Real Dictators - Fidel Castro Part 3: The Mountain Guerrillas

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

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 his grip on the island is slipping… A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Paul McGann. Featuring Anthony DePalma, Carlos Eire, Lillian Guerra, Jonathan Hansen, Jennifer Lambe, Alex von Tunzelmann, Ileana Yarza.Special thanks to University of Miami Libraries for the use of the Huber Matos archive. This is Part 3 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, Anisha Deva, Rob Plummer | 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

Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $5. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, English muffin sandwiches, value iced coffee, and more. Limited time only, a participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. It's a January day, 1957, around 8 a.m. Winter is doing its worst in New York City. Every day brings freezing temperatures and a low gray sky.

The Big Apple shivers, but it doesn't slow down. In midtown Manhattan the streets are as frenetic as ever. Yellow taxis roar up the boulevards and across the avenues. Office workers file out of subway stations and hurry their way to work. In Times Square the gloom is obliterated by batteries of flashing lights. Gaudy billboards advertise the latest Hollywood movies and Broadway shows. And, up on the 10th floor of the New York Times building, the day is well underway. Walking to his desk is a 57-year-old man, skinny and with a slight stoop,

his hair graying and fast receding. This is the veteran reporter Herbert Matthews, a living legend of American journalism. Recently, he's been occupied by an intriguing tale from the Caribbean. A few weeks back, the Times printed a barely believable story from a news agency. It detailed a failed invasion attempt on the island of Cuba, carried out by a bunch of exiled revolutionaries opposed to the rule of General Batista. A revolution in gorgeous, prosperous Cuba? Matthews is perplexed. To him, as to so many Americans,

the place seems a virtual paradise. Yet the stories keep coming. At the heart of it all is a dispute about what has happened to the leader of this alleged insurgency, Fidel Castro. Military sources claim that Castro died almost the moment he set foot on Cuba and is buried deep beneath the sands. Others are certain that he's still at large lurking in the impenetrable mountain forests of Oriente province. It seems nobody really knows for sure. This morning as Matthew settles in at his desk, his telephone rings. On the line is the New York Times' foreign editor. Ruby Phillips, the newspaper's long-serving correspondent in Havana, has been in touch.

She claims she's got a huge story, but she won't divulge what. All she will say is that Matthews needs to get to Havana immediately. Come now, she insists, without delay. Just like that, Herbert Matthews lands the biggest assignment of his life. He doesn't know it yet, but up in the mountains, hidden amidst the sprawling forests, Fidel Castro is waiting for him. From the Noiza Podcast Network, this is part three of the Fidel Castro story. And this is Real Dictatus. We find Castro where we left him in December 1956, high up in the Sierra Maestra mountain range.

With him is a group of demoralized and bedraggled fellow revolutionaries, including his younger brother Raul and the ferocious Argentine Che Guevara. Following the nightmarish collapse of their attempted invasion, they're on the run from Batista's military. Precisely how many are left isn't clear. Later generations of Cubans will refer to the 12, a neatly symbolic number with overtones of the New Testament. Historians suggest the number is actually 14, maybe more.

Whatever the case, this is a decimated gang, severely lacking in weapons, ammunition, food and other basic supplies. To survive they'll need the help of the local people, the rural poor of Oriente province. At least some are happy to share what little they have. A dozen or so peasants even join the cause. In this part of Cuba, Castro's message of ridding the island of its corrupt leaders and American landowners finds a sympathetic audience. Senior Lecturer at Harvard, Jonathan Hanson. Eastern Cuba had always been different.

It had been poor. The peasants there were sort of on the edge a lot of their lives. Yes, there were some big sugar plantations like Castro's father's and the United Fruit plantations. So there wasn't that there wasn't wealth in the East, but there were just these huge divisions of wealth and huge inequalities and Castro remember had grown up with us. The Castro brothers have access to the most elite circles in Havana. The Castro brothers have access to the most elite circles in Havana. Yet, as a revolutionary, Fidel claims that it is his childhood exposure to poverty, interacting with workers on his father's farm that has shaped his worldview.

