The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Revolution: How the Castros Lied, Cheated, and Murdered Their Way Into Power by Al Romero

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Revolution: How the Castros Lied, Cheated, and Murdered Their Way Into Power by Al Romero https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Castros-Cheated-Murdered-Their/dp/1642145521 REVOLUTION is a thrilling novel of intrigue, deception, betrayal, courage and the remarkable resilience of the human spirit under unbelievable circumstances. It illustrates how Fidel and his brother Raul lied to the Cuban people, cheated those who helped them fight against Batista and murdered their way into power, removing anyone and everyone they saw as a threat. Revolution is the story of the Quintanas, an ordinary middle class family thrown into the turbulence of a civil war during the Cuban Revolution, as they witness their normal everyday lives change dramatically for the worse and watch as family members turn against each other. Joaquin Quintana is one of the original 82 men who landed in Cuba with Fidel to fight against Batista and liberate their country from that dictatorship. He rises to a high level position among the rebels and becomes part of Castro’s inner circle. After consolidating power, Fidel aligns Cuba with the Soviet Union and many of the men and women who fought with him against Batista are rounded up, jailed or executed. Joaquin, disillusioned with how the new regime has bastardized the ideals that he and so many of the rebels fought for and believes Fidel and his brother Raul orchestrated the murder of his friend and great revolutionary leader Camilo Cienfuegos, makes the decision to work with the CIA to over throw the Castro regime. Joaquin’s bothers Diego and Cesar, join him in plotting against Fidel while Elena, Diego’s daughter, becomes a blind and fervent disciple of Castro. Revolution was inspired by the family of the author Al Romero

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Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today's featured author comes to us from Books to Lifemarketing.co.com. With expert publishing to strategic marketing, they help authors reach their audience and maximize their book's success. Today, we're an amazing young man on the show with us. We're going to be talking about his interesting book that's timely right now with what's going on in Cuba in 2006, if you're watching this five to ten years for now. The book is entitled, Revolution, How the Castro's Lied, Cheated, and Murdered, Their Way and,

to power May 2nd, 2018 by Al Romero. We're going to get into it with him, find out the deets, talk about Cuba, and all that good stuff. He is, he was born in Havana, Cuba, and came to the U.S. as a child and later graduated from Florida State University. He's a stand-up comedian, an actor, and writer who enjoys a long-standing career and stand-up comedy. Al has been seen on HBO, Showtime, A&E, VH1, NBC. CBS, ABC, and Fox.

We just say everybody. AI's most recent pursuit and his lifelong passion is a bring a story, or Al's, I'm so used to reading AI as Al, sorry Al's. Al's most recent pursuit and his lifelong passions is bringing this story to the big screen where it can gain a global audience. Welcome to show, Al. How are you doing, sir? Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Al's got to be an interesting name to have right now because I read it as AI.

My brain, we talk so much about AI. It's just ad nauseum at this point, the conversation about AI. Give us your dot-coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? The easiest way to do is basically on Facebook, mainly. But if you're talking about in reference to my book, the easiest way to purchase my book will be on Amazon. Go to the search line, put Al Romero Revolution.

It will come up in hard cover, soft cover, like this one, and in e-book, which is probably the least expensive one. Give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside this book. My book is basically about the Cuban Revolution. It started from the very beginning. We Cubans in exile have done a very bad job telling our story, while Fidel Castro have done a very good job of telling the lies of the revolution. So I take it from the very beginning, show how the Cuban people were totally for getting rid of Batista,

the dictator that we had there before, and how people would be, were very happy to have somebody get rid of Batista. Then it turned out that everything that Fidel Castro promised us turned out to be a lie and turned you into a communist country. He never said he was a communist. He would have said a communist, nobody would have followed him. But we find out a little too late. See, what happened is when people believe the lies of a charismatic leader like Fidel Castro,

they fall for it, they came power, and then they control the country by oppression. and you feel. And that's exactly what happened in Cuba. Yeah. It's interesting how Cuba didn't, I guess a Cuban student, Batista, that was the leader that they overthrew? Yeah, it was the president, president, you know, dictator. Yeah.

Yeah. And people will follow these people that will promise them anything. And they really believe it. It's just astounding to me that in all the eons of history where you're going to be, You can study fascism, authoritarianism. What do they call Castro's government? What is the term of the, is it a authoritarian regime? It's definitely authoritarian.

