Real Dictators - Fidel Castro Part 9: Down With Fidel!

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

After a tragedy in the Florida Straits, a dramatic tug of war takes place between Castro and America - all centred on a five-year-old boy. A new leader in the Soviet Union comes to power with fresh ideas which terrify Fidel. The Berlin Wall crumbles, putting Cuba on the brink. As riots break out in Havana, rebellion is in the air... A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Paul McGann. Featuring Alvaro Alba, Michael Bustamante, Anthony DePalma, Lillian Guerra, Irene Lopez Kuchilan, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Rogelio Martinez. This is Part 9 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 | 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 August the 5th, 1994. We're in Havana, walking north towards the harbor.

The sun has been up only a couple of hours, but already the city is scorched. These past few weeks have been intense, and not just because of the soaring temperatures. Havana crackles with a sense of instability. There's a friction in the air, a feeling that violence is only ever one lost nerve away. The streets are busy today, unusually so. Around the ferry terminal a crowd of people gather. Their numbers grow all the time. It's hard to make out what's going on.

There are raised voices, whistles and yelps. Young women gesticulate, anxiety worn into their faces. Shirtless men prowl. Some of them wave sticks above their heads. Gradually the situation becomes clear. Word is going around the city that today a huge fleet of boats is arriving from Florida. Fidel Castro himself has given his blessing. A mass exodus is about to take place. And there's no shortage of people who want to be part of it. Ever since Castro came to power more than three decades ago, the Cuban people have been

tested frequently. But the last five people have been tested frequently. But the last five years have been uniquely punishing. Everything is in short supply, including patients. In recent months, countless people have been clamoring aboard makeshift rafts. Armed men have been hijacking ferries. Their aim is to sail to the United States, even though to do so is illegal and potentially fatal. But now Cuba's leader has listened to the will of the people. He's letting them go. Except he's not. It's just a rumor. One that's snowballed. There's no

rescue fleet on its way from America. Morning drifts closer to noon. The heat intensifies. No boats turn up. But Castro's security forces do. Tempers rise to a rolling boil. Skirmishes break out. Impassioned conversations turn to rage, screaming and chanting.

One phrase, unheard of in normal times, screeches through the air like a missile. Down with Fidel. A full-scale riot is now in flow. And that shocking phrase is heard over and over. Down with Fidel. Pandora's box has been forced open. After 35 years, it's happening.

Fidel Castro is facing the end. From the Noiza podcast network, this is part 9 of the Fidel Castro story. And this is Real Dictators. Let's roll back 14 years to the start of the 1980s. In the previous episode, Fidel Castro was stunned by what's known as the Mariel Boatlift. Over the course of a few months in 1980, an estimated 125,000 Cubans left the island for Miami. In the lair of his great foe, the United States, a parallel Cuba has now established itself.

Miami brims with what Castro calls worms, Cubans who want no part of his regime. Fidel is angered and wounded by the departures. From his perspective, it's a judgment on the revolution, and therefore himself. He's surely right. After more than 20 years at the helm, captain and ship are indivisible. In Miami, the sudden influx of Cubans causes headaches. For a time, there are so many new arrivals they have to be held at the Orange Bowl Stadium. In Cuba too the impact of the departures leaves its

mark. Throughout his dictatorship Castro has wavered about the best way of affecting social and economic change. On the one hand there is the theory of material incentive. Workers are rewarded on the basis of their productivity. On the other hand, there's the idea of moral incentives. In this scenario, the progress of the revolution rests solely on workers' readiness for sacrifice. The latter had been passionately favored by Castro's late ally Che Guevara. It had inspired the attempt to transform Cubans into so-called new men back in the 60s and 70s. After the shock of the Marielle Boatlift, Castro ponders.

