of i'm gonna be a citizen, and i don't own allegiance to a nation and those who are america first got proud americans who take the country back so there's a little agreement other than who you are again . >> watch afterwards on sunday at 9 p.m. eastern on book tv on cspan-2. american history tv continues now with a look at the cuban revolution. in the book, tony parity discusses fidel castro's childhood in the role of women and young people in the cuban revolution. the smithsonian associates hosted this one hour 20 minute discussion . tonight, we are pleased to welcome to the smithsonian, tony parity, australian born perch factual explore car travel writer and author of six books including napoleons private 2500 years of history,

the grantor, a journey through the historical underbelly of europe and most recently chase fedele and the improbable revolution that changed world history. as a college student, tony regularly disappeared to hitchhike through the outback and travel through rural india where he briefly enjoyed a career as an extra. now based in the east village he makes it a point to continue to explore in iceland, tierra del fuego, beijing, and tasmania to name a few. tony's travel stories have been published in magazines like the new york times and smithsonian magazine and have been translated into a dozen languages and widely anthologized, having been selected seven times for the best american travel writing series. is also a regular television guest on the history channel he spoke in a but everything from the crusades to

the birth of disco. his book is available for signing after the program. please join me in welcoming tony. [ applause ]. hey everybody, thank you for coming out on a beautiful spring night for dc is looking pretty good today. to celebrate the secrets of the cuban revolution. you may be wondering from my funny accent what is an australian during living in new york and writing about cuba, many have wondered and the reason is that i used to live in argentina, and blend a series and i reported all around south america and if you live in latin america and deal with latin america to everyone there is in some way thinking about cuba and what happened in cuba and what's gonna happen in cuba. so in that sense i felt like i

had to go. i finally did in 1996 just after the soviet union had collapsed to it was kind of an economic disaster. i got down there from new york she couldn't fly direct and all i knew was that i had to take $1000 in cash and give it to a guy name lionel at the airport and i would recognize him by his hat and i got to the airport and i went into the diffused terminal with wires hanging down and lionel did appear and i gave them the money and he gave me the handwritten thing and pointed to a russian prop plane so six people squeezed into the plane that zoomed over the caribbean and landed in cuba and it was a fascinating experience. the next time i went was under the obama years and i got invited on a private jet to fly from miami to havana with six

passengers and a slightly different experience. champagne getting picked up in beautiful american cars being taken to a lecture hotel with a rooftop pool with wi-fi. it was like science fiction. but, yes, after that before i went on the trip i asked a friend, i just wanted to find out about the revolution and they told me more or less what happened. it doesn't exist then you should write it and i thought okay that seems wildly difficult and extremely unlikely but on the trip the trip i felt about a little bit and heard there were some sites around the island around cuba including the hideouts in the mountains and these other extraordinary places.

so i propose to the smithsonian that a go back and follow the trail in the history of the revolution which is how the story appears on the print out and it was a story of going to the places and finding all the things going on. look okay i should've had that up to give you an idea of classic havana but after i did that i realize there's much more to be learned and that was the tip of the iceberg so i suggested doing a book about it and i started to get into it and the thing that inspired me was this idea that i discovered of how popular the revolutionary war was amongst americans, which seemed extraordinary, given what it happened since. so, how difficult it was to find out about the revolution here and going to cuba can be difficult

as well so i tried it it to investigate the injury surrounding you see it on youtube and he's like, he is absolutely fast-track comparing him to george washington and he's a fine young group of revolutionary youngsters and again, this twilight zone feel and he says what you think of americans and fedele says, a very positive feeling and he says we want you to like cuba and we like you and it's sort of a lovefest but this is the sort of point where i started the book and sort of go back to

find out how it all unfolded because the, it's incredibly unlikely that this bunch of youngsters in their early 20s and some are teenagers, crash land on the coast of cuba and decimated down to like 12 people and how they ended up defeating an army of 40,000 professional soldiers. in the space of just over two years. it seemed like an extraordinary story but a thing i like about the story as well as its broken up into specific chapters and i should've put this in the printouts, it's nice to have printouts but there are five parts to the story and we know more or less where we are as we drift along in the first part is a prelude and here's young fedele playing basketball, he was an athletic character and

he was logo, the crazy one and he would do things like he bed his friends that he would not drive his bicycle into a wall at full tilt and he went downhill, smashed into a wall and knocked himself out for three days and that was just to prove a point. this is to give insight to his character and he loved sports. you know, he's in basketball and baseball they are his favorites and other american sports. and, you can actually go and visit his family house on the eastern side of cuba. and his family is still there, he from quite a which family but he grew up with the sense of injustice because he go to school and all the other kids didn't have shoes and he was

paying the workers badly, they'd get into arguments he organized a strike at one stage which didn't endear him to his dad but if you go to displays you can actually look into the family bedroom and his younger brother raul and him shared a bedroom and you can see the baseball outfits there. unfortunately the story was offered a contract and it's the last one but untrue, he had a great pitching arm but not enough to get a scholarship to miami or indianapolis and so anyway, fedele this extraordinary character one of the most extraordinary characters of the 20th century, the thing this one, he's seen without a beard, he once didn't have a beard, he was once a long lawyer with being very