It's dictatorship. The same people really power 67 years. 67 years, no votes. I mean, that doesn't happen because people want you. It happened because you force people to accept you. What happens is when people believe the life, when you tell people you're going to give them free stuff and everything's going to be one, people believe it but listen when somebody when a when a politician tell you you're going to give you free stuff and the government is a solution to your province run run as fast you can because you're about

to get screwed that is very true that is very true that's what happened to us in cuba we believe the life yeah we wanted to believe it we were so desperate to try to change the dictatorship that we had in the form of government that we had in cuba that we believe the lies because the lives were wonderful if they were come true but he never came true yeah If it sounds too good to be true, what's that old adage? If it sounds too good to be true, it's not. You know, your family is involved in this story. It's historical fiction, so there's a little bit of fill in, maybe.

It's inspired on my family. What I did was I took the experience of what happened to my family during the revolution. I added what happened to other people, put it all together into this family to tell the story. Yeah. But a lot of the things that happened in the book, actually it happened to my family. Yeah. The character of Tico in the book is me when I was a kid. And a lot of stuff that happened to me also are in the book, and it's true.

A historical fiction, historical fiction, people don't understand what that means. Historical fiction means that he's historically accurate. It's just that the characters have been changed in order to make it more interesting. Yeah. Sometimes you fill in the back and forth between people and the conversation and stuff. But now, tell us about, so how old were you? Did you watch the transfer of power, the rise of Castro as a child? Yeah.

The reason why it's so ingrained in me is because I lived it, even though I was a child. My family was against Batista and fought with Fidel Castro. Oh, really? And then they were realized that being lied to and started working against Fidel Castro. So in my family, I experienced people being hidden in my family, in my house, guns, statue in my house, both when they were trying to fight Batista and also when they were trying to buy Fidel. So although I was a child, it was very vivid, what was happening in my life at that time. Yeah, that's got to be wild. You can sense the stress of the family and the stress of what's going

on, the worry, people are paranoid. I'm sure holding things like that was probably a death sentence if they were caught. I didn't know exactly what was happening, but I could feel the tension. You could feel the tension, yeah. And this is the first. book you've written? It is the first book. I've written screenplays before, but this is a first full-length book that I've written. You've spent a lot of years in comedy, too, doing stand-up, right? I've been doing comedy for over 30 years. And you have to write a lot in comedy. You write a lot of jokes. Well, exactly, yeah. That's where the writing comes in. You have to write your own joke. You can't do other people's joke. That's a big no-no. And I've also been an actor for all these years.

But this book have been a passion of mine, and that's why I wrote it, because I wanted to get this story out. Because, listen, like I told you before, the regime of Fidel Castro did a great job of selling the lies. Let me show you how good they were. They took a racist, misogynist, murdering homophote like Che Guevara and made him to an international icon that people wear the T-shirt because they think that he's a wonderful human beings that were fighting for liberty. justice and it was completely the opposite. He was in charge of the firing squads in Cuba. It will be the guy that go around putting the last bullet in people's head. That's Che Guevara. And then we're able to turn him into an icon. Yeah, he's like you see all these people that will wear the shirts and stuff. I know. I've kind of heard this over the years that there's some

issues with that man and that maybe he not be, he may not be everything he's cracked up to be. But he's nothing nothing like who he's cracked out to be. The guy was a racist. He was a homophote. He was a misogynist and it was a murderer and to be able to turn that image into what it is now is an amazing feat that the Cuban Revolution have done yeah and I suppose they do that that's why I wrote the book because I wanted to debunk that I wanted to show that all those were light I wanted to show those characters that they really were and that's what I do in my book I show the character I show them how they were how they lie how they use people how they murder people and how they're really in real life.

They're laid now, but how they were in real life. Was there an aha moment when you said, hey, you know what? I'm going to finally tell the story. I'm going to put pen to paper. Write this book. Did it take a long time? Was it a short run? Or how did that come about?

It was many years ago I wrote her as a screenplay. That's the first thing I did because I had experienced writing screenplay. So I wrote her as a screenplay first. actually auctioned it to a production company out of North Carolina, and they budgeted the movie I read $12 million, which is an exorbitant amount of money for an independent film. We were not able to raise the money. After a couple of years, the book, you know, the story reverted back to me.

I went ahead and threw it in a drawer, forget about it. And then years later, I decided to say, you know what, let me write this as a book. And I tell you, I have to give a lot of questions. credit to my friend Dave Kelly, who's also an author himself because he did a wonderful job editing my book. You know, with grammar, with punctuation, with a syntax, without messing or stepping on the story at all. I knew I had a great story. I knew how to tell the story, but I needed a good editor, and Dave Kelly did that. Nice. Now, you know what's interesting? You talk at the book

about how Castro lied about being a communist, and that was something I was. I was wasn't aware of. I always thought that the Cuban rebels that fought with him knew that the communists were supporting him and backing him. I know that the U.S. was backing. This is the crap we did in South America that caused so many problems. I guess it's the region of South America. We've mucked up most of what's gone on there over decades and decades and caused the problems that are there really when it comes down to it if you research it. But I, I, I wasn't aware that the Cuban rebels weren't aware that they were working for the communists for Russia. There's a little misconception of what happened with the Cuban Revolution.