Frequently during his rule, he displays a surprising capacity for pragmatism, a willingness to bend when the situation requires. In the early 1980s, he picks a moment to change course. Michael Bustamante is associate professor at the University of Miami. The Cuban government is responding to the crisis of the Mario ball lift and the horrible legacy that that left. And they do that by implementing certain ginger liberalizations of the Cuban economy. There's like a little tiny opening for what we might call some forms of private economic

activity. And if you talk to Cubans today who live through that period, if any time socialism quote unquote worked, they might point to the 1980s, at least economically, right, because things seem to be getting better. But Castro's reforms are pale. They do nothing to alter the fundamental nature of his regime. On the other side of the world, however, something seismic is going on. Cuba will soon be hit by the shockwaves. Cuba will soon be hit by the shockwaves. On March 14, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev enters Red Square in Moscow.

He's here to fulfill a solemn public duty as the new leader of the USSR. The occasion is the funeral of his recently deceased predecessor. A symbolic moment. Nobody expects it just now, but Gorbachev will soon preside over the burial of Soviet communism. The Soviet Union is in terminal decline. By almost every measure it has fallen leagues behind the United States. Thorough change is needed. Gorbachev talks of klasnost and perestroika, transparency and reform. In Fidel Castro's ears, those words are akin to blasphemy. Alvaro Alba is from a high-ranking military family. As a teenager, like countless young Cubans, he leaves to study in the USSR.

He's a third-year university student when Gorbachev's Perestroika reforms begin. He's quickly exposed to all kinds of new ideas, including George Orwell's 1984. We all love Perestroika. You understand that? At the end of the tunnel, the light that you see is the real life of the future. We start to read about the real history of the Soviet Union. A lot of teachers say, don't read official books. Read about what happened in the Gulag, the real story. When I read the 1980s, 40s, it's not here. This is Cuba. We have the Ministry of Truth. You read this, you say, oh my God, he describes how we live. On one trip back to Cuba in 1987, Alvaro brings with him these reformist ideas. In one conversation with his father, he suggests

that Castro should overhaul the military leadership just as Gorbachev was doing in Moscow. It doesn't go well. With my naivety, I say, and the Castra need to do the same. He need to fight his brother as the Ministry of armed force. My father took the glass in his hand. He threw the glass to the floor. I said, we don't talk about this. I said, okay, no more conversation about the perestroika. No more conversation about perestroika is precisely what Castro wants. This is complete garbage, he says of Gorbachev's reforms. We must not play or flirt with capitalist things. It's not only free enterprise Fidel's referring to.

It's freedom of expression and individual human rights. In 1986 he performs a handbrake turn. In 1956, he performs a handbrake turn. The mild liberalization of the early 80s is reversed. A new era begins. Biedel calls it the rectification of errors and negative tendencies. To promote these measures, he co-ops the legend of Che Guevara. Cuba is returning to its revolutionary roots, he tells the Cuban people. It's what Che would have wanted. comes with Volvo's legendary safety. During Volvo Discover Days, enjoy limited time savings as you make plans to cruise through Muscovica

or down Toronto's bustling streets. From now until June 30th, lease a 2025 Volvo XC60 from 1.74% and save up to $4,000. Conditions apply. Visit your GTA Volvo retailer or go to volvocars.ca for full details. Cuba's relationship with Moscow changes rapidly.

As Alvaro explains, Castro had electrified the Soviet Union when he first visited in the 1960s. When he traveled to the Soviet Union, all leaders there was all creepy, oil, creepy, no charisma at all. And Castro arrived in power with the 33 years old, full energy, black beer. He traveled everywhere. And there was some kind of myth as a young communist who bring the hope for the world. Fast forward 25 years and things are different. Newspapers in Moscow and Kiev carry articles questioning the enormous sums of money being sent to Havana each year to prop up the Castro regime. There are even stories about the Castro brothers' private lives. There are even stories about the Castro brothers' private lives. The first article I remember in 1988 was the first article in the Soviet Union about what we need to do in relation with Castro.

