes, sympathetic to the antipatista

cause. Using his strong influence, Cardenas calls off the dogs, and within a few weeks, all the rebels, including Che and Fidel, are at liberty once again. This latest brush with the law concentrates the mind. Fidel feels a sense of immense urgency to begin the revolution. But to do that, he needs to replenish the resources that the police have just confiscated. They need to get their hands on tens of thousands of dollars, and fast. It's now that Castro makes his visit to Carlos Priyo, the scene from this episode's opening. He asks the exiled former president for a large and immediate injection of money. A distasteful mission from Fidel's perspective, but utterly necessary.

Yet if Castro's plan has any chance of success, it needs to be supported in Cuba itself. Castro has no difficulty in cultivating networks of sympathizers back on the island. Supporters of the M26-7, who agreed to set aside ideological differences in order to work towards the goal of ridding Cuba of its dictator. However, many are skeptical of Castro's plans. They think he's trying to run before he can walk. The country isn't ready for a revolution, they warn him.

But Fidel won't listen. He feels the pressure to get out of Mexico. Fixated on returning to Cuba before the end of 1956, he presses ahead. In Santiago, a committed antipatista revolutionary called Frank Pais pledges to use his extensive contacts to aid Fidel's cause. He will lead uprisings in the East to coincide with the arrival of Castro's Guiruna force. In Havana, another young revolutionary, José Antonio Echeverria, agrees to do the same. The plan is set. The invasion will take place on November the 30th.

The invasion will take place on November 30th. Now all that's needed is a boat. In October, Castro catches sight of a dilapidated yacht, a small one, about 60 foot long. The paint is peeling, the hull is corroding, the keel is cracked. But for reasons best known to himself, Castro immediately decides that this is the vessel to carry him home. The boat's owner, who was also Castro's arms supplier, points out that he needs a craft that can accommodate 130 men. This thing is built for not much more than a dozen.

God knows what he was thinking. But I just don't think there were a lot of boats going around to be sold to Cuban revolutionaries at the time. I mean, that's how I look at it. Even the boat's name seems implausible. Grandma. And often people, I think, who only speak English think that there must be some sort of word in Spanish,

but actually, it doesn't mean grandma. Literally, the boat was named for its owner's grandmother. Everyone tells Castro he's out of his mind. Even if the boat were big enough, there's no way he can make it ready for a military operation in just a few weeks. Castro won't be swayed. This wildly inadequate vessel will eventually become a part of the grand mythology of Castro's rise to power. The official newspaper of the revolution will be named in its honor. The Grand Mar will in time be framed as proof that even Fidel's worst decisions are, by definition, correct. This, after all, is the man who defended himself in court with

the words, History will absolve me. Seidel's sense of himself is always right. It just never goes away if anything, it becomes sort of cataclysmic. Everything that has happened from point A to Z, you know, is somehow legitimate in his view, and it is an outcome that he predicted or that he assumed or that needed to have transpired, despite everybody's convictions otherwise. In late October, the Castro brothers receive word that their father, Angel, has died. Some historians have speculated that the news strengthens Fidel's resolve to return to Cuba. Is grief perhaps a spur to push ahead with a half-baked plan. Other commentators suggest

otherwise. The fate of the revolution will not be contaminated by any personal sentiment. On that subject, Fidel has recently become besotted with a new woman named Lilia. Nati Revuelta, it seems, is yesterday's news. According to some accounts, he's gone so far as to ask Lillia's father for her hand in marriage. Frightfully bourgeois. But the call of the revolution consigns wedding plans to the dustbin. In November, Fidel publishes a manifesto to herald his return to Cuba.

In it, there is no mention of Marx or communism. Castro sticks to his script. This revolution is about restoring the Constitution of 1940 and fulfilling the dream of Jose Martí. On November 25th, a telegram arrives in Santiago. It reads, Book ordered out of print. That same day, a separate message reaches Havana. Make reservation. Both are sent by Fidel. Both carried the same coded meaning. The invasion party is about to set sail. There are now just five days until the grandma is due to arrive in Cuba. Last minute preparations are made.

And then it's time. 82 men somehow clamber aboard. And then pretty much everything went wrong. As the boat pushes out into the Gulf of Mexico, a storm rises up. The rebels attempt a rendition of the Cuban national anthem to lift their spirits. It's no use. The little boat is tossed this way and that on the sea. Che Guevara commits a picture of the scene to memory. The whole boat assumed a ridiculous tragic appearance, writes the Argentine. Men clutching their stomachs, anguish written in their faces,

some with their heads in buckets, others lying immobile on the deck in strange positions, their clothes covered in vomit. A search begins to retrieve the seasickness pills from the cargo, but nobody can remember where they packed them. The boat started flooding, they had to get the bilge pump and, you know, kind of pump it out. But by the time they managed to salvage the boats, most of the food they brought was completely ruined. Che Guevara's asthma medicine was gone, so he was having an asthma attack and he couldn't do anything about it. It was horrific. For four days, the grandma pitches and rolls on the waves. Then eventually the waters calm, but the party is massively behind schedule.

The grandma is meant to arrive at the Cuban coast on November the 30th, but the lookouts search the horizon in vain. Instead of steaming in to spark a revolution, Castro's ship of war is bobbing listlessly miles out at sea. Soon the latest news crackles over the radio. Violence has broken out in Santiago. Frank País is following the script. His uprising is shaking the city. But in Havana, José Antonio Echeverria has decided to cancel his uprising, unconvinced by Castro's ability to deliver on his plan.

It's a shrewd judgment. The grandma is 48 hours away, to deliver on his plan. It's a shrewd judgment. The grandma is 48 hours away and has all but run out of water, food and fuel. In the early hours of December the 2nd, the heavens open. One of the rebels slips and falls into the water. He's fished out. The journey and the misery continues. It isn't until the sun comes up that the precious sight of Cuba comes into view. At least it looks like Cuba. But there's confusion as to where exactly they are. Impatient to get off this floating torture chamber,

Castro orders the boat to be piloted straight ahead. At which point, the grandma clatters into a sandbag. As the boat starts to fill with water, Castro's men summon what energy they can and haul themselves over the side of the boat. They wade through the Caribbean Sea onto dry land. Dehydrated, hungry, exhausted and seasick, they are finally in Cuba. But they've landed among vast stretches of mangrove swamps,

quite possibly the single worst spot on the island at which to attempt an invasion. Over the coming days they lay low. Batista has military search parties combing the area. They remain undetected. Or so it seems. In a quiet clearing, the rebels are suddenly ambushed. The frenzy of gunfire breaks out. Attack planes rain down round after round. Fidel starts screaming orders, but nobody can hear him. Che is hit in the neck. He slumps against a tree.

Two of his compañeros drag him away. The scene is one of devastation. Several of Castro's followers are killed. Dozens are captured. For the second time in just over three years, Fidel is facing annihilation. The remaining rebels split into three groups. One is led by Fidel, another by Raoul, a third by Che, whose injury is less serious than First Fiat.

They each descend into the Sierra Maestra mountain range. For two long weeks they live off the kindness of strangers who offer them food, shelter, and guidance through the thick woodlands that encase them. On December the 21st the three groups reunite. There are now just 14 of them, with 10 guns between them. The glorious plan hatched in Mexico City is in tatters. But they are still alive. Just. In the next episode. While Batista tries to convince the world that Castro is dead, Fidel regroups in the mountains.

The world's press descends on Cuba, hoping to meet this elusive rebel. And Fidel is only too happy to grant everyone interviews. Meanwhile in Havana, Batista's sick son helps to save him from assassination. But the dictator's grip on the island is slipping. That's next time.