Fidel Castro never said he was communist. He never had any backing for the Russian or the communists. As a matter of fact, the first people that backed Fidel Castro was the United States government, the CIA. The reason why was because Batista was harboring all the gangsters, Meyer Lansky and Charlie Luciano were actually, Locke Lusiano, were actually created a beachhead for gansters in Cuba. And the United States were really upset about that. So they started supporting Fidel Castro.

They took the support away when Castro started attacking sugar refineries and companies that were owned by United States companies. And that's when they pulled up. the support back. But the first people that supported Fidel Castro was the United States. Fidel Castro did not have any contact with the Russians till after he took over power

because what he wanted to do, he wanted to give the middle finger to the United States. If Fidel Castro would have liberated Cuba and would have been a great leader in Cuba, he would have been famous in Cuba and that's about it. By giving the middle finger to the United States, he became an international figure. And that's where Fidel wanted because he was a maculamian.

Yeah. We seem to have caused a lot of that in Cubans. And that's what I try to do in my book. I try to debunk all this myth that had been perpetuated that people have actually believed. And my book tells you exactly that that is not the case. And I go step by step by step by state and show how they lie, how they gave power, and how they betrayed to Cuban people. Yeah.

The people that were actually for and fought and fought with Fidel Castro was basically the middle class. That's another thing that people, you know, the Cuban revolution or the Cuban regime had been able to sell to the people is that it was like some kind of peasant uprising and people were starving to death and they had to fight for the to survive. Not at all. It was the middle class that was tired of having this banana republic image of Cuba that wanted to get rid of it. And those are the people that actually fought and supported Fidel Castro financially and in actual fighting. Yeah. Like my uncle. Yeah. Now tell us about

your uncle, because I think he's an integral part of the story, isn't he? Yeah. He was an average Cuban, like the family that I talk about, which is typical middle class family. Again, was totally sick and tire of the Banana Republic image that Cuba had. Listen, a lot of people don't understand that. If you go to

1958, the United Nations statistics, you will find that Cuba was number one or number two, number three, in all categories in this hemisphere, not only in Caribbean or South America, in this hemisphere. So we had a very strong economy. We had a very strong social unit in Cuba, but we had a dictatorship, and that's what we want to get rid of. And my uncle, like many other middle class people, wanted to get rid of that, and that's why they got involved to try to get rid of Batista. Never knowing that Fidel Kavis, was a communist and we were going to turn Cuba into a dictatorship.

Worse than the war we had before. And so did your uncle play some integral parts of this story that you tell in the book? Yeah, he is. Again, I have fictionalized some of the characters to make it more interesting. When you write a story, if you write it like a textbook, it doesn't appeal. When you write a book, you have to make sure that the people are writing the book, that are reading the book, are going to be interested in the story. So you have to dramatize it and you have to fictionalize it in order to make it more interesting.

And that's what I did. Yep. And so you've been cooking the story and probably hearing it from your relatives all these years and talking amongst your family. And so you have all these different viewpoints and aspects of the story. And what interesting times we lived through. One of my first books was 1,000 Days by I believe Schlesinger, who was, I think, the chief of staff of John F. Kennedy. And so one of the, that was my first big boy book that I read, which was all of a book to read.

But I'll never forget it. They talked in there about the Cuba Bay of Pigs. Am I pronouncing Cuba, right? Cuba. Cuba. Got to hit it. And I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I want to go there. And I, I'm a photographer.

So I wanted to take all these pictures of all the, of that country that's been locked in time. It's, it's like a time capsule. You've got these 1950s, 1940s chevetsiesies that are still there, that they jimmieged the work and the food. And I love Cuban food. And I wanted to go there before Walmart and Starbucks took over. But I guess it was a short run once Trump turned off, took office, he cut that off in his first admin. Well, you know why, right? It is, and a lot of people don't know why Trump did that.

The reason Trump did that is when they were having demonstrations against Maduro in Venezuela, Cuban government was supporting Maduro, and actually the bodyguards of Maduro were all Cubans. The Venezuelan military was basically run by the Cuban government. So when Trump took over, he stopped that in order to, punish a Venezuela government for putting down all their resistance and all the people that would demonstrate against them. That's for the reason what the other people are not aware of that. Yeah. And one thing that has always haunted me through history that you question, in 1,000 days and other books, if you study the CIA and the muckery they were up to in the

56 late, I don't think they ever stopped being in the muckery. Their job is to be the muck. But you see all the things that we did to support, like in Chile. We're like, oh, let's put Penachet in because Penachet will do a better job for us Americans at representing democracy. We see how that turned out, right? We do so many things where we put our thumb on the scale for democracy in South America, and then it turns into a shit show. I don't think it's necessarily only for democracy, also for the best interests of the United States.