The journalists write about the Castro family, how many sons they have, where is his wife, what is the secret about him, how his bodyguard is more important than any deputy of assembly. And Castro understood that journalists, even from the Soviet Union, is a danger proposition. Castro has no intention of allowing anyone in Cuba a similar glimpse behind the curtain. In 1986, Fidel turns 60. He's been the nation's figurehead for 27 years. Yet, to his compatriots, Fidel the man is cloaked in mystery. Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo grew up in Cuba during the 1970s and 80s.

I knew his voice, probably from the womb. He was a hero. He was not a president. He was part of the nation, probably the father of the nation. But in a way, we didn't know Fidel Castro. I didn't know he had more than 10 sons and daughters. I didn't know he had different houses. If you tell me in the late 80s or maybe even in the early 90s that Fidel Castro gave an interview for Playboy, I

would say you're lying to me like every capitalist. Well, in fact, I have the magazine now, Fidel Castro, The Interview. Did they pay a million dollars to do that? I don't know. Maybe it was for free because he knew his voice in Playboy was going to be very important to spread his image in America as a strong leader. So it was kind of a division between Fidel for the Cuban people and Fidel for the outside world. Most notably, nobody knows that Fidel has a wife. Her name is Dalia Soto del Valle. They've been in a relationship since the 1960s and have five children together.

It won't be until 2001 that Cubans learn of Mrs. Castro's existence. Even then it will be done begrudgingly, in response to reports by a foreign journalist. Until that point, the woman Fidel is most closely identified with is Celia Sanchez. In the early days of the revolution she had been cast with indispensable aid and confidant. Some believe they were lovers. Her death at the start of 1980 comes as a terrible blow to Fidel. Professor Lillian Guerra Professor Lillian Guerra. Cedio was a chain smoker. She did get cancer when she did die in 1980. He had this massive funeral for her.

And he didn't do that for anybody. He actually even looked, if you see the footage of him, he looked like he was going to cry. She must have been a very unique person. And I think that when she died, what empathy he might have had for others died with her. There is a much colder and steelier Fidel Castro in the wake of Celia Sánchez's death. The tales of Fidel's extramarital affairs are legion.

Like his father, he had multiple children with several women. Irene Lopez-Crujillan is the niece of an old friend of Castro's. A satirist whose criticism of Cuba's former dictator General Batista was championed by Fidel in the 1950s. Many years later, Irene's work as an actress and filmmaker brings her into Castro's orbit. She describes a memorable encounter with the Comandante. It's a tale that could have come from a Hollywood casting couch. The way he approached women was through his bodyguards. So one day there was a reception.

The bodyguards surrounded me, so it means that nobody can listen. And they say, the commandante wants to talk to you. He wants to invite you to his yacht. But I knew already because some colleagues of my actresses told me that at some point they received an invitation. Later in the evening the man himself arrives on the scene. We would like to, we, we would like to talk to you more about what you want to do with your life, you know, it's like, oh, maybe I can help you. So I have a party in my yacht and I want you to be there.

I knew what happened in his yacht and I said, Commandante, I need to tell you I'm not going, but I want to refresh your mind. Do you know that I am the niece of your good friend Mario Cuchilan? And he was like, OK, OK, OK. And he left me alone. In the 1980s,

Irene is treading in her famous uncle's footsteps. At first, she makes newsreels. There's little room for artistic expression in this format. The brief is to support the revolution and portray Fidel in a flattering light. But Irene tries to find ways to stray from the formula. When filming Fidel speaking at a rally, she takes close-ups of his hands as they jab and prod the air. To study his body language and ignore his face while he speaks is seen as eccentric,

bordering on subversive. Later in the decade, she makes films. Mixing music, dance, documentary, and drama, they are suffused with subtle social commentary. Her work reveals the textured reality of Cuban existence. Beyond the rigid dogma of Fidel's revolution, there is a world of vibrant color and emotional expression. One film fuses authentic Cuban street life with dance and US-influenced rap. Its subject matter is the HIV pandemic, as much of a problem in Cuba in the late 1980s as anywhere in the world. Even its title seems a long way from the sternness and controlling grip of the Castro regime. I'll sit your mind before your pants.

pants. It came from my visit to Los Cocos, which is a sanatorium where people with AIDS stay and they were isolated. It was like a sin to have that. So I went there, reported on that a very dramatic story and it was so hard for me that I tried to do something funny to keep myself in better spirits. And I said, well, what if I tried to make people use condoms so they can protect themselves? So that's what you see. As lyrical and inventive as her films are, Irene can't escape the stubborn facts of Castro's Cuba. She begins an intimate relationship with the foreign journalists. Such entanglements are risky.

