journalists -- play rights who working on historical themes. we have been trying to be more the last few in years. working on next? little book ing a gave a series of lectures on mental ricans health and mental illness. lectures on ing on umanity and how scholarship shapes the world. i'm going to suggest we move stem vocabulary to technology,ngineer, socie society. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. been a pleasure. > you are watching american hf

history tv on c-span 3. > we talk about fidel and the revolution that changed world history. him scusses fidel castro's begins and the important role of young people. this hosted the event. australian born perpetual explorer travel writer books hor of six the grand apoleon's, tour, journey through the europe al underbelly of fidel andecently che, the revolution that changed history. he college student regularly disappeared for hikes through the outback and traveled rural india where he had

. career makes ed in manhattan he it a point to continue exploring beijing and other place. have been stories published in magazines like "new -- and translated into a dozen languages. having been selected several times for the best american travel writer series. he is a regular guest on history channel where he is spoken about everything from the crusaders. it is available for sale after the program. welcoming me in tony.

>> hello, everybody. such you for coming out on a beautiful spring night. celebrate the secrets of the cuban revolution. from my be wondering many wonder why i'm writing about cuba. in argentina in buenos aires and was all around if you live innd latin mark everyone is there thinking about cuba and what happened and what is going to happen in cuba. that sense i felt like i had 1996, which did in was just after the soviet union had collapsed. it was kind of appear economic disaster.nomic i got there from new york because you couldn't fly. i went to nassau.

all i knew is i had to take a 000 in cash and give it to guy at the airport and i would recognize him by his hat. there and went into this d disused terminal with wires and lionel appeared and gave him the money and he thing and dwritten pointed out a prop plane and to six people squeezed on cuba.plane and landed in it was an exciting experience. went was in the obama years. flew on a private jet from havana.o champagne and beautiful american cars picked up. taken to a luxury hotel with a roof top pool and had wi-fi. was like science fiction. trip i asked friend a

cuba specialist i wanted to find about the revolution and happened. she said it does not exist. you should write it. yes, that seems wildly difficult and extremely unlikely. this trip the obama era i understand there was including the ba hideouts in the mountains where idel used to lurk and other extraordinary places. so i proposed to the smithsonian follow the trail and history of the revolution, which is he story -- how the story came up. words of ut 3,000 going to these places and finding the things that were on.g out to have will that give you an idea of classic

images. that, i realized there is much more to be learned and more discovered. that was just the tip of the iceberg. about it and book i started. get into was trying to it that inspired me with the dea that they discovered how popular the revolution was amongst americans in those days 1959 which seemed extraordinary given what had happened since. how difficult it was to find out inut the revolution here and cuba it is difficult. so i tried to investigate here image that most intrigued me s just after the dictator fled ed sullivan flew to cuba to about ew fidel as he was to come into havana and you can and he was utube

like -- and ed was star struck over fidel l comparing him to george a fine youngd said group of revolutionary youngste youngsters. it was a twilight zone. . e said what do you think of american and fidel said a very positive feeling. you to like cuba and we like you. was the other way around. lovefest. this is the point where i started the book and go back to find out how it unfolded. incredible by unlikely that this bunch of oung doctors in their 20 -- youngsters afternoon land on the down of cube and decimated to 12 people how they ended up 40,000 professional

soles in just over two -- years.rs in over two the thing that i like about the that it is broken up into specific little chapters in a way. the uld have put this in print out but there are five arts to the story so you will know as we go along. ae first part is a prelude in way here is the young fidel playing basketball and he was a athletic character and as his student as well nickname was the crazy one of he he would do things like would bet his friends that he into at drive it bicycle wall at full tilt and they said we will bet you that. down a hill smacked into a wall and he was out three days.

that was just to prove the point. that gives insight into the character. loved sports. in basketball and baseball were of the american sports. you can visit his family house and e eastern side of cuba it is a place we entered, the mance is is family still there. he was from quite a rich family up with this sense of injustice. didn't have shoes and he had shoes and he realized dad was a land holder was he ng the workers badly and would get in arguments and got in a strike which didn't endear to his dad. if you go to this place you can family bedroom and he and raul shared the bedroom and baseball outfits

there. he rtunately the story that was offered a contract with is ican official baseball untrue. he had a great pitching arm but a scholarship et to miami or to indianapolis. any way, fidel, it extraordinary haracter, one of the more extraordinary characters of the 20th century, the thing that i show is he was this conservative went havana used studying law and became radicalized. brewing e these things ncluding in 1953 a coup from batista. fidel was running for politics senator.

he the coup not occurred he robably would have won and maybe eight years later run for the presidency himself. instead, batista takes over and out the process. and there were american mobsters to run the casinos and milking way and in a blatant extremely violent. secret police were beating up opponents.ng it was a thuggish environment. fidel came to the conclusion as do others that this american dictator could not be defeated by people. something ad to do extreme. so they decided to start an insurrection. before the actual revolution begins sort of the first voluntarily. east the major city is santiago very beautiful place has a barracks there.