Yeah. That's what it's done. Yeah. We think Pinochet is going to be more favorable to us than what they had before. So what happened is that sometimes we end up supporting people that are horrible people. Yeah, or worse. Or worse, yeah, correct, exactly. What was it?

Is it El Salvador, I think it is? Where during the Reagan administration, they had the huge massacres and slaughters of people. And we were, of course, giving the military advice and guns to kill their own, turn on their own people. And supported by the Reagan administration. there's like an endless thing. Even back then, the CIA was assassinating leaders. That was still a thing. And it was a crazy world back then. But it's one of the, the story that I was leading up to was, and I don't know how many people know this, but Castro, when he was young, he admired, evidently, the United States. He wrote FDR at 14 years old in 1940, asking for a $10 bill. And I think he sent in some Cuban money.

and he was really enamored with the United States and everything else. And you're like, how does a guy that really like this? And my understanding is he did approach us to assist him in the things. And we're like, no, we got our guy already installed. And I think, like you said, the CIA was working the back channel there. But the CIA did help Fidel Castro, though. Yeah. Yeah.

He helped him with guns and money at the beginning. It shows when he started attacking American industries, is one the CIA say way, way, way. Maybe this is not the guy would be supporting. Yeah. The Bay of Big invasion, that was one of the most sad cases that this country have really perpetrated. Because let me tell you something. They say that Kennedy was bamboosov of the CIA and forced to do it.

He had the opportunity to stop it before the left Central America. He had the opportunity to stop it where they were heading for Cuba. he had the opportunity to stop it before they landed. He chose to stop it after 1,500 men landed and left them there. After the men landed, they turned around the boat and left. And that is really, really criminal. Yeah, they left them hanging. Yeah, I'll never forget the Bay of Pigs.

And the CIA, I don't know, unless you can sit in John F. Kennedy's head and know what he knew and what he was being presented with. But my understanding is the CIA kept a lot from him on how. on how military worthy those Cuban rebels were that were wanted to overthrow Castro that they put into the Bay of Pigs. The whole operation was like just a shit show. And the CIA kind of overble it that he was doing them. But I don't know that this may be getting off topic for which written your book and stuff. But it's interesting history. It's an integral part of Cuba.

The Bayo Big seal Castro's control of Cuba. Once that happened, he knew that the United States was never going to attack. attack him again. Yeah. And that's when he declared himself a communist for the very first time. Yeah. He never said he was a comedy. Even for the first couple of years I was in office, he never said he was a communist.

Yeah. Isn't it wild? All this stuff? It's freaking wild when you think about all the crazy. That's what my book is about. My book is about to debunk all this myth, all this lies, all these ideas and stories that have been sold to the world. world that are not true and that's what i thought of do in my book somebody has set the record straight

and you grew up there what a what a what a thing to see and i i wish i could still go visit cuba i think it would just be such a cool place to go i watched i think anthony bradain and people go down and talk to the people down there and they seem like the most wonderful people in the world and and you i look at people like that when i see them being interviewed i just last night i was watching cubans being interviewed on the streets over what's going on in the the the the the threat of war, those criminal charges they just filed against, is it Roel? Roel Castro. The Ro Castro's brother.

And the threats of war. And the sad part is, all these things were like, yeah, let's go, let's go throw over, throw the regime in Iran, is what we're doing right now, or trying to do whatever. And they don't, the people who die are the poor people, the average people, the citizens, the people that are caught in the blast zone. and they're just trying to live their lives. They always get caught in the middle. Yeah, they always get caught in the middle, and they're the ones who usually suffer the most. They're just ahead of Iran's right now in some bunker so deep.

So people can't even find them. Now, let me ask you a question. Were you watching people in this street in Cuba being interview? Were they pro-Qaeda government or were they against the Kiwa government? You could always tell when they're talking in that I don't want to go to the Gulag speak. and so they were just talking about their concern about war coming and the dangers of it and you can kind of tell they were riding the line down the middle because they're not going to stay on camera that screw this government right you don't do that

until they were kind of riding the line just like that you and it's interesting you can watch because you can see a ray of hope that things might change but then you see the realization they understand that to get to that point there is going to be death and destruction and hell and they may not survive. So on one hand, as a human being, you're hoping for something better, but you realize that you may not be around to see it. And then things can get worse before they get better. At one point, they were running out of everything, including electricity.

And in that point, you have, you have horrific collapse and refugees and a huge larger mess than whatever. But why are they running out of everything? Because we block the oil. They have to be answered. People say it's the embargo. It's just bullshit. The embargo have nothing to do with it. Cuba could do business with Europe, with Canada, stuff like that.