When the journalists reporting displeases the regime, all eyes turn to Irene. The state security, the secret police, grabbed me and said, you need to inform us about him because he is a CIA agent. I said, I'm not a prostitute, he doesn't give me money. Yes, we want to see each other and I'm not going to collaborate. So please stop with this. I'm just having the only fun I can have, which is feel free with my body, with my life, and you cannot meddle with it."

This isn't the answer that's required. So now history repeats itself. In the 1950s, Irene's uncle had been beaten for his refusal to toe the line and respect the dictator, Batista. Decades later, under Castro, it's Irene herself who's the victim of the regime's violence. During an ugly encounter with state security officers, she's hit on the back of the head. The attack causes serious problems with her vision. I went through a lot because I couldn't work anymore. They beat me here, which is a region that has to do with the site. I'm a filmmaker, so it was well planned.

Of course they said, oh, because she was robbed, but they knew what they did. The incident is traumatic, and Irene is also ostracized. In 1991 she manages to find a way out of Cuba. My streets were forbidden. I couldn't direct anymore. We saw being watched and censored and it was hard. But I was living my life of being independent and being brave, honoring my uncle that was already dead. Irene's career is a tale of Cuban adaptability, improvising around restrictions to create something new. It's a national characteristic that's needed more than ever as the 1990s appear on the horizon.

By 1989, the old order in Eastern Europe is fraying. As Gorbachev's reforms take hold, communism loses its grip across the region. The winds of change blow all the way down to Cuba, and Castro knows there are figures within his own government who are sympathetic to this change. In this context, it's little wonder he's feeling anxious. So perhaps a desire to reassert his authority is at play when a national hero is suddenly declared an enemy of the people. General Ochoa is a prominent figure, popular with the public, a decorated veteran of Cuba's victorious campaigns in Angola.

So it's stunning news when he is arrested and put on trial for corruption and drug trafficking. Fidel has always publicly expressed utter disgust for the drugs trade. Outside Cuba, however, there are those who insist he is directly involved in it, a way of boosting the public purse or his own wealth. Whatever the truth, Ochoa is made to face revolutionary justice. A televised show trial that commands the attention of the nation. There's been a lot of speculation about that over the years, about Ochoa as sort of somebody who had more popularity than some leaders did at that point.

Was this an attempt to reassert control? I think anxiety is also coming from the climate in Eastern Europe. I mean, it's 1989, right? The show trial is this massive display of state authority. And I think if nothing else, it sends a clear, fairly dark message to the Cuban people that like here nothing's going to change. You know, like at least politically we're sticking to our guns and our power, essentially. The verdict is a foregone conclusion.

Ochoa is pronounced guilty. His sentence is death by firing squad. Later that year, there comes a world changing event. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall is breached. Ordinary people begin dismantling it with their bare hands. Decades of division, physical, emotional, ideological, are heaved away. It happens with breathtaking speed. It might remind Fidel of the rapidity with which he first gained power in January 1959, events acquiring a breakneck momentum of their own. From Fidel's

point of view, this is all madness, a threat to him and his life's work. He reminds the people of the need for strength, discipline, the indefatigable spirit that fueled the revolution thirty years earlier. He insists that even if the virus of capitalism should destroy the Soviet Union, the Cuban revolution will persist. There will be no deviating from the path. Then the unthinkable happens. Communist rule in Moscow disintegrates. The Soviet Union dissolves. Cuba is suddenly left with no benefactor, no security guarantee against the United States.