There's a marvelous quote I have from one of Castro's letters in 1953. He says that on his parents' farm, there was no sense of a hierarchy, no sense of some people being more precious than others, more deserving than others, and that his life on his father's farm, life in eastern Cuba, taught him that any one person was as valuable as any other. Rumors trickle up and down the mountains. At the start of 1957, word reaches the rebels that the government is proclaiming Fidel Castro dead and his force utterly ruined. Presently, the rebels spot an opportunity to announce that Castro and co. are still very much alive. Climbing ever higher up into the mountains, the group comes across a pair of beekeepers. Fidel forks out a few pesos in return for 60 pounds of their delicious nourishing honey,

then promptly announces that he's taking one of the beekeepers hostage. The man is informed that he's to guide the rebels through the surrounding terrain, and for his trouble he'll be paid five pesos per day. He's also afforded the luxury of sleeping in Fidel's hammock. From the rebels point of view, it's a prudent investment. The very next day, the beekeeper leads them to a spot overlooking a small, isolated barracks. Castro's eyes light up. The place is lightly guarded but seemingly stocked with the very things that his guerrillas desperately need. Guns, food, and medicine. The rebels encounter an employee of the local landowner. The man is Chicho Osorio, despised by the local peasants for his violence and cruelty. Fidel claims to be an army colonel performing a secret checkup on the local soldiers.

It isn't a difficult ruse to pull off. As usual, Osorio is drunk as a skunk. Swinging a half-finished bottle of brandy in one hand, he uses the other to fish around for his false teeth. Dentures in mouth, he boasts that the boots he's wearing were liberated from the feet of one of Fidel Castro's mob, those traitorous fools who tried to invade but drowned in a swamp. Fidel lets it slide for now. Osorio leads the guerrillas to the barracks. By way of thanks, one of Castro's men shoots him dead. Now the rebels besiege the barracks. Within thirty minutes they've overwhelmed the place and seized all of its supplies.

Those soldiers who aren't killed are disarmed and allowed to go on their way. It's a surefire way of spreading the news. Fidel Castro is back. Yet, to stay alive in the mountains, he needs much more than muscle and chutzpah. You can't have a guerrilla war with just a bunch of soldiers. You not only theoretically anyway have to have the peasant population willing to work with you and to help you, but you also have

people delivering ammunition and food and organization and energy and press coverage and promoting the cause. In Cuba's cities, underground opposition to Batista is widespread. Fidel Castro can call on the support of any number of committed activists aligned to his cause. The so-called 26th of July movement or M267 for short. Castro, though he seems audacious, outlandish, even irresponsible in many people's eyes, he's working with people who aren't, who are very competent, very organized, and have a whole of like phalanx of all the people you would need to maintain a guerrilla force working for them.

Even Castro's little sister, Juanita, seven years Fidel's junior gets involved. She procures money for the rebels and helps smuggle weapons and supplies up to their hideout. Within this network, a couple of names stand out. Frank Paiz, a remarkably able 22 year old, who organized a support in the city of Santiago de Cuba. And Celia Sanchez, surely the highest ranking woman in the M26-7. Sanchez spends much of her time up in the mountains. She provides invaluable structural and logistical organization. She also plays an important role in the non-military front of the rebels' war against Batista, the one waged on the pages of the international press.

No sooner has Castro gained his footing in the mountains, he wants to tell the world all about it. Sanchez is one of the rebels who gets word out to the cities below that Fidel is ready for his close-up. It's mid-February by the time the New York Times star reporter Herbert Matthews arrives in Cuba. He stays at the Sevilla Biltmore Hotel, a landmark of languid, elegant old Havana, and a favored destination for wealthy American visitors. In the evenings he eats delicious meals of morro crab, a Cuban delicacy. Cocktails flow too.