e and another 100 of his riends, students, taught themselves how to shoot gunsh, s and made ell themselves uniforms to look chevrolets led into and buick apsd trundled off to place that had maybe 500 soldiers in it and they if they surprised them while they were asleep because carnival t night of they thought they would be so hung over they wouldn't fight. the case.ot they completely blew it. ran accidentally nearly over a couple of patrolmen and a of fight start and many them were killed and some were captured and tore cleared to -- tortured. so it was kind of a disaster, battle of little

big horn in the united states elebrated in its own awards way. so you can see the bullet holes of a reserved as part shrine. idel was captured and a bunch f them and sent to devil's island of cuba. ff the coast and all thrown into this model prison which is modeled on one in chicago. is an example of where a guard can be in the middle and in the whole place. sinister and very reason but for whatever the political prisoners were put in one room and they got each other gave classes on revolutionary theory isn'totted what to do and messages to people outside and fidel even managed to in a great

publishing story he wrote a book pamphlet on e or a his defense speech. pieces of little paper and smuggled out piece by havana. supporters in lemon juiceitten in so the guards never asked why passion for citrus. believe pressure mounted to fiddle and the friends and there were some youngsters they flee nknown so to mexico city and organize and invade cuba. they are complete amateurs. the story is out ph.d. grads nch of rom princeton went to the mountains to overthrow the government. they had to teach themselves how how to navigate,

how to survive in the mountains. rocks in theirut back packs and go hiking up and down the streets of mexico city, the mountains. they found a veteran of spanish teach them to shoot and they tried to raise money nd they were often caught, secret police were after them in mocks city. arrested.ge then all by this stage they have been a medic, a young chap forctor and he signed on to the, digs. he was arrest -- expedition. none s the first photograph of che and fidel in a mexico city prison. tighten iing on them going as cided to get fast as they could. his 19 second part of the -- this is the second part with the plan of the invasion. decided to buy a boat from

doctor in mexico city called the grandma and they organized the locals, local supporters. this is the frank sinatra type for the r boy revolution and he organized in antiago knowing there were going to river some time at the end of november. fidel would send a telegram that said the book that you ordered of print. that was the code they were city.to leave mexico it was going to take five days boat y all piled into the minuminnow e the s.s. waterlogged.ky and 120 people wanted to get on and 82 and they set off at

ight in a storm ignoring it is one of worse storm warnings in months. s soon as they got in the harbor it started to rock and sick.ot sea he forgot to pack the sea sickness tablets and with the other on of raul and one they got sea sick and it was a disaster.ar water was coming in the boat and hey realized it was going to flood so they grabbed whatever they could and started throwing lighten it oard to until somebody realized the tap toilet.n the that set the tone for the early revolution. they were heading to this ama which i was line able to travel it has some of the worse roads in cuba which is saying something but it was

remoat and isolated and -- fidel and isolated and decided to do that so they could and into the mountains probably the poorest and most caribbean.rt of the it turns out they are two days the ground people gave up and then they come along and crash-land and they are long coast and somebody in the we need s and says sandbags and they all get in and them go across and realize to their horror that of have not landed on one beautiful beaches but in a swamp most sinister swamps in east. the spot u can visit they have done this beautiful walkway to see where they crash-landed. climb over the vines

and dropped their stuff and lost their shoes and it was a complete fiasco. dehydrated so they meet a farmer and he wanders out bushes and fidel says ave no fear we have come to save the cuban people. the guy apparently russell -- resisted urge laughing.o burst out but he is helpful and he catch get more food. then there is shooting and they spotted hey have been by the coast guard and soon the air force is coming. decided to slip off toward the 30 mile walk to the mountains. third day ly on the they are surrounded and ambushed. them rican-american found and -- the army find them and massacre and 20

killed and the rest captured. veryone else scatters in wild directions. he is dying and he a tree and inst remembers his favorite jack london story about a guy who is die in the wilderness of alaska until somebody grabs and says come on, we have to et out of here and get in the bushes. so there were scattered everyone. himself in a sugar cane field. dusk he notices two riends and the army are going back and for the. they hang out there five days away.e ample to go -- ample to go away. hey are drinking dew and gnawing on sugar kane to keep themselves sustained. ere of the time fidel is

rocking back apnd forth saying victory will be ours. the other two are saying fidel lost it. he's gone mad. turns out they get it together and walk basically like walking a few hours a day and mostly at night and get in the eeting point up mountains. ery beautiful area and isolated. others manage to survivor and i mean raul his brother made it out with a couple of people. up there. che is there. he was from argentina which is name, it is like hey, che, like pal or australian it would be like mate. well.ds up there as believe about 20 of them gather nd they are camping out in a coffee field and recovering from the wounds. any others were caught and

butchered by the army, machine gunned. miraculous thing. those that survived became the revolution.he he one that would be running the african-americrmy he was be with shovels. the lead guys, these few people, later someone would write a book and it was 2 people more like 20 but they liked the know as it -- con the religious connotation of 12. trying to survivor and only way to survive is of sanchez efforts whose daughter lived below and organizer of the revolution. ou go to havana archives you can find her accounts. meticulous and she

boots and food and would organize mule trains to take them stuff. the coming months it would turn out if not for her the revolution would have been snuffed out. the boys were full of enthusiasm that they couldn't organize their way out of a paper bag. just very young and disorganized and couldn't even guns.their they were going off. ut she was able to roaring reinforcements -- reorganize einforcements and kept the revolution going in these early months. bautista had seventh out word that if i -- fidel and and his friends were dead. word went back to fidel wanted to get an interview and decided to get a "new york

times," a stringer in havana. she didn't want to go up there she contacted another guy herbert matthews a great latin and knew f his day cuba and flew down and we said send somebody. he looked a the him and frail late 50's he said we will send somebody. myself. said i'm going the other guy could not believe him but matthews did decide to do it. his wife got -- there the driven by acts out to aoeast to plantation owners. he hikes up into the mountains and fidel meets him. strort thing. one -- extraordinary thing. the without this revolution would have expired. fidel meets him. got 20 guys and they are

ragged. raul get is brother back and forth and change outfits so he looks like he has more than he does. also had to walk sideways so they wouldn't see the backs torn on.irts were it was a ragtag army. matthew he has his cells all over the mountains, soldiers which prints.s buys and he had this extraordinary thing is on f i disrespectful the front page of "new york report and glowing romantic revolution. the heroic ut resistance of a youth rebellion sinister dictator a robin hood sort of thing and image that

right,many ways, it is that these guys didn't have any political agenda other than getting rid of baptista. that was ago they could all get behind. came much later. che was kind of a communist and , but fidelll basically wanted power. somebody said they tried to make fidel a communist and fidel laughed and said, if i was a communist i would be stalin. on the same day herbert matthews meets him, celia is the one in the middle, and the other one is haley santamaria, celia sanchez hikes in to meet fidel for the first time. it is this extraordinary moment.