$4 billion is wiped from Cuba's annual budget. The impact is shattering, made all the worse by the long-standing U.S. embargo. For 30 years, Fidel has hailed Cuba's health care and education sectors. Now they suffer severe damage. Fidel doesn't call this a crisis or an emergency. The official label he gives it is a special period in a time of peace. It's a typical bit of Castro wordplay. Orlando Luis Pardolazo is entering his twenties when the special period begins. For him and his community, it's a time of scarcity and deprivation. There was rationing upon rationing.

The lines for gas, it was like a six, seven hours. The same time that we were spending listening to Fidel Castro in the 80s and 70s, now we were spending that to get some food or to get some gas. Schools, institutions, workplaces were closing for the first time. For the first time in my life, I saw the face of hunger. We were a humble family. We were a poor family. Neighbors coming to my place talking to my mother, Maria, would you have a glass of water with sugar

please? Because I haven't eaten anything today. And yes, we had that sugar, and maybe we had also like a spoon of rice to share. So it was really terrible. Journalist Anthony de Palma is the author of The Cubans, Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times, a chronicle of the special period. They'd struggle to feed a family. I think was, for me, the most graphic and gripping examples of the privations. Meat disappeared, so they would take grapefruit rind, and they would figure out a way to sort of pound it

a little bit and tenderize it, and then stick it in some oil and fry it, and make believe that it was something like a beef steak. There were examples of people who were so desperate they would take a piece of a woolen blanket, cut it and then saute it in tomato sauce. There was nothing. One Cuban who was with me for a few days said, look, you've got to understand that this system makes every one

of us a criminal in order to survive. And I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, look, for instance, if I've got my five-year-old son has a toothache and has to go to the dentist, I show up at the dentist office and there's a line of 50 people and he's screaming and I can't wait. So all I can do is I work in a paint factory, so I've stolen a gallon of paint, I bring it to the nurse and say, look, I've got to get in, tell the doctor that I'll give him the paint in exchange for seeing my son early. Everybody did that.

The only way to survive is to adapt and to realize that the government is just a source of revenue for you if you can steal from it. Loyalty goes out the window, empathy gets fractured. You look at your neighbors not as friends but as competitors. And in the end, you have so little that you end up being more concerned about losing the little you have than fighting for something more for yourself and God forbid for other people who are helpless. In the midst of this hardship, Cubans display an incredible ingenuity.

They have this ability to adapt. You can go down there and you'll find people reusing things in the most inventive ways. They could keep those 1950s cars running. If you've ever had the opportunity to open up the hood and see it, they're Frankenstein's, those cars. There's a piece from a Toyota here and a Hyundai there. And I've seen people using a man's belt as a replacement for a fan belt on a 55 Chevy. So they are adaptive, and they can adapt to a 20-hour blackout, even if you live in an apartment building that is 10 or 15 stories, which means

there's no elevator and no air conditioning, and it's dark for 20 hours a day. Fidel too plays the hand he's dealt. To him, losing power would be a fate worse than death. So he makes yet another policy turn. Tourism and foreign investment are now embraced as Cuba's future. Cuba had no foreign currency reserves other than what it had in the ruble. Fidel was warned of that by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989. He visited the island, spent three days, tried to convince him to make reforms.

He didn't. So when you got the disappearance of the Soviet Union and got the disappearance of the ruble, when Cuba has nothing, Fidel was very desperate to come up with some mechanism by which to sustain the government. And that mechanism was supposed to be these temporary capitalist reforms. A number of small, privately-owned restaurants are allowed to open. In years to come, one of these is run by a man known to most in Havana as Erasmo.

He used to work as Fidel's personal chef. Years to come, one of these is run by a man known to most in Havana as Erasmo. He used to work as Fidel's personal chef. Dinner at Erasmo's is way beyond the budget of most ordinary Cubans, as are the new hotels and holiday resorts that open up to bring desperately needed foreign currency into the country. Tourists always wanted to spend time in a small restaurant where the food was better and the service was great than in some kind of state-owned restaurant where half of your ketchup was watered down because people were constantly stealing from the state or there was one item from the list of items on the menu available.