Refreshing frozen daiquiris, made of the lashingings of Bacardi, the world-famous Cuban rum. But darkness lurks beneath Havana's tourist sheen. From his sources in the city, Matthews hears about the regime's brutal treatment of dissidents. Batista's secret police, the SIM, were notorious for their extrajudicial violence. The urban opposition to Batista is fierce. There are street shootings and bombings on the outskirts of town. When Matthews picks up the latest edition of the New York Times, the pages are riddled with holes. The handiwork of Batista's senses. Clearly this is not the joyous island paradise

of the American imagination. It's a picture familiar to Ileana Yaza, a teenager living in Havana at the time of Matthew's visit. Of course I would listen about the tortures and the killings of Batista. You had no guarantees. You just could get detained by the police, by the SIM, and then you just disappear. Maybe you would be fed to the sharks at the Malecón. You never knew. Actually one day we saw a Batista police car hitting young people.

And when I said, Mom, look at that, my mother turned my head and said, you don't look at that. We don't talk about politics. Matthews heads off to meet Ruby Phillips, his newspaper's Cuba correspondent. Her office is in an old house near the presidential palace, very Havana, right out of a tourist guidebook. There, Phillips announces that the contact has given her some stunning news. Fidel Castro is alive, hiding in the mountains, and eager to talk. She explains that she can't do the interview herself. When Batista discovers that Castro is hosting journalists, he will want anyone involved hanged, drawn and courted. This job needs an experienced head with no ties to the island,

one who can be in and out of Cuba in a flash. I'm Helena Bonham Carter, and for BBC Radio 4, I'm back with a brand new series of history's secret heroes. And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent, she will work undercover, and if she is caught, she's going to be shot. Join me for more stories of unsung heroes, acts of resistance, deception and courage from World War II. Subscribe to History's Secret Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. A week later, Matthews is hiking at midnight up the Sierra Maestra.

It's so dark he can barely see his hand in front of his face. His feet sink into the ground, muddy from a recent downpour. Helped by his guides, Matthews wades through a cold, fast-flowing river. On the other side, his clothes drenched, he gropes his way up a steep slope. On reaching the top, he's told to sit down. His guides disappear into the darkness, and there he stays, shivering, with only the moonlight and the distant cries of animals for company. After two hours, a whistle pierces the night air. A local man suddenly appears, air. A local man suddenly appears, emotions for Matthews to follow him. They trudge on upwards, more mud, more faltering terrain, and finally they stop. Soon there's a rustling And into the dim first rays of the morning light steps Fidel Castro.

Anthony de Palma is the author of The Man Who Invented Fidel, a book about Matthew's encounter with Castro. Out of the woods, breaking through the brush, in a military uniform, drab, olive, and carrying a rifle with a telescope. Six foot something, young man with a beard and with a presence. And Matthews is gobsmacked. It's a brulance from the beginning. To Matthews, this imposing young man is the romantic vision of a Latin American freedom fighter made flesh.

During the three hours of Matthew's visit, Castro sets out his store. His goal, so he claims, is to secure a democratic Cuba, free from tyranny at home and control from abroad, whether that's Washington, Moscow or anywhere else. He misses no opportunity to dramatize and mythologize the guerrilla's struggle. He shows Matthews his rifle with its telescopic lens. We can pick them off at a thousand yards with these guns," he says. What he doesn't mention is that the weapon is a rarity. The guerrillas are relatively lightly

armed. In fact, they're a pretty meager fighting force all round. But Salia Sanchez has taken pains to whip the camp into shape. Equipment has been cleaned. Tattered clothing strategically hidden. Encounters and conversations are stage managed to give the impression of constant warlike activity. Matthews fell for it, a hook line and sinker. He really believed in this idea of a single man who could affect the course of history. And he then presents that in a series of articles that run on the front page of the Sunday New

York Times in 1957, when there is not a larger platform anywhere in the world. And that story is picked up and repeated over and over again that in Cuba, there's this young handsome guy who is a Robin Hood character, who wants democracy and who's beaten the crap out of the dictator. And that image sticks for a long time. For Fidel, the meeting with Matthews is a PR masterstroke. Jennifer Lam, associate professor of history

at Brown University. His interview with Fiatlanda Sierra helps to spread news of this movement at a time when it was not clear it had any political future in Cuba. And so the very fact that Matthews is able to carry his message to spread it in the pages of, you know, the most venerable paper in the United States does give credibility and publicity to this movement at a time when, frankly, it really needed it.