here he is, showing off his favorite rifle. she loves shooting, loves fishing, the great outdoors, she was a political devotee, totally devoted to the revolution, and it begins one of the great romances of the revolution. a lot has been written about the relationship between che and fidel, which was extraordinary, but this union between celia and amazinge has all these ideas that he spouts them out, she puts them into action, sort of translates them into something practical and can actually happen. fidel is on the front page of "the new york times" as the face of the cuban resistance, so it's an extraordinary thing. that inspires people. cbs news decides to go there as well and we have a guy named robert taylor who interviews

fidel is a tv natural and knows how to stage things as well. he says we will do it on top of the highest mountain in cuba, spectacular view, unfolding coastline, and there is a bust of the independence hero jose m arti, and they sing these rousing songs and it is broadcast to 50 million viewers across the united states suddenly -- the united states. suddenly fidel is a huge presence, despite the fact he has only a handful of followers. today you can go up the sierra and it is still an extremely poor place. the other reason they were able to survive is that the local farmers decided to help them out. they long felt isolated and removed from the rest of the country. they had been left out of cuba, exiles within their own land, so they give them food, support, they carried messages, they told

fidel when the army was coming in. so in this early, nomadic phase, campesino,s amazing secondary army helping them out. and they are wandering around in the mountains for months, changing camps every night, and exhausting time for the revolution. one thing i found in the havana archives, one of my favorite discoveries, all the leaders were writing diaries, but the cuban platoon leader wrote a diary that was never published. he was sort of a romantic. he had a girlfriend who lived in mexico, he didn't like hardship, he didn't like being rained on, trudging around, didn't like blisters, but he was devoted to the revolution. he was also very lonely. he missed his girlfriend. he writes all this down in the diary.

he gives this marvelous accounts where he falls in love with every woman he meets in the mountains, shop girls, farmer's ,aughters, guerrilla volunteers writes these lovely poems about it. liaisonup in a romantic at dally's so long that his platoon left. but it ends when the girl opens a locket around his neck and sees the photograph of his girlfriend in mexico, unfortunately. in his diary, it is all for the best, although one doesn't quite believe him. he was a very lovelorn character. just waiting for some water. there it is. ok. he has extraordinary insights into this amateurish, do-it-yourself revolution. one of the other great things i found out was that after herbert matthews' story was published in "new york times" a lot of

americans were inspired to join the revolution. three teenagers from guantanamo theirsappeared from families, ran away and joined fidel. and fidel and frank paiz decide it is a good idea, a good pr thing, so they let the three american kids join. then they write an open letter to the u.s. government saying that they love the revolution, that it is like the founding fathers all over again, and it is published in "the new york times." and it is calling for americans to stop supplying batista the dictator with arms. planes are refueling and guantanamo bay, americans are training the secret police, it was not an ideal situation. so the three kids are there, but fidel eventually decides one of them couldn't hack the mountain it isbut fidel decides too dangerous to have them there

because if they get killed or wounded, it would be a pr disaster. he lets them go. one guy stays another three months and then fidel sends him back to the u.s. to do fundraising speeches. he set up an office in new york on the upper west side, right near columbia university, and all these students keep turning up trying to volunteer for the revolution for the summer holidays only. they want to be back for their classes in the fall. only a few of them do actually make it down there, but there are great stories from kids in berkeley who steal their parents' car to drive to miami to go down to join the revolution, and failed dismally as well. anyway, we have another rare, early photo of che guevara. reallya medic, he wasn't initially that important, but it turned out he had an extraordinary talent for guerrilla warfare. he was also an extraordinary

character, very stair, very tere,tted -- very aus very committed, and he had a sentimental side as well. he loved dogs in particular. he carried his dog around a david -- around at every gathering. and one of the saddest stories, an army patrol was going by and a dog starts whining and making was like, you have to get rid of the dog. the guy who owns the dog has to strangle the dog is the army is going by. it's one of those weird a goodes, and he was writer as well, a poetic soul as i said. and quite good looking, he sort of became the poster boy of the revolution later. but there are some amazing history'ss, probably most photogenic revolution in many ways. because the chinese revolution, the russian revolution have

paintings and statues, but this was the golden age of magazine. so american photographers would ,ind their way into the sierra "time," all these magazines, kind of a next ordinary thing, and this was the first execution of the revolution. they had a trial, a series of trials lasting 12 days. there were a bunch of guys impersonating them, going around telling people they were revolutionaries and then stealing stuff, which was alienating a lot of farmers. so they put them on trial and the ringleaders are executed. and here the photographer captures the execution, kind of an incredible image. but this is in the early days, and there are 100 of them floating around in 1957, at this stage.