It's just that they don't do anything in Cuba. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Good point. Just exacerbated with the oil blockade then. Now, you talk about, why did the revolution fail in its promises? I don't want to give away too much that's in your book.

Just feel free to tell us what you can on that. But I was telling you about the embargo. They blamed everything that happened in Cuba to the embargo. What happened in Venezuela? We never had an embargo in Venezuela, and their country fell apart just like Cuba. Why? Because communism doesn't work. Yeah.

You know, in Cuba, everything that makes money is controlled by the military. And that money, it doesn't go to the Cuban people. It goes to the military and to the people running the military. Yeah. But the easy thing to do is to say everything in Cuba is bad because of the embargo. No, it's because they have a system that doesn't work. Like Wolesa. You remember you know who like Welsa is, correct? I was a face person.

The leader of solidarity in Poland. Uh-huh. They asked him why communism didn't work in Poland. He says because under communism, the government pretends to provide for the people and the people pretends to work for the government. It's all lies. Yeah. Everything is a big lie.

Yeah. And that's why nothing keeps done. There isn't a communist country in the world that have been successful. That's true. I don't know. Is China? Communists. Okay, I'm glad you brought China because China is communists only in name.

While they have in China is actually a classic fascist dictatorship. In China, they realize that the government cannot run the economy because they don't know what they're doing. So they let a quasi-capitalistic system run the economy while the government controls everybody's life. And they only get involved in the production of, of a business only when it steps on the toes of the government. Otherwise, they let it run like a capitalist system. So they don't have a communism in China. They have fascism in China.

Maybe a kleptocracy like Russia, where, you know, I think all the Goombas share the wealth and power of industries and stuff, don't they? They're in China. But on the communism, the government controls all form of production. Yeah. On the, what happened in China, they don't control all form of a production. It's the same thing that happened in Germany.

In Germany, you had a dictatorship going on, but Mercedes-Benz was run their own company. Volkswagen, which was actually invented by Hitler, but run by porch. All those industries were run as a capitalist industry. They were not run in control by the government. Under Hitler, the government did not control the motor production. The industry did it, and that's exactly what we're doing in China. Yeah, yeah.

And we, of course, prop up China, buying all this stuff. We buy everything for China. There's someone you talk in the book that I'm not familiar with, and I'm not sure I can pronounce the last name correctly, but tell us about Camilo. Okay, Camilo Xion Fuegos was a very popular leader. Okay, he was as popular or more popular than Fidel Castro.

He will, whenever he gave speeches, there were as many or more people going, to see him. He will walk down the street and he will mob by the Cuban people. He was beloved by the Cuban people. So obviously he had to be eliminated because he was a potential threat to Fidel's power. So what did they do? They made him disappear. They didn't kill him. They didn't put him in prison because they knew that the Cuban people will be totally against that and will rise against the government. So they made him disappear. And like I told you before, they made him into a into a figure of the Cuban revolution.

Wow. Isn't that wild? Now, who do you hope read your book? Is this targeted? Do you hope largely maybe Cubans that are interested? There's a whole contingency of that. Cuban people, they might bring my book, but they already lived it. You're the audience I'm going after. The average American public, the world as a whole,

the people that have been bought, have been sold and bought the lives of the revolution, and I want to set it straight. That's my public. And that's why I'm interested in turning it into a limited series so I can even broaden my horizons and be able to show the story in a visual manner so it would appeal to more and more people than just reading my book.

Yeah, yeah. Now, I have, listen, I have some great people behind me to do that. As a matter of fact, one of the people that is associated with me in this project is Stuart Radfield. I don't know if you know who he is, but he's the gentleman that wrote the movie Passenger 57 with West this night. So he's a very, very successful writer and direct. But everybody that I have with me is the creative side.

They don't call a show business for nothing. There's a show and this is the business. So we are the show part. We are the creative people. And what we're looking for, if we're looking for people that are interested in helping us turn this into a visual medium, like a limited series, like executive producers, a production company, equity investors, people that might want to get involved with this. And I tell you the truth, this is the best way to get in touch with us. You see what it says there? Art W. Smith Jr. at gmail.com.

If anybody is interested in helping us turn this book into a limited series or a Fisher film, please contact us at this email address and we can start the conversation. And that should be good. There's a lot of, I know there's a contingency in Florida of Cubans that want to return to the island and liberate it and stuff. And maybe we're close to that moment. Every time I think we're close to Cuba and Castro, the brother. I guess we should say no. You'd always think it looks like it might happen.