Above all, Matthews legitimizes him as a political leader. He takes him seriously. Matthews is the first journalist to be hosted by Castro, but by no means the last. Over the next year and a half, a constant stream of reporters ascend the Sierra. It includes many U.S. journalists, but there are also Latin American journalists who did the same, one of whom ended up actually being killed by Batista's police later on, and journalists from Europe as well. So it becomes a kind of rite of passage for a certain generation or kind of journalist

in this period, getting out the sierra, no easy thing, and seeing this revolutionary movement for yourself. And it's not just print journalists. TV and radio reports turned Fidel Castro into a semi-mythical creature. A committed freedom fighter meets pop culture pinup. Professor Lillian Guerra. Fidel loved to be on television and he loved to be in front of microphones. So the strategy of the 26th of July movement, I think naively, was to create a one-face, one-man kind of a revolution through Fidel.

And that was something now well-documented. As a strategy, it wasn't by accident. Fidel will lap that up. Batista's censorship of Cuba's well-developed media is stringent, but not total. Various outlets pick up the story. Batista dismisses the whole thing as fiction. If the New York Times had really interviewed Castro, says one government minister,

there'd be photos. Cue the next edition of the paper, which features a large photograph of Matthews side by side with Fidel in his mountain hideout. side by side with Fidel in his mountain hideout. Yale University professor Carlos Ayer grew up in 1950s Havana. Matthew's interview gave him his first glimpse of the curiosity that was Fidel Castro. I first learned of his existence from a magazine that my grandparents had in their house. And this magazine had a spread on Fidel and the mountains. But in the story, it came from Robert Matthews, who went to the mountains and wrote glowing articles about Fidel and his men, these noble rebels who were, you know, going to restore democracy to Cuba, blah, blah, blah. Then I heard adults talking about him. No adult around me expected much from

this man because they knew that he was only one of multiple rebel groups. Among those other groups is the revolutionary directorate run by José Antonio Echeverria, a leading figure in Havana. In 1956, Echeverria had pledged to lead an uprising in the city to coincide with Castro's invasion. He pulled out at the last minute, unsure that Fidel's plan had any chance of success. He's also disinclined to subordinate himself to a man who wanted command of the whole revolution. These two firebrands are as different as they are similar. Fidel isn't famed for his self-deprecating sense

of humor. It's hard to imagine anyone getting away with calling him El Gordo, Fatso in English, as Echeverria's comrades affectionately refer to their leader. At 24, Echeverria is several years younger than Fidel, but this kid is no pushover. These guys were in conversation with Castro, and they're trying to help one another to a certain extent. They're also rivals. Echeverria was much more open to terrorism as a tactic than Castro was, and so these guys agreed a lot and they disagreed a lot, sometimes cooperating and sometimes less so.

In March 1957, news of Castro's meeting with Herbert Matthews is percolating throughout Cuba. Perhaps feeling the need to assert himself as a revolutionary leader, Echeverria rolls the dice. One morning, a handful of his followers file into a delivery van. Stored beneath a false floor is a stash of guns. Their plan is simple. They will drive to the presidential palace, storm the building,

and assassinate Batista in his own office. The delivery van sets off. On arrival the doors open. The rebels leap out. One of them trips, falls to the floor, smashes his glasses and breaks his gun. He darts forward anyway, keeping close to his accomplices. They meet no resistance as they bolt through the opulent palace entrance and scamper up a flight of grand marble stairs. On the second floor they race down the corridor to the president's office.