one thing i found interesting was figuring out how they did it. iny had great support base the cities and they tried to convince people to start burning sugar plantations to undercut the economy. so he put out these helpful tying ballsplaining of phosphorus onto the backs of rodents and sending them into sugarcane fields. or using a slingshot with phosphorus from matches and it would burn and they would send it into these fields to start conflagrations. so they are sort of making it up as they go along. whether it worked or not, nobody knows. but they would do other things as well. the army was going around bombing randomly all over the sierra maestro, the air force. a lot of these bombs wouldn't go off and if they did go off there was almost no damage because it was a jungle, a fact the viet cong found out many leers -- many years later, it virtually

gets absorbed in the mulch. so they would find these unexploded bombs, take them apart and create their own booby-traps out of condensed milk cans and use shrapnel and they would hang them with garlands and figured out how to explode them from a distance. one of these extraordinary things, condensed milk was their favorite food so they had tons them up they would get from the low lands smuggled by celia, and condensed milk was like the nectar of gods because it was sweet and rich. they would make a lot of dishes as well, great recipes have survived. raul had one, sausage guerrilla style, where he would get a spicy hot dog, chop it up, saute it in one tablespoon of lemon, one of rom and one of honey, --

andof rum and one of honey, that was his favorite dish. they had one sausage night. talked about discovering a whole chain of sausages and said it was the greatest feat he had in his life. they managed somehow to make it of 1957 and just by hanging around, they were winning in a certain way. they would take photographs. here is che -- they would take photographs. at a breakoff camp, 1958, and he took this photograph and distributed it around, like a mocking photograph. you can see he is wearing a cap instead of the famous beret. again, he was sentimental. one of his comrades had been killed and he decided to keep the cap, and many months later he loses it and is heartbroken.

so we have these guys hanging out in the mountains, but in verybana -- in havana, little is changing. havana is like the sin city of the western hemisphere. if you saw "the godfather part ," they had mayer lansky and these other ones that were running these art deco casinos that are still there. the greatone of centers of vice. graham greene loves it. details would go into, these live sex shows and it was a decadent place and there was an underground growing there as well. the support is probably at its weakest in havana. in any case, up in the mountains fidel is preparing for a maybe

five or 10-year war. he decides to get a permanent base, they have about 300 men at this stage and he decides that instead of going around nomadic lee, they have somewhere they need to have some more where they can hold up. so celia designs this beautiful camp in an isolated place. you go up this trail, and you can still go there today, the huts are still there, you go up the goat trail, clambering up, you trudge along and it opens up and it is this secret area that is there. this is what it looked like in 1958, this is the main plaza for them and he would sort of hang out there and read the newspaper, meet people that would come up and come up with plans. you could also see he started to grow his beard. very early on they had actually thrown their razors overboard, but they decided they might as

well keep growing their beards until the revolution was won. so they all became known as the distinguish, to them from everyone else. so fidel is wearing his for ge cap, i looked up became world-famous eventually. for is the hut celia made herself and fidel, by a bubbling brook, and it is chair -- it is compared to a chinese philosopher's hut. it is up in the mounts, very breezy, dreamy, cool you can lie there, the bed is they are, the kitchen is still there, they have a fridge that they finally brought up that still has the bullet holes that the air force made when they strafed the mule train. you can still go up there. the guide will show you around. it is sort of barricaded, but

the guide wandered off at one stage so i thought, i will climb over and go into the bedroom. the mattress is still there. down on fidel's bed, to see if i could get some machismo coming through. and there is a gorgeous window that is propped open and it is filled with mariposa flowers, a lavish, tropical scene, and it is such a poetic little place. it was here that he acted as though he was already president of cuba, giving orders, coming up with plans, and the people who trudged up there were incredibly impressed that he had this sense of authority. he was also joined by others, and at this stage more and more women are starting to join the revolution. they had been working in the cities, but there were often, suspicion was starting to fall on them.

policely the cuban male couldn't conceive women had political ideas at all, so they never bothered the women. and they would use their petticoats to carry ammunition and smuggle food and guns around to the revolutionaries, but eventually people did start to figure them out. and and there writing m.i.t. chemistry got graduate -- m.i.t. chemistry graduate became the major operative in santiago. she was organizing all this stuff because frank paiz at this stage had been murdered, grabbed on the street and plugged twice in the head for $3000 bounty. he was 22. a is there organizing and until finally suspicion falls on her and she gets out in

the nick of time and goes up to the mountains as well, at about the same time the "paris match" photographer shows up, so he does a spread of all the the sexynary gals, look that is the counterpart of the handsome guerrilla guys. and the women are up there sewing uniforms, but others were joining and wanting to fight. and eventually fidel starts a women's platoon, something of a beforeirst, 25 years west point. so they had their own platoon, about a dozen who would go out into combat the whole time. meanwhile, we have a lot of revolution to get through, but morehile, they became popular among the cap encino's -- the campesinos and they would drift into villages and it would

be a party, like a fiesta, they would crack open beer and give them food and whatever, until the summer of 1958, when batista decides he is finally going to get rid of these guys. just by hanging around, like i said, they are winning in a strange way by showing how weak he is. so he sends 10,000 soldiers into the mountains and calls the ofration operation end fidel. fidel gets word of it because he has spies in the army so they set booby-traps along these mountain trails, and he has 300 men. and being a classical scholar, he said it was like the stand of the spartans at thermopylae, which didn't end well for the spartans. [laughter] but that was his idea. the overwhelming odds were there , and they also had contingency plans, but in the end they were able to terrify the

recruits on the march so they would lose their morale, give up and start surrendering. and fidel had this brilliant idea of treating them extremely well, giving them food, giving them medicine and sending them back. treated they said, they us quite decent and they are not hurting us. so the army starts to realize, why are we dying for $35 a month ? batista is obviously corrupt, basically raping the country, they start to lose faith in the theggle, so eventually whole assault fizzles out and they decide to leave fidel in the mountains, assuming that was it, he would be contained in the mountains for a while. but fidel has other ideas. within weeks of this incredible victory, this incredible survival, he sends che and