We might get this thing. I was hoping the Obama thing would open the island up and make that work for the Cuban people. But that's the irony of the whole thing. Every time any president have tried to open relations with Cuba, all the money that comes into Cuba doesn't go to the Cuban people. Yeah. It goes to the people that run the government.

There's an agency. I think it's called Gasea. I'm not saying it correctly. But there is an institution in Cuba that is run by the military that controls any amount of money that comes into Cuba. Wow. And they use it not for the Cuban people, not for the benefit of the Cuban people. They do it for their own benefit. Yeah.

And to give yourself in power. I wish people knew more of the history too. And I'm glad you share this. And this is why. because a lot of this issue that we're dealing with with immigration from South America, we caused the collapse of so many of these governments. If you study what we were up to with the CIA in the 60s and stuff, and the 70s, Reagan and the 80s in El Salvador,

we've caused so much of this crap on top of the fact that we keep all the cartels running in Mexico by buying their drugs. Not me, just want to make that clear. Those Sessna planes that are flying to my house are delivering pineapples. No, I'm just kidding. You could have deliveries of drugs in Utah. Anyway. You know, the problem with the United States getting involved in all these countries is that we're doing it, hopefully, for our benefit. Yeah.

And what happened is we end up supporting the least bad guy that we think there is. For example, Batista, Batista kept telling the United States, Fidel Castro is a communist. Fidel Castro is a communist. If he takes over, it's going to be horrible. So what happens? Fidel Castro took over, and the communists took over, and it was worse. So what does the United States do in a situation like that?

You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. So if you support one side versus the other one, they're both bad. Yeah. If you look at a situation where you have two bad guys, who do you support? The lesser of two evils. And this whole thing that we shovel shit on that I, like I said, my first book was 1,000 Days by Schlesinger. And from there on, I read all the muckery that we're always up to as a, we're going to spread

democracy. I remember when we said about Iraq, they'll greet us as liberators and celebrate in the streets. Instead, they were throwing rocks at us. and we have this Zionist sort of idiocracy of spreading democracy and fighting communism now we're the fascist ones in America watching somebody in Britain go

yeah if you want to study fascism you go to America these days I'm like that's great we flipped the script literally less than 190 years 95 years later people throw that word fascism around like nothing fascism we might have

a right wing government at this time. We're very far away from being a fascist government. You really think so? Oh, I think so, yeah. I don't think we have fascism. Listen, I lived under a right-wing fascist government during Batista, and it doesn't look anything like what I live here now. Yeah, yeah. We have the beginnings of it. It hasn't fully taken control. Hopefully you're wrong. Hopefully it won't, but we're just waiting for a blood vessel to clot. And I've always been fascinating with Cuba. I've always been fascinated with South America. Like I say, I think I think that

started because one of my first big stories is reading about the Bay of Pigs in 100 days, 1,000 days. And trying to understand like, how does it happen? Like, how does, why is the, I was a kid? So I didn't understand a lot of this stuff. And I'm like, why is the CA to see me a president or supposedly deceived the president? The Bay of Pigs was going to be a great way to overthrow Castro. on the course the three days of the blockade where we went to a nuclear detente overnight and came within seconds of having buttons pressed that probably wouldn't be here.

The Chris Vachau wouldn't be here today. It wasn't for maybe some smarter heads or cooler heads or maybe just good timing or luck. It seems like all of that went into that play in that time. But yeah, what a history. I would love to be able to go to Cuba and meet the people there. They seem wonderful people.

They seem so nice. The food, Cuba food is amazing. I love, in California, there used to be this guy who had escaped from Cuba, and he was a chef. My God, he could make the best plantains and pulled pork or whatever it was, the pork that he would make. I fell in love with the food. And then it's so beautiful there. I love old places. And like I said, that place is locked in time.

So it would be so great if somehow they could build it. it, but I don't think the people have the ability to fight back. They certainly don't have the guns, the power, and they're starving right now. How can you fight back when it's such an oppressive system? In Cuba, they have something called the Committee of Defense. That is, there's a person in every block that their job is to spy on the people that live in that block. I'll give an example. My friend, Dave Kelly, the gentleman that I told you, edited my book, he went to Cuba. he's a great baseball player, 40 and above. He went to Cuba with some kind of a cultural exchange

where they went to play against Cuban players. Of course, they were playing with ex-al most professional baseball players, so they got their ass kicked every day. But while he was there, he went to my neighborhood. He was walking down my neighborhood, took a picture of my house. By the time he got to the corner, the police was waiting for him. Really? They detain him for five hours.

Wow. They interrogating him for five hours because whoever in that block, their job is to spy on the people that live there, saw him taking a picture in that neighborhood, called the police, and the police was waiting for him by the time he got to the end of the block. That's how oppressive. And insidious Cuba is. So it's impossible to get anything going because you're being spied on

on a daily basis. People realize how suffocating that government is. Yeah. And the intent is terror and the intent is intimidation and the intent is to keep people down. Let people know.