Bursting through the door, they raise their guns, only to find the room empty. As all this unfolds, a seven-year-old Carlos Eyre is at school. And he is suddenly drawn into a national emergency, because among his schoolmates are Batista's two young sons. Carlos fears his school may be the next target. There was quite a bit of kidnapping going on. There was a Grand Prix in Havana in 1958, believe it or not, and this Argentine driver, Banjo, was kidnapped. And I forget what demands were made, but

it was common to hear things like that. When there was an attack on the presidential palace, the school was immediately surrounded by police, and we were all whisked away by parents. It was a very scary moment because there was a suspicion that the school might be attacked, that the children might be kidnapped. As it happens, only one of Batista's sons is at school with Carlos today. The other is at home sick. Just moments before Echeverria's attack on the presidential palace, Batista had stepped out of his office to check on the boy. It's an incongruously caring act that may well have saved the dictator's life. The assassination attempt in ruins, Echevria drives across town to rally support at the university.

Approaching the campus, a police car crashes into him. Dazed, Echevria crawls from the vehicle and falls to the ground. As he rides in pain, a police officer towers over him. The officer shoots. For an hour, a chivalry lies on the road, slowly bleeding to death. Some passing nuns offer what comfort they can. Nobody else dares go near. In Havana you never know who might be watching. The palace attack seriously rattles Batista. His response is predictable. Dozens of revolutionaries and opposition figures are hunted down, tortured and executed without trial. opposition figures are hunted down, tortured and executed without trial. Castro's mountain guerrillas may excite foreign observers, but everyone in Cuba knows it's

the revolutionaries in the cities who do most of the hard yards. Strikes, demonstrations, espionage, civil disobedience, and acts of urban terrorism. This is the backbone of the anti-Battista campaign. To push back, the regime begins to terrorize its own people with unprecedented ferocity. It's thought that around 4,000 members of the resistance are killed by Battista in just two years. Author and historian Alex von Tunselman.

Batista was incredibly ruthless. I think it's important to understand that he had literally no principles at all. It's not an ideology of liberal or progressive, conservative. It is literally just survival and power. That's all he really cared about. He really kind of became almost hysterical at this point and started to carry out extraordinary persecutions against Cuban people. A really striking example of that is September 1957, there was a naval mutiny in San Fuegos in Cuban port and Batista

just straight away sent in the army with tanks, sent the Air Force to bomb the city. You had people, just civilians, being strafed with machine guns, bombed by the Air Force. It's estimated that probably between 100 and 400 civilians were killed during that attack. It's a pretty extraordinary thing just to bomb your own people like this, but he was doing stuff like this and that's not even to It's a pretty extraordinary thing just to bomb your own people like this, but he was doing stuff like this and that's not even to begin to quantify the number of people who were being arrested, tortured, raped and murdered straightforwardly by his regime. To compound murders, Batista is also losing the loyalty of what had once been a crucial source of support, Cuba's business community. Not only does he rule through extra-constitutional state violence against opponents and journalists, etc., but he rules through crony capitalism.

And that's where he really begins, especially by 57, to lose the support of genuine capitalists, business class, because you have to in some way make it profitable for Batista to do whatever you want to do as a business person. And this became extremely intolerable. So the combination of state violence and crony capitalism is what ultimately would make the situation optimal for opposition activists. Ironically, Batista's growing weakness poses complex problems for the M26-7. Fidel is as impetuous as ever.

He craves new resources that will allow total victory in a total war. Frank Paiz, the wonder kid of the underground resistance in Santiago, worries that although Fidel could win the war, right now he's in no position to win the peace. There's an interesting tension in this that all revolutions have, and that is there's the need to win the fight, the guerrilla war in this case, but there's also a need to build a political platform. There's a lot of tension, tons, like those guys up in the mountains, they're not doing anything right. Those guys down in the Llano, in the cities, they're not giving us any orbs. They're not doing anything we need. And then later, Frank Faiz came up to

the Sierra and said, Sadello, cool your jets. Frank was saying we do not have a political platform capable of sustaining a revolution of this kind yet. We are building it, it takes time. Fidel, cool it." Pais tries his best to temper Fidel's yearning for revolution. But in July 1957, four months after the death of Echevrier, By 1957, four months after the death of Echevrier, Pais also dies, gunned down by Batista's police. His death is a blow to the M26-7, a vital link between the mountains and nearby Santiago eliminated. To fill the void, Castro relies increasingly on Celia Sanchez. She is swiftly becoming his gatekeeper and his closest confidante.