fuegos, the other great leader who was extremely popular in cuba, so he sends them to the low land for what seems like a suicide mission to trudge across open terrain to set up bases further into the island. if you go around there now, it's extremely beautiful but it is quite exposed. so there were often strafed. they found the people in the low lands weren't that helpful and friendly, propaganda went out that said they were propaganda that said they were communists that should not be supported. ses his where che lo farage hat and starts to wear a beret with a red star. he is going around on a mule because he had terrible asthma and often couldn't walk, he would have to be carried, so for days these guys would be lugging them, you, yelling at argentine, you son of a bitch,

you argentine, get moving, and dragging him physically, he seemed like more of a liability at many stages than an asset. but he had this leadership and perhaps because of the asthma, he had this incredible endurance. and he goes to this mountain and sets up a base there and organizes all the other anti-batista forces, and he meets elaina march, 26 years old from santa clara, a former and she joins the revolution and is sent to the mountains. they didn't like each other to begin with, but at one stage she is driving by in a jeep and he sees her by the road and says, jumping in, and she hopped sand, and she says in a sense -- she

hopped in, and she says in a sense she never left the jeep, they end up getting married and they had four children. i was just in havana hanging out with the oldest of their four children, who does motorcycle tours in cuba and is also named ernesto. meanwhile, fidel is in the mountains taking interviews and organizing things until november. he starts to go to down to the low lands to take the fight to batista's army. this is all going on in the east. in the center of the island, che decides to attack the main town of santa clara, where all the railroads are, basically the heart of cuba. there is elaina behind him, he is wandering along giving orders on the outskirts of santa clara. and none of the guerrillas had ever taken the city before, let alone with 100 men, but they creep in and start fighting door by door, and soldiers start

giving up. then he comes up with this other simple but brilliant idea. throughout the whole struggle up and down the cuba, this armored train had been rumbling back and forth carrying troops, hundreds of guns, bombs, grenades, a moving arsenal that was heavily fortified. and it is sent to santa clara. che goes where it is and attacks and they start to retreat with the train and he got a caterpillar from the agricultural school and they started to tear up the tracks. so the train goes barely down at full speed and it derailed and then they start throwing molotov cocktails, there are the great weapon, easy to make and cheap. women used to carry them in coca-cola containers for them.

and in santa clara supporters would make molotov cocktails for them and pass them out the windows so they could be used. so this happens december 30, 1958. news filters out that they have seized this train, and men go in and it is like aladdin's cave. they have hundreds of guns, ,achine guns, mortars, bazookas and it's this extraordinary thing. and word gets back to havana on new year's eve, and the dictator whose main worry at this stage was that there would be a military coup or he would be arrested and put on trial, decides to cut and run. he has a regular new year's eve party, and if you have seen godfather part ii, it's accurate. he has a new year's eve party with chicken and rice at the cup of brandy and then reads a statement that he is about to about to abandon cuba. and there are three d.c. for's

's waiting three dc4 on the airstrip with a list of people who are coming. and people start running to the airplanes as they are idling away, with no idea of where they are going. and they go through the list of names. some of the military rush off, trying to get money, and they all have swiss bank accounts, and they finally all pile into the three planes and had off. -- and heahd off. two of them go to florida, not to miami, which was extremely pro-fidel at this stage. they go to jacksonville and palm beach. but the other one, the americans finally decided a couple of weeks earlier that they could no longer support batista. not only that, they wouldn't let him into the country. so he flies to the dominican republic, where the dictator welcomes him with open arms. word starts to

filter out on new year's day. afterradio announced it they just played beethoven's ninth after game. word gets out, people take to the streets, supporters of the fidel come out with guns and start to take over the streets of havana. there is some shooting but fidel himself is over in the east at a farm, and he hears about it on the radio. he has no idea these guys are going to come in, and at first he thinks it is a military coup, and then he realizes he better do something. so he goes to set iago, -- goes to santiago, where he gives this rousing speech and claims victory for the revolution, but he makes sure to do it in the place where the spanish surrendered at the spanish-american war.

part of the root of the revolution was that the cubans had been trying for decades to get rid of the spanish of the united states intervened at the last minute in 1898 and saved the day, but they decided to occupy cuba for three years with a military occupation. and then they refused, they didn't even allow the cubans to come to the surrender ceremonies in the sand? main square. that was -- and that it surrender ceremonies in the -- to come to the surrender ceremonies in the santee iago iago main square.iag it was considered one of the great insults of all time. so fidel stops at key points along the way, giving speeches, his skill as an oratory now comes out, these endless, to our speeches now begin, and cubans love him. at each step he gets more

support. finally he comes to havana. che andlready sent camilo i had to occupy the main derricks. they each have about 100 guys, guerrillas, and 5000 soldiers floating on their rooms, each of them. observers said it was enough to make you burst out laughing, understanding there was no resistance at all, completely giving up. the cia couldn't even understand. they thought they should be some sort of negotiated opposition. but as fidel gets closer to havana, it's obvious he has 99% support of the population. havana and goes to the main military base, right in front of the place where the new year's eve party occurred, and he gives this incredible speech that has triumphed. and as he does, women in the front row release these doves,