We're always watching you. Exactly. People know that. People know that they're being watched all the time. That's why they're afraid to do anything. Because you don't know who you're talking to or you might say to the wrong guy and the next thing you know, you find yourself in jail.

Yeah. Just like the secret persons we're building today. Yeah, in the video I watched last night, they showed these Cubans that were walking through streets with carts that were carrying water, empty water bottles. And so they were searching for water. And I know that there's a big, they don't have enough food down there because, like you said, the communist system did a poor job of doing stuff. It happened in Russia where they, remember when Lenin and Stalin sent people out in the fields to create farm. and they all 25 million people died or something in that figure. And it's horrible.

It's horrible. And hopefully, I don't know how with this regime that we have now, it doesn't seem to have a vision of the long-term future of anything. They want to go start a Cuban war and we're still stuck in the Iran war. Yesterday they pulled back from negotiations again. And so, yeah, it's really interesting. For all we know, if we do whatever America's going to do in Cuba, But we might end up something worse.

I don't know. I don't know how you can get worse. I don't tell you the truth. I don't think how it's going to be worse. That's true. I don't think possibly worse the situation in Cuba is. It really can't. I can't picture any government or any system that could be worse than what we have now.

That's true. I can't, I can't fathom that. Yeah. But you know, when you go to Cuba and you start talking to people, not only are they afraid to say something, but you're also talking to people that are dressed like civilians, but they work for the government. For example, when you go to Cuba, any tourist area that you go to,

and the people are working there, the taxi craft drivers, the people selling stuff in the corner, those are no regular Cuban people. Oh, really? Those are people all work for the government. Wow. So when you start talking to these people, they tell you how wonderful the Cuban government is because they are the Cuban government. So is that your sign to be like, okay, I don't want that case.

You have to go away from the tourist area. When you start walking away from the tourist area and you start talking to actual regular Cubans, they will tell you how horrible things are. Yeah. They think that they don't want to get caught. Yeah. Living in fear and stuff just kills hope. Yeah, it is.

If you wake up every morning, knowing who in your block is spying on you. Might be your own family. And it's going to join you to the government. You know how oppressive. form of life is that? Yeah. Might even be your own family too, huh? Maybe. What was that? It might even be your own family.

It's your cases. Yeah. In my book, I have a character in my book that turns again her own family. Wow. That's just crazy. And he's based on a, it's based on a actual situation. My father had a friend who the son

turned his parents into the government and they put him in jail. Wow. That's brainwashed some of these kids have been. Wow. So I took that character and put it in my story, which is made a member of the family, which is not, but that's

a fictionalized character, to show you how brainwashed some people were and how to what extreme they will go to turn into their own, against their own family. Let me ask you this for context in your book. How did you guys leave Cuba?

Did you guys escape? Or were you, how did you get out is a child. Okay, I get out what they call the Peter Panflights, Pedro Panflights. Oh, really? Okay. Sometime in 1960, there was a rumor going around that the government was going to take all the kids of the age of 10 and above, and they were going to take him to a government-run schools, like boarding schools, away from their parents. Wow. And basically to indoctrinate him. Yeah. So Cuban parents were nuts. They were going. crazy. I remember my parents talking about barricading themselves in the house to prevent them from

taking me. So what happened was the Catholic Church came up with this program called the Peter Pan Flies. Well, they will take kids by themselves and bring them to the United States and were an orphanage. My college roommate was in an orphanage for a while and then lived with a foster a family for about two or three years. I was very lucky. My aunt, as a fluke, came three weeks before me, so I never had to go to an orphanage. I was safe from that.

But I have many friends that went to orphanage and went in foster homes. There were 14,000 of us that came here by herself. It was called the Peter Pan flights. The Peter Pan flights. I did not know about this. Yes. I mentioned in my book. And what people think that the strategy of Fidel Castro was,

that if the kids were allowed to leave by themselves, the parents will willingly leave and leave everything behind. In Cuba, in order to leave Cuba, you had to turn everything to the government. You couldn't leave it to your family or to your friends. If you had a house, you had a car, whatever possessions you had, you had to turn it into the government. Wow. So if your kids are in another country,

you're willing to do anything to reunite yourself with the kids. So you would easily without fighting and without any confrontation, you will more than willingly to give everything up to the government so you can leave and reunite yourself with your kids. And they think that that was a strategy that Philo Castro was using. Wow. That is wild. Man, I tell you, you don't know how diabolical these people are. Oh, yeah. I remember the...

the psychological games that they play on people's mind. I remember watching in the 80s, I believe it was, under Carter, or maybe it was the 70, late 70s. Whenever they dumped all the prisoners, the criminals onto our shores. You're talking about a real boat lift. The real boat lift, yeah, the one that, I think it was the late 70s, early 80s. 1980. 1980. That's how my book starts.