I think he formed very few very deep relationships with people through his life. He's incredibly private person and he certainly had lovers and he certainly produced a large number of children from various women and so forth. But I think he was actually much more shy and introverted than people have perhaps assumed. His close relationships in his life really were with Raoul, his brother, and that was a very fraught relationship. At times they threatened to kill each other and possibly tried, but they did retain this very, very profound brotherly relationship through it.

Celia Sanchez, she was kind of his closest companion. And again, people often say she was his lover. I think that doesn't quite crack it because actually he did have other girlfriends, but they stayed in this very, very close, supportive kind of deep bond with each other for decades until her death. And I think that was a deeply important relationship with very few people, I think, who he confided in and let himself be vulnerable around. Very few indeed.

I think that Celia was probably the only person who got away with contradicting him. From what I have heard of her voice in very rare interviews that she gave and what I have read of her shows that she was a very mild-mannered kind of a woman and that if she were to contradict, that she would do so in a way that was diplomatic, that was loving, that was embracing. People who met her,

journalists who made their way to the Sierra and whom she sheltered and to whom she gave press passes. They all remark on how she seemed to have a kind of a natural legitimacy in Fidel's eyes. With Echeverria and Pais both out of the picture, Fidel becomes the dominant figure of the revolutionary cause. From Batista's point of view, it makes shaking Castro out of his tree all the more important. But a year on from their catastrophic invasion, the rebels are not only surviving in the mountains, they're flourishing. The guerrilla force has grown to around 150 men and women.

The makeshift camps have become headquarters. Sixteen wooden structures, hidden beneath a thick mass of tree branches. There are offices, the guest house, and the hospital. Fidel's house contains a kitchen and a double bed, supposedly for him to share with Salias Sanchez. All are invisible to Batista's military. The Cuban air force bombs and strafes the dense woodlands. The Cuban Air Force bombs and strafes the dense woodlands. They even douse the area in napalm. But these heavy-handed tactics are utterly ineffective. The rebels are too sparse, well-hidden, and nimble to be wiped out.

Into this environment, a new face arrives in the Sierra. Six years earlier, Uba Matos was a school teacher. Batista's coup of 1952 spun his life in a radically different direction. He became a member of the Revolutionary Resistance. In 1957, the attentions of Matista's government forced him into exile in Costa Rica. But in the early months of 1958, Matos makes a stunning return, flying a plane load of weapons directly to Castro's camp in the mountains.

When we arrived there we realized you couldn't land there because the space was too small. The plane crashed, the landing gear broke, one of the propellers bent on impact was a pole. But all the cargo stayed put. The plane had been a passenger plane, but was transformed to be a cargo plane. The base, where the seats had been, was very strong, a thick steel base. Because I had been a lorry driver and worked in the countryside, I made sure that the cargo was securely fixed. The plane should have exploded because it was full of mortars and ammunition.

Luckily for Matos, nothing blows up. Fidel is ecstatic. He literally jumps for joy, like a kid on Christmas morning. He takes one of the guns Matos has just delivered, and he fires it into the night sky. With these weapons, shouts Castro, we can finish them. By this time the rebels control a swathe of local communities. The M26-7 conducts weddings, arbitrates disputes, and imposes taxes, including on some wealthy American

landowners such as United Fruit Company and Texaco. The guerrillas provide some elementary education and basic health care for the poor. There's a rebel court, too, in which trials are held for a range of crimes. Punishments tend to be severe. Those found guilty of rape and murder are executed by firing squad. All but Fidel get their hands dirty in the killing. Some peasants are enthused by the rebel's presence. Others are not. Fidel has ways of enforcing loyalty. Oath-taking ceremonies are held for entire villages. Once fealty has been pledged, certain standards are expected. Namely, inexhaustible work for the revolution.