conservative and became more and more radicalized as he went there. less the studies in the politics and there were other things brewing including a coup by the former president. now fedele is running for politics and he had he had the coup not occurred you probably would've won and then maybe, eight years later might've run for the presidency himself but instead, he comes in and takes over and everyone is suddenly cut out of the process and he invites tens of american mobsters to run casinos and basically runs the state milking the state and the blatant way and extremely violent as well. the secret police were going around and beating up and murdering opponents. it was a completely thuggish environment. so fedele came to the conclusion as many came to the conclusion that this american backed dictator could not be

defeated by peaceful means, that they had to do something extreme. so, they decided to start an insurrection in this is way before the revolution begins it's the first volley so in the east the major cities jose santiago a very dreamy and it also has barracks there and he and his friends put together and taught themselves how to shoot guns, not very well and they made themselves uniforms to make themselves look like soldiers with a bunch of chevrolets and buicks and trundled off to attack this place that had maybe like 500 soldiers, they thought if they surprise them, because they came to the conclusion that they would be so hung over that they wouldn't fight this is not the case that they completely

blew it fedele accidentally knew he ran over a couple patrolmen and, a fight started and many were killed, many were captured and tortured to death. so, it's kind of a disaster and it's one of the disasters that it was like the battle of little big home for celebrated in a weird way so, you can still go in see the bullet holes they preserved as part of the shrine. but, fedele was actually captured in a bunch of them were sent to the devils island and they modeled one out of chicago. it's an example of the and opticon were guard can be in the middle and see everyone in the whole place. now, it was a

very sinister place in those days, very violent but for whatever reason the political prisoners were all put into their own room together. this is a strange decision, they all got together and gave each other classes and revolutionary theory and plotted what to do and sent messages to people outside and fidel even managed to integrate in a great publishing story, he wrote a book while in their pamphlet really on his defense speech in which he wrote on little pieces of paper and smuggled out piece by piece to supporters in havana. and she was riding and lemon juice so the guy never asked why but the pressure mounted to release fidel and his friends and they are still youngsters and basically unknown at this stage. they flee to mexico city where they organize and decide to invade cuba they are complete

amateurs and this bunch of ph.d. grads from princeton word government in the appellation mountains and told to get it together for the revolution and the government and they had to treat themselves to teach them how to shoot and how to navigate and survive in the mountains and they put rocks in their back packs and went hiking up and down the streets and sometimes in the mountains and they found a veteran to teach them how to shoot guns and at one stage they are all arrested but at this stage they've been joined by a young chap named ernesto and he was a doctor and he signed on to the extradition

so they started to get going as fast as they could and this is the second part of the story where they actually see this and they started to buy a boat and he was can organize in santiago knowing they would arrive sometime at the end of november and planned it all out so he was gonna send a telegram that said the book you ordered is at a rent this is a code and

they would head over to the coast, the plan would take five days so they all piled into the boat it barely worked, he had been waterlogged and there were like 120 people that managed to squeeze on 82 and they were in there like sardines and they set off at night in the storm and it was a storm warning in months and is and is a got out of the harbor is started to rock a lot and they started to get seasick they forgot to pack the tablets, the seasickness tablets of the all started with the exception of raul, and the professional sailors, they all started to get seasick and it was a spectacular disaster and they started sending things over

and the top was on in the toilet and it was flooding [ laughter ] this set the tone for the revolution of the early days of the revolution but fidel decided on this to hike into the seer maestro and the most isolated part and indeed at the caribbean. so, they are heading their name turns out they are two days late and they gave up and then they come along and they go along with the coast and suddenly the boat stops and they had a sandbank and so here's an early photograph of them getting in there and they

go across and they realized to their horror that they haven't landed on one of the beautiful beaches for which cuba is renowned, they landed in a swamp and in the east they go they have this beautiful walk way and they had to climb over the vines and they drop their stuff and panicked and took off their shoes and it was a complete fiasco and they were already dehydrated and desperate and they said have no fear, we've come to save the cuban people. but they burst out laughing and the farming was helpful and he catches the chicken and was gonna cook it for them as well as a piglet and then suddenly they sported by the coast guard

to the sierra maestro. unfortunately on the third day, they were surrounded and they are ambushed in the army has found them and the bullet started appearing out of nowhere and there's a massive amount captured and everyone scatters and he gets shot in the neck, nicked and everyone thinks he's dying, it's a poetic soul for someone leans against the tree and remembers his jack london story about a guy who's gonna die in the wilderness. someone grabs them and people were scattered everywhere fidel is by himself and he's sitting in a shooting field and as it gets desk they were in the shooting

field for five days waiting for the army to go away. they were drinking do in the morning to keep themselves alive and fidel was rocking back and forth and victory will be ours and the other to look at each other saying fidel is lost it and as it turns out, they get it together and they walk, basically it takes them like 10 days, a few hours a day and mostly at night and they managed to get to the meeting point in the mountains, very isolated and others managed to survive as well and fidel's brother, raul managed to make it out and end up there as well and they nick named him shea because he's from argentina and

sort of light and australian mate and they were recovering from their wounds. many were butchered by the army and machine gun to so it's a miraculous thing and those who survived by default became the great leaders of the revolution. money was meant to be running the army was unfortunately caught and only found out years later where he was beaten to get with the shovel -- beaten to death with a shovel. later, they were right about called the 12 about 12 people who survived but more like 20 but they like the religious connotation of 12. there in the mountains trying to stay low and trying to survive and as they do survive

the it's