symbols of peace and good fortune. and they land on the podium, one on his shoulder, and for the rest of the speech they are sitting there, getting sort of a benediction. and in santeria as well that is considered extremely good luck. and in the following weeks of magazine had this portrait of him with this halo. so he was considered this strangely christ-like figure, which is difficult to believe, but he was considered this great savior of the island. lo is also extremely popular, he is from havana, good-looking dude, very bon , and he is described as more of a rumba dancer than a gorilla, described as looking like jesus christ on a spree. elaina decide and

to get married. they kept a chaste, 1950's relationship as they traveled around in the mountains, most of the time to dirty, exhausted or too tired to have any sort of romantic relationship. but when they get to havana things start to progress. and it is one of the first revolutionary marriages. raul and wilma get married. fidel and celia don't. fidel takes up random admirers, there are many, and we don't know what celia thought of it but she stayed the great organizer. they have a suite in the havana hilton and the romantic stuff starts to slide. guerrillas keep their distinctive look, their uniforms, the long hair, their beards, they are like prototype hippies, a complete contrast to , eisenhower-era

en" look at the time. and if you look at magazines from the time, the contrasts urilla mane ge lla gals are quite striking. there is the man in the gray flannel salute going off to work, pulsing their shoes, and the women are the ideal housewife, cooking for the kids, very doris day looking. so the contrast is striking. in a sense, the 1960's as we were beginning in 1959, this idea of the rebellious youth movement was already brewing in the united states, at a time when especially with young people there was a lot of

dissatisfaction growing. and fidel was regarded as a james dean sort of character, a marlon brando, a "rebel without a cause" kind of thing. meanwhile, fidel was having a blast, hanging out with ernest hemingway there, and 1959 is , it is what i call the honey mood of the revolution , i stole that. when everyoneme loved fidel, everyone loved che, the guerrillas were heroes, and in the united states as well. so in april, fidel and the gang were invited to speak in washington to the american society of editors. so they all fly up and when they go to new york they are mobbed, 20,000 people meet them at penn station, fidel is carried on

their shoulders to his hotel. he goes to the empire state building, he goes to the zoo, gives a speech to 20,000 people in central park, and all of this press coverage is very laudatory, calling him the reincarnation of one of the founding fathers. americans were recognizing their a small groupves, who managed to overthrow an evil empire. alsouan almeida is extremely popular among african-americans at the cusp of the civil rights movement to sign cuba, overnight they got rid of several geisha laws -- they got rid of segregation laws. it turns out it's not as easy as that. there are a lot of other things, but officially segregation is gone. the struggle in the united states is only just beginning. here we have fidel and che, more

chummy, and che is wearing the star as he becomes more radical, and the revolution drifts further to the left and the fights begin after this marvelous trip to new york. things go quickly awry for the united states, partly because the washington visit was not successful at all. in public she seemed like an amazing thing, a huge success, fidel and the gang, but it turned out eisenhower was miffed it wasn't an official visit. fidel was just turning up. so he made sure he was out of washington playing golf the whole time fidel was here. instead, he sends richard nixon, his vice president, and richard nixon and fidel hate each other on site. they have a 90 minute meeting, but it doesn't go well at all. nixon is convinced fidel is extremely naive. fidel calls nixon a son of a bit,

[laughter] an opinion that others have this is going awry, not going as well as fidel hoped. he wanted to communicate directly with the american people. so to the frustration of his bodyguards, he would leap over barriers and start shaking hands ggingamericans, hu them, saying, i want to meet my people, sort of like a rock star. and he think he is getting his message through, he's in the hotel room and they described him doing a little dance, they are starting to understand us, they are starting to understand us. but he couldn't figure out why americans were obsessed with communism and why they didn't understand and fully sympathize with the main goal of independence of cuba. ,hey wanted an independent unfortunately, economic independence, and america ran everything there. they had the best land, they

owned the railroads, the electricity companies, even the telephones, so it was a crash naively, both america and cuba at the initial stages were thinking this could be avoided, but things go awry as 1959 progressed. toward the end of 1959, eisenhower authorizes assassination of fidel. they also talking -- they also start talking about an invasion plan. by 1960 fidel comes back to new york to speak at the u.n. and is snubbed everywhere, hated, vilified. and he is in his hotel at the hotel guys accuse him of killing live chickens, plucking them and killing them and cooking them in the hotel room. so they go to harlem famously, and this was hugely popular with the african-american community, , and onelies outside of the other visitors is khrushchev, who has already offered economic eight

and will now offer much more as well. the americans had banned imports of the cuban sugar so russians hanging around in the wings offered to buy the whole lot at inflated prices. and from there goes from bad to worse. one of the great historical accidents is that cuba is like upon in the cold war -- is like a pawn in the cold war. during the revolution there was a missile base in cuba within a year. ofe we have the iconic image che, the original iconic image taken at a rally in 1960, when things were really going south with the united states. there is a huge explosion in the harbor, whichever one is convinced is staged by the cia. there was never proof of that but the cia was doing other stuff. here he is standing implacably looking into the distance, and

cuban photographer named albert korda takes a couple of snaps of him, one vertical and a couple of horizontals. and they publish it and sort of forget about it, but he cops it and hangs it up in his studio -- but he crops it and hangs it up in his studio. after che dies in bolivia in 1967, an italian fashion designer comes and sees it and borrows it and takes it back to italy and does these screen prints on it, and its 1967. by 1968 it is one of the world's and in many ways now that is all people can remember about the revolution. very sad story. i don't even know what time it is because i haven't got a watch . 7:51, is that right? should it be time for questions?