My book starts like that. Oh, does it really? I kind of suspected that giving some highlight to this might be in your book, so this turned out well, because it'll give people additional stories to take and scrap into. So this has been wonderful, Al, and I've learned a few things that I'm probably going to be studying, because I've always been fascinated by this part of the world, and of course, how we're always trying to be like, we're going to give democracy to people that don't understand it. And then you look at places where, like, at one point, ISIS was taking over things,

and you talk about making things worse. That would probably be the worst thing that could happen to the, We're talking about how diabolical this regime is. They were going around to schools and Catholic schools, especially, and they were going and asking the kids, ask Jesus for ice cream or soda. Close your eyes and ask Jesus for a soda or ice cream. Open your eyes now.

Nothing there. Now close your eyes and ask for the revolution to bring you some ice cream or a soda. And the kids will open their eyes and they will bring the ice cream and the sodas down the aisle and pass it on to the kids. That is some devious stuff there. Man, I'm telling you, I'm telling you the depth of deceit, the depth of evil that this regime is, people have no idea to what extreme these people are evil. Yeah, it's beyond belief. And the people that suffer.

I remember when the wall fell in Russia in 1989, and my favorite band, Rush, Neil Peer, he wrote these lyrics. Who's going to pay for this? Who's going to pay all the people back who died, who suffered under this regime, who live lives of quiet desperation? Who pays the price for this? In the end, maybe the leaders pay. Maybe Mussolini gets hung on a rope at the public spectable. But usually these guys get away. and sometimes it's in death, suicide, or sometimes they just expire with old age.

But there's no, the people, the citizens, the average person who lives and dies and these regimes starves to death. I think you have the Cuban diet now, I'm sure where people are starving, much like the Maduro diet that was in Venezuela, where people lost 40 pounds because of the poor operations of government there. Which country in South America, by the way. Yeah, that's what was so insane. It was like the fourth richest economy, I think, in the world at its high point of oil. And they fell to people that promised more than they could deliver. And here we are.

That's what happened. I'm telling you, when you're here, somebody tell you they're going to give you free stuff, run, run away because you're about to get screwed. But I just want to say that my book is not only, there's humor in my book, too, because life, there's humor in life. No matter how bad situation. I'll give you a quick. Do you have the time? Yeah, let's do it. Let me give you a quick story. My uncle, one of the people in the book that was involved, and I fictionalize it, but it's based on him,

he was in an embassy trying to get away out of the country. Okay. Across the street, there was this guy that kept, there was some athletic fields, and this guy was fall vaulting every day. and became friends with the guards that were guarding the embassy and stuff like that. So one day, the guy starts running with his paw right at the guards. And the guards are looking at him going, what the heck's going on? The guy, Paul vaulted himself into the embassy.

Oh, really? Turn around and gave the finger to the guards. Do I remember this story? That's a wild story. That is a wild story. Yeah, that's crazy, man. That's the way to do it, I guess. Yeah. Listen, when you're desperate, you do anything. Yeah. Before I leave, I would like to, if you don't mind, I would like to mention two things.

I want the International Impact Award for my book, and I'm also being nominated for Best Author of the Year. Congratulations. I'm keeping my fingers gross of that. And anybody that wants to purchase my book, please go to Amazon, go to the search line, put Al Romero Revolution, and the book will come up. And again, one more time. We're looking for partners to turn my book into a limited series or a Fisher film. And if you're interested in doing that, if you're an executive producer, an equity investor or a production company, please get in touch with us at R.W. Smith Jr. at gmail.com. And let's start the conversation. Thank you very much, Al, for coming in the show. It's been super insightful and fun, and I hope we somehow end up creating a better

life for the Cuban people. I don't know how that's going to happen, but I hope is there. I don't know. You might be the instrument that I need in order to take my book to the next level. That would be ideal. I would love to meet you and shake your hands. We'll go to Cuba and get us some great fried plantains. Listen, if you ever come to Florida, I will take you to the best Cuban restaurant and buy you. That sounds like a deal. That sounds a good deal.

I used to practically live at the Cuban restaurant that I had in California from the ex-patriots. So the food was just, oh my God. He spent like 48 hours making stuff. It was insane. Anyway, thanks for coming by the show, folks. We really appreciate it. Order his book, wherever fine books are sold and pass the word around. Revolution.

How the Castro's lied, cheated, and murdered their way into power out May 2, 2018. Thanks for us for tuning in. Go to Goodrease.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Chris Foss 1 on the TikTok and all those crazy places in the net. Be good at each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next.

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