Deprived of the five-star luxury enjoyed by the foreigners, Cubans throw themselves into tourism side hustles. They do whatever they can to survive. Their greatest strength turns out to also be their gravest weakness. That same adaptability, that same willingness to confront a situation and find a way out of it, also ends up making them willing to accept things instead of being out in the street and demanding a change. So that adaptability gets translated into complacency when you know that the government controls everything

so that if you dare speak up, the little bit that you have can be taken away. And that's how the government has been able to remain in power all these years. Some things don't change. Cuba, of course, is still only 90 miles from U.S. territory. For those who can no longer bear the struggle, there is the prospect of escape, though it's never a safe option. Far from it. At 3am on July 13th 1994, 68 people board a tugboat in the port of Havana. 68 people board a tugboat in the port of Havana. In an orderly line, they file below deck as quietly as they can. Some of the children are irritable. They ask their parents where they're going.

The adults shush them. What these people are doing is a crime. They're heading for Florida. It's illegal to leave the country without the government's permission. But thousands of Cubans are making the same journey this summer. Many not on sturdy vessels like this, but rickety life rafts and dilapidated dinghies. Long before sunrise, the boat pushes out into the water. Soon some of the passengers catch sight of something behind them. Two other tugboats, both larger than this one, each equipped with water cannons. Then without warning, the vessels fire powerful jets of water. They smash the tugboat's windows.

As panic spreads among the passengers, the boat is surrounded. There are three other boats now, all closing in on them. The water cannons continue to fire. They rip across the deck and flood the engine room, now swallowed by steam. One of the pursuing boats plows straight into the tugboat. The hull shatters. Now in real trouble, it begins to sink. Below deck the passengers are frantic. They try to get out. But the door is jammed shut. More than half of those on board drown. Survivors flail in the water. The larger boats that have caused this offer no assistance.

When the news of the disaster is reported, the survivors are incredulous. What's being said is that a stolen tugboat capsized. There's no mention of the three vessels that fired at it, ripped it apart, and left everyone for dead. It's clear that the attack was carried out by the authorities. Intent on stopping people from leaving the island, they'd taken the most extreme measures imaginable. Some may have survived the ordeal, but they've lost everything in the process. One family makes the remarkable decision to speak out. It was no accident, they tell foreign journalists. The regime did this to us. It was punishment for desiring a better life.

The state press hits back. One headline reads, a bitter lesson for irresponsible people. They're branded traitors and criminals. The US is also blamed. The government accuses the Americans of cynically stirring up trouble. The imperialists are enticing Cubans to abandon their homeland. It's all a ploy, says Havana, to target one of the few people in the world who continues to stand up to gets around that Fidel has decided to let people leave. He's done it before, after all. Think back to 1980 when he permitted more than 100,000 people to take their chances on the water and sail to Florida.

For 35 years, migration has been a useful lever for his government. At times of stress, he's been able to release pressure by sanctioning an exodus. It rids the island of opponents and troublemakers. But at the beginning of August 1994, he's made no such decision. Yet thousands of Cubans desperately want to believe otherwise, to believe the swirling rumors. On the morning of August 5th, a massive crowd swarms around Havana harbor. Some are here because they've heard that people are attempting to leave by ferry. Others in the crowd are expecting an armada of boats to arrive from the US.

That's wishful thinking. Amidst confusion and frayed tempers stoked by the intense heat, angry confrontations erupt. This is the chaotic scene that opened this episode. Rioting breaks out. It's spontaneous anger that Havana hasn't seen for many years. What's more remarkable is that Fidel Castro is the subject of the fury. They were so frustrated that they started shouting the unthinkable down with Fidel. It seems the world is turning upside down.