Anything deemed as a betrayal to the cause is punishable sometimes by death. The guerrillas also set up their own radio station. Radio Rebelde transmits revolutionary propaganda across the island and beyond. Through these channels, Castro is able to portray himself as a civic leader, not just a guerrilla. The Sierra Maestra is a microcosm of a more equitable post-Batista Cuba. Fidel does his best to scotch the notion that his movement is communist, but it isn't always easy. At one point, a minister in Battista's government announces on radio that he's got his hands on some revealing letters written by Raul Castro. In them, the minister says, there is abundant proof that both Raoul and Che Guevara are

Stalinists. Piedel is incensed at his brother's indiscretion and lack of discipline. In a fit of rage, he threatens to kill Raoul. I hate Soviet imperialism as much as I hate Yankee imperialism, he's reported to say. To the journalists who interview him, Cuban as well as foreign, he talks incessantly of restoring Cuba's democratic constitution of 1940. To some scholars he is at this time at least being sincere. He took the turn he took toward communism, I say for instrumental reasons rather than

ideological reasons. Che Guevara was a communist, Raul was communist, but Castro when he would say, I am not a communist and the journalists who would come up to the Sierra Maestro when he's fighting the guerrilla wars. He wasn't blowing smoke. At that time, he was a pragmatist. He wanted a free and independent Cuba dedicated for the well-being of its people. To those reporters in the mountains, Castro disavows not just far-left ideology,

but also any designs on power. Once the revolution is won, he pledges to return to the mountains to work with the rural poor. This strikes many as empty rhetoric. One of the things he loved to say was that he could not be president because he was too young, and the Cuban constitution of 1940 required him to be two years older. I don't think a lot of people believe that, even the journalists who were asking him those questions." Uwe Matos is skeptical himself. After his arrival, Matos is swiftly promoted through

the guerrilla ranks. In no time he's one of the most senior figures in Castro's army. Many years later, Matos will reflect on the Fidel Castro he got to know in the mountains. will reflect on the Fidel Castro he got to know in the mountains. The picture he paints is of a man fixated on seizing and wielding power, at any cost. I saw that Che was interested in social issues. He said, well, yes, I am a leftist. I believe in socialism. I said to him, what, like the Chinese and others? He replied, no, I would never sympathise with a regime like Stalin's. I reject that ideology.

I think that Fidel convinced him to leave that nonsense, those scruples, and learn how to kill. On one occasion Fidel found Shea trying to extract a tooth from someone who had tooth ache and he told him, are you still doing that crap? Forget about helping the locals. And Che said, I like helping the Cubans. I do not doubt that Fidel was more cruel than Che. I am not defending Che. I am giving the historical facts of Che that I knew.

What he was looking for was adventure. Fidel taught him to be a radical without scruples. You have to become a scrupulous guy. By summer 1958, Castro has most of the southern portion of Oriente province under his control. Batista responds with Operation Fin de Fidel, the end of Fidel. The plan is to squeeze the rebels until they choke. Ten thousand soldiers are deployed to encircle the mountains. They sweep in, capturing villages under rebel control. But Castro's HQ remains out of reach. The winding networks of steep,

narrow, muddy passages are unbreachable. Each surge is met by a hail of fire from the rebels above. The army's enormous numerical superiority proves irrelevant against Castro's guerrillas, as does the heavy aerial bombardment that Batista delivers. Batista's weaponry comes courtesy of the United Kingdom and the United States, albeit the U.S. hasn't agreed any new arms deals with Batista for several months. The General's violence and instability is becoming a concern. Washington may find Batista distasteful, but he doesn't panic them in the way that Castro does. The U.S. Ambassador to Cuba warns Washington that both Castro brothers are mentally unbalanced, and that the vast majority of M267 are communists.