ok, down in the front. >> i'm curious about your research process in cuba. what was your process in cuba? and did you have government minders, government officials who followed you around? were you free to do the research you wanted? what was myt: process, and was i followed? cuba changed a lot. by the obama years there was a window of opportunity. i had flown down to cuba and stayed for a week and had come back. i could go to the archives and make my requests, they could think about it for months. but there was one place that celia set up, the office of historical affairs, and she got everything to do with the

revolution and put it in one repository, and it is still there and you can go in and make requests. you have to get special permission. you have to get an academic visa, which became very difficult, unfortunately, in the because the americans and cubans sacked the staff, so it is hard to get a visa at any time. get anid manage to academic visa and i would explain what i was doing and they were actually very helpful. but the real reason i was able to break into it was that a friend of mine named nancy stout had written the first biography of celia. a biographyt been of celia written in cuba. she spent a lot of time meeting people and hung out there and had a translator who actually so sheat the office,

became friends with them. and when i went down she introduced me to the translator, and the translator introduced me to the guys, and i had this entree. and in cuba everything is very personal, handshakes and whatever, so i would hang around their end at some point it didn't hurt that i was australian, i would have a more objective view, in theory. but i sort of hung around, and if you just hang around, they figure it is easy to give you stuff when you come in every day. i was there, they would bring me things, that which only the letters, and one of the funny things was that they had the catalogue and they would say, what do you want to see? and i would say, what do you got? and they said, you have to ask for something specifically. and i would ask for the diaries, certain letters, and when it came to those letters, other things would come up. the guys that

worked there, i would take them out for lunch, and around the corner there was this restaurant , a swiss restaurant that was indistinguishable from any cuban restaurant, and the swiss restaurant had heineken beer and i would buy them heineken beer which they had never tasted before. i sort of became friends with them, emailed back-and-forth, i would tell them when i was coming, and then they started to bring things out. 's diary was a major thing. did anyone else write these diaries? and eventually they brought out 's, which was an extra ordinary thing. it is very cheeky, he has a great sense of humor, he was a goofy character, much more fun than fidel. fidel couldn't dance, was obsessed with politics, in mexico city they tried to take him out and line updates with

people who were in the movement and fidel would bore them to tears. and raul would kick him under the table to try to get him to stop talking politics, and he wouldn't do it. so there was that sort of thing. but also hanging around down there, they are still around, all the old fighters, the ones that had been very young during the revolution pizza some of the guerrilla leaders are still hanging around. there was one guy who was shuffling back and forth in the archives, i would see him there, he is like 90, he is in uniform with a bundle of stuff under his arms. so i went up and introduced myself and told him what i was doing and said, i'm writing a i'm about -- and he said, writing a book about the women's platoon. he showed it to me at which out about it and he told a few stories and that was a breakthrough as well.

guerrilla who stayed in the military, there is an annual ceremony at the anniversary of celia' death at a ceremony, so i went there and realized everyone was there, and i went around, set hi, nothing pressing, maybe i could chat, whatever, so they knew i was around and was interested in stuff and was actually taking it seriously. and i was doing research in cuba instead of a lot of americans who actually do it in princeton or miami or whatever. i was actually going down there and going to the locations and meeting all the people, and i would meet these minor figures wereere guerrillas, they in their 90's, they don't remember much, their stories were kind of hard to follow, but then you see the photographs on the wall, there is fidel, there

is chain, their members would be jolted and they would tell these stories. but in the 1970's and 1980's they started to write memoirs, so a lot of the stories that were telling weren't even related to the memoirs, you could go back and find these things. copy at nyu,d one younnection with nyu, so could actually go back and find this stuff that no one has really looked at. and it is not that ideologically saturated. it is kind of a story that everyone agrees on. inngs changed completely 1959, and the biggest bait is whether fidel was coming all along and was actually lying and keeping it to himself. there is no evidence of this at all. in fact, the communist party and

the movement, the 26th of july movement, hated each other. the communists wouldn't joy the insurrection, they wouldn't support the strikes, so they were kind of useless until the end after fidel got this whole banng going, the cu communist party comes along. question, youour hang around and things come to you at a certain stage. any other questions? >> what do you see for the future of cuba? mr. perrottet: it is not looking great in the short term. trump has just tightened the which has been going since eisenhower blocked sugar in 1959, 1960. and then jfk imposed the trade embargo. a law was passed in the 1990's that could really have strangled enforcedpresident has

this particular law that allows people to sue companies that deal with cuba, using any piece of land appropriated during the revolution. -- that is almost anything almost everything. and you consume german companies, french companies, whatever. it's dubious about whether this has a basis in international law, but it is scaring everybody off, entirely. i was in cuba a week before it came into force, the second of may, everyone was freaking out because shortages were already going around, shipments were stopping, everyone was worried it was going back to the 1990's. it remains to be seen what effect it will finally have, but it is not auspicious. ae very day it was passed, family in miami sued carnival

cruise lines because they were using a dock that had been taken you960-61, and not only do get the amount in modern dollars, it is triple damages as well. i think they were suing for $500 million. and there are hundreds of these cases, at least 3000 cases that are technically on the books. it remains to be seen what effect this will have on cuba, but it is not going to be for the best and it is not going to encourage anyone else, i don't think. >> what were the circumstances that led batista to leave the country? there are a lot of analyses done. what made batista leave the country is the question. there are a lot of studies on

that, because he basically had 40,000 troops. the guerrillas were in the low lands, technically they took santa clara but that was one city. a lot of his generals kept going and played along, and fidel himself is going to take a couple of more years, at least. but one book i find very interesting is called "the war by robert tabor, the cbs news man who became very pro-revolution and in fact joins the revolution after fidel wins, he becomes a journalist at "the revolution" newspaper, he carries a revolver on shakes ends in the streets because everyone knows him from the tv show. he writes a book studying guerrilla warfare and how it manages to win. he comes up with the argument that they don't militarily win and a sense. they create the conditions for collapse. they weaken the other forces and morale goes, soldiers don't want to fight, things crumble

internally. the whole thing starts to fall to bits. batista started to worry there was going to be a military coup within his own forces because he was so disliked, and he was so open about his corruption. he was shameless by that stage. , when he was younger, quite progressive, but as he became older he became more cynical. as meyer lansky's men were leaving, every monday there was a briefcase full of money on his desk. shameless. so he worried he would be personally arrested and put on trial, perhaps executed as a war criminal, so he decides to cut and run. and it was the battle of santa that, che's victory there sent shockwaves through the military and convinced batista, time is up.