Could Cuba be on the brink of revolt? When news filters through to Fidel, he's disbelieving. Then his PR instincts kick in. Instead of running away from the riot, he gets in his Jeep and heads straight to the center of it. With cameras rolling, he lets the world see him talking to the protesters face to face. He lets the world see him talking to the protesters face to face. What might have been a crisis for someone else ends up being an opportunity for him. Of course it's well orchestrated and the media is controlled so the only images are not downward Fidel but Fidel showing up, coming out of the Jeep and calming the waters. Then when the international community starts to raise objections about what happened to this tugboat, he turns around and goes

on television and says, well look, that's what the United States does and if they don't stop it, I'm going to stop protecting their shores by keeping all of the people who want to leave from leaving. He's got this ability to turn things around even in the most dire prices. And in large part, I think he's successful because the United States plays along with it. There's something about Cuba and particularly Fidel that got the people in Washington howling. It was like a werewolf on a night of a full moon. They just lost their senses when it came to Cuba. On August 11, six days after the riot, Fidel opens the safety valve. Blanket permission

is given to anyone who wants out. Cuba's disaffected are now America's problem. It leads to another wave of migrants crossing the sea to the US. Cubans improvise as they always do. Vessels are fashioned out of whatever people can get their hands on. Roofs of cars are cut off and fixed to floats or tractor tires. Tens of thousands attempt the journey. At least a quarter of them perish in the process. Perhaps more. The U.S. Coast Guard is overwhelmed. At first, anyone picked up at sea is taken to safety. But the volume of raft has become so great that the Americans start taking them

back towards Cuba, to the US military base in Guantanamo Bay. That fate is enough to dissuade most would-be rafters from chancing their arm. Fidel uses this development to claim he was right all along. The Americans don't care about Cubans, only destroying their revolution. For Fidel, the summer of 1994 might be the most precarious moment since the Cuban missile crisis of 62. Yet, he emerges in one piece, battle-worn but still standing. Then, at the end of the decade, there's another crisis to navigate. But this one grimly presents an opportunity for Castro. Again it begins with Cubans trying to reach the US. This time it's a group of 14. The oldest is 65, the youngest just 5, a little boy named Elian Gonzalez.

He's traveling with his mother. His father, however, is staying in Cuba. Their vessel is far from sturdy, but it's better than many. A 17-foot aluminium boat with an outboard motor. It's early one November morning when they venture out to sea. They've packed little to keep them going. Some crackers, a few hot dogs. But America isn't far away.

Thirty hours from now, their new lives will begin. They're just 35 miles off the coast of Florida when the trouble starts. A storm envelops them. A northeasterly wind pushes torrential rain onto the little boat, its passengers all exposed to the elements. Then the motor fails. The surging waves flip the boat over. For long agonizing hours the passengers try desperately to keep their heads above water. One by one they're claimed by the sea.

All except a young couple and the boy, Eliane, who's been tied to the inner tube of a tire, the only thing saving him from drowning. He floats helplessly. Just off the Florida coast, two cousins are cruising in a brand new boat. One of them spots an odd object in the water. Intrigued, they sail out to investigate. It looks like a shop dummy. A large children's doll, maybe. They're horrified to discover that it is in fact a child, a Lian, weak, traumatized, but alive. Once on dry land, it's discovered that his mother has drowned at sea.

She was taking a Lian to live with her relatives in Miami. It's decided that her wishes should be respected. The child is dispatched to his new home. It's now that a full-scale diplomatic incident unravels. A dispute breaks out over where Eliane should be raised. In the US where his mother intended, or back in Cuba with his father. A dispute breaks out over where Elian should be raised. In the US, where his mother intended, or back in Cuba with his father. Fidel Castro immediately inserts himself into the center of the story.

At his direction, Elian-related updates appear across Cuban TV. He orders that the entire street on which Elian lived and the school he attended are to be repainted. He wants Cuba to look its best for the cameras. There are innumerable rallies, public meetings and demonstrations demanding the child's return. The way in which the Cuban government and Fidel Castro in particular seized on Elian Gonzalez's case illustrates, again looking at this sort of coldly, Castro's skill in grabbing a public relations opportunity.