As a State Department official reputedly puts it, though Batista might be a son of a bitch, at least he's our son of a bitch. In retaliation for the bombing, and seemingly without his brother's knowledge, Raoul kidnaps dozens of American citizens, living and working in Oriente province. When Fidel finds out, he orders that the hostages be released, perhaps concerned about tit-for-tat

escalation with the US. Not that the older Castro feels any less angry about American involvement. Fidel tells Celia Sanchez that when the revolution is won he will have his revenge on the United States. Plan Fin de Fidel lasts for 76 draining days. In August 1958, Batista's forces give up the assault. For Batista, this is a total humiliation. Military morale hits rock bottom, his authority fatally wounded. The rebels move to seize the momentum. After twenty months, the time has come for them to come down from the mountains. The guerrilla army numbers some three hundred soldiers.

Yet, despite their comparatively puny size, their progress is effortless. The proverbial hot knife through butter. Neither the military nor the civilian population has Batista's back. Soldiers are willing to defect, surrender, or be bribed. By November, most of Oriente and the neighboring province of Las Villas are under rebel control. Things go so well that Fidel is able to take a festive holiday. On December 24th he arrives at the Castro farm with Celia Sanchez by his side to celebrate Christmas with his mother and sisters.

News of the rebels' progress sweeps across the island. In Havana, there is further violence, but it's nothing new. For the whole of 1958, the urban resistance has waged a relentless war. Bombs, Molotov cocktails, gunfights in the street. Even for the children of well-to-do families, it's a traumatic time that they'll never forget. I went to sleep often hearing shots in the distance or bombs going off, and I was caught in this gunfight. Some prisoners had escaped from a jail, and the police were chasing them down, shooting very wildly because I could hear bullets ricocheting off buildings.

And one of the escaped prisoners actually grabbed my brother as we were getting out of the car and begged my father to hide him. But my mom was physically handicapped. So he said, look, man, we can't help you. My wife doesn't walk very fast. I've got two little kids, you know, I can't help you. And the man ran walk very fast, I've got two little kids, I can't help you, and the man ran away.

And the next day we learned in the newspaper that he had been shot dead. Batista's Cuba is falling apart. An emissary of US President Dwight Eisenhower meets Batista to tell him that Washington can no longer support his weak, unpopular, and abusive regime. Batista protests, but the message is clear. The dictator's time is up.

The dominoes begin to fall. First, Castro secures the support of soldiers in Santiago. Two days later, Che takes control of the town of Santa Clara. New Year's Eve usually brings Havana alive. Celebrations this year are muted. The President, however, is determined to make the last moments of 1958 ones Cuba will never forget. That evening, the Batista family make their way to Camp Columbia, Havana's military HQ. There drinks are poured.

The president flashes his gleaming grin and toasts the New Year. Then, a little after midnight, he walks outside. On the adjacent airfield, a plane sits waiting. Batista, his wife and their children ascend the steps and take their seats. The plane speeds along the runway, pulls up into the air, and Fulgencio Battista is gone. He will never set foot in Cuba again. Ultimately, he is defeated himself. They didn't have a military victory over this professional army. What they did have was a moral victory over Batista, a massive mobilization on behalf of this morally righteous cause, which is to the restoration, so many people thought, of a constitutional state and a real sovereign one for the first time, and democracy.

When the news reaches him, Fidel is stunned but elated. Instantly he takes to the airwaves. Expounding the cause of justice, liberty and Cuba libre, he announces that Havana belongs to the revolution. On the first day of 1959 it's a new year and a new world. Against all odds the guerrillas have prevailed. Power is in their grasp and Fidel Castro is on his way. In the next episode. Fidel goes on a victory parade, eventually arriving in Havana on top of a tank.

He plasters himself across the press, stands on balconies before adoring crowds, and dabbles in a bit of reality television. At the same time, he starts violently disposing of enemies and meddling in the legal system. And as the communist influence on his plans becomes more pronounced, the US starts to sweat. Very quickly, Cubans will be left wondering, have they merely swapped one dictator for another? That's next time. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.

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