he cut and ran like a thief in the night. he got out, much to the disgust of many of his supporters, and his main police chief in havana, he was there at the party and said, why didn't someone tell me, i could have brought my wife and kids. so he had to leave without his wife and children. but others had no way of getting up. some were able to get out on boats, they prepare to skate plans, but many others didn't get out. they were seized, and in the end a lot of them were on trial and unfortunately not the most edifying trials. they were more of a call for blood, because mothers in santee? for example -- mothers in we goingwent, when are to get vengeance, many of the kids disappeared, they were teenagers, like 14, 15, 16, and

they seized, tortured and were buried in very shallow graves. people were going around digging up shallow graves all over the country, so there was a longing for vengeance, which unfortunately they didn't carry out in a good way at all. they had to this show trial in the sports stadium, which is unfortunately called the coliseum, it is still there and people were really howling for blood. they only had a few of those show trials when they realized what a pr disaster they were. but che was in charge of the trials at a spanish fortress and in the end about 550 of batista's men were executed. but it was a big rift in international opinion when that happened. was there another question? state of thee cuban education system? what is the ideology of the

younger generation? mr. perrottet: the state of the cuban education system and the ideology of the younger generation. the education system is going fine. it still has the highest literacy rate in latin america. the hospitals are great, they just don't have the medicine because of the various trade problems that go on. but the younger people's opinions, it's hard to generalize about this sort of thing, but they are definitely much more jaded about the revolution. they are not necessarily about to rise up and revolt against the system, they are just trudging along waiting for something to change, waiting for these guys to die off, like raul, they can't last too much longer. so they have this unusual view of thing, in my experience, because they regard them as like crazy grandparents.

they have these ideas that are completely out of date, they don't work, they just sort of humor them, whatever, they have affection for them, still have an admiration for the revolution itself and still he first name basis, fidel, che, camilo and the others, so the heroic nature of that is not denied, but it has gone so far arrive. and these changes everyone is expecting are so slow, and there are so many false starts that there is a sense of unease. a lot of the young people down there don't have much to do. there is a sense of loss of opportunity. it is a very tragic mood, especially now. under the obama years there was . sense of incredible optimism more than the obama years, it was a rolling stones concert that occurred and it was a symbolic thing.

peoples of thousands of converged to see the rolling stones and they all trudged back into havana with a sense that anything is possible. the rhetoric between the united states and cuba is the new guy,sh, the new president is a party guy, reforms they started in 2011, and opening up of the economy, there are like 200 jobs that now people can earn foreign currency on, and that was changing things much more than the normalization of relations with the united states or the toght, making it easier travel. because tourism will always go on and cuba, and still, the united states was a significant force, but tourists i think are all shocked and disappointed that the place is crawling with japanese and italians and australians and greeks, chinese, tourists everywhere.

havana is a touristy place. there is not a sense of forbidden fruit, it's only for americans, the rest of the world has been going there all the time. so they rely more and more on tourism is basically the only source of foreign income at the moment. sugar is not doing well. ofthe sense of optimism three or four years ago has really died. last time i was in havana there was a bleak mood there and young people were like, anyone who can get out is getting out. so it's like a flight of creative people, sort of jaded, younger people, and a sadness has settled over, there is always been a sort of melancholy in havana but now that optimism had withered, unfortunately. all right, that's it. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute,

which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] thank you. thank you. >> this weekend american history tv will mark the 50th anniversary of the cuyahoga river fire, an event that shed light on water pollution and helped create the clean water act. sunday at 9:00 a.m. eastern, historian and co-author of "where the river burned" joins us live from along the river in cleveland to take your calls and talk about the fire, myths, and the campaign of then cleveland -- of the then cleveland mayor.

easternday at 9:00 a.m. on american history tv on c-span3. >> tonight on lectures in brucey, professor craig smith teaches a class about the american revolution and continental army. here is a preview. given command of the vanguard initially, a prestigious position, leading the army at the front with orders to attack. and he turns it down. lafayetteton appoints , lafayette except. lee is now upset a junior officer has been placed in command instead of him. so he demands the appointment, accepts it, marches out and his forces are facing british grenadier's. the sense is that he is supposed to attack and he retreats instead.

this,gton catches wind of actually a drummer is running back in washington grabs him, what are you doing, sir, we are retreating. what do you mean? washington charges forward and runs into a retreating leon says to lee, what are you doing? paraphrasing a bit, he says, your excellence, and he called pultroon, itdamn means you damn coward. and there is this mythical language of the trees shaking as washington is swearing. anyway, washington relieves him of command and personally righting a

potential retreat. >> american history tv. history bookshelves, the biography of influential conservative writer russell kirk. this was recorded at the 2016 chicago tribune book fest. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. i love the smell of books in the morning and it's great to be around a bunch of friends who feel the same way. it's my pleasure to help kick fest.day's day of lit it's my great pleasure to rzer, theradley j bi "russell