Across the water, Fidel's enemies are just as quick to recognize the potency of Elian's story. Huge anti-Castro crowds gather outside the home of the boy's relatives in Miami. They whoop and cheer whenever they catch a glimpse of him. For both sides of the Cuba-U.S. divide, he is seen as the embodiment of a grand struggle. People in Miami and in Cuba, for that matter, took the case very personally because almost everyone in Cuba that I've ever interacted with has been impacted by a history of family separation and so it was very easy to get pulled into this. In our last episode we heard from Rogelio Martinez.

He's just nine years old when he sails from Cuba to the US in 1980, part of the Marielle Boatclaf generation. Thirty years later, Rogelio, now a writer, will craft a play around the Elian Gonzalez story. His perspective on the case is shaped by his own experience of family separation. There were many instances where I felt, as I did the research, that the father really was being used by the Cuban government. The father had called the family telling them, hey, this might be happening. However, once Castro entered the picture, the father's actions became very, very different. He was pushed in the direction of demanding that his son come back. I knew the father's wishes, I understood the mother's wishes, and it was my story in many ways. My father said, I'm never going to see him again, so

I'm going to let it go completely. So it plays out differently, but it is the same story. For months, a legal battle rages. Ultimately, it's decided in favor of Elian's father and by extension Fidel Castro. It concludes in a moment of high drama. Before dawn on the morning of April the 22nd 2000. Four white vans with blacked out windows pull up in a residential street in Miami. The van doors swing open. Out leap several border patrol agents. In full riot gear, they smash their way through the front door of the home of Eliane's relatives. They've been ordered by the courts to take the boy and return him to his father in Cuba.

They rush through the house. One of them finds Eliane hiding in a closet. A photograph of the moment, taken by a friend of the family, makes front pages across the world. It's an unsettling image. Heavily armed, adult aggression bearing down on one small scared child. In Cuba, the photo is displayed as evidence of American brutality. In Cuba, the photo is displayed as evidence of American brutality. After years of turbulence, years when the regime seemed to be on the brink of collapse, this is a gift for Fidel Castro. It shows Castro sort of seizing a moment and picking a cause that ultimately is going to

be very difficult for global and even US opinion to disagree with. This is a kid who ultimately, his mother dies tragically. The father says he wants custody. US law is clear, international principles are sort of clear. The family in Miami really didn't have ultimately much of a leg to stand on. Elian returns to Cuba a hero. His seventh birthday party is a day of national celebration. It's broadcast live on Cuban TV and radio. Among the 1,000 guests is Fidel himself. Once the clowns have finished their show, he takes the stage. But as he begins to speak, he takes the stage. But as he begins to speak, Eliane interrupts, behaving as though the dictator isn't even there. The boy starts showing off, joking loudly with his cousin. Everyone is stunned, including Fidel. Nobody has ever deliberately stopped him from finishing a speech before.

A few years later, the little boy and the old man are reunited at a rally. Eliane delivers a short speech. He thanks Fidel for saving him from the evil empire and returning him to Cuba, the real land of the free. The boy's precocity and bulletproof self-confidence are astonishing. He could be Fidel reincarnated. There's idle talk that maybe he is a future successor. But such thoughts are best kept to oneself. To say them aloud is to invoke the death of Fidel, something inconceivable.

A decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, Castro has defied the odds. He's nearly 80. In the communist world, he's practically the last man standing, still hurling stones at the United States, but not even he can stop the hands of time. The end is creeping near. And in the next episode, we bring you the end. After a head-turning incident at a baseball game, the Maximum Leader responds with arrests and intimidation. We hear first-hand testimony from a Cuban who was on the receiving end of the violence. Fidel lectures the youth on the enduring importance of the revolution

and on how to properly use household appliances. A nasty public fall and a painful ordeal on an airplane show that age and illness are catching up with the dictator. And as a change in leadership finally arrives, the question remains, can Cuba ever truly be freed from Fidel? That's next time in the final part of the Fidel Castro story. Get every episode of Real Dictators a week early and ad free by subscribing to Noiza Plus. Hit the link in the episode description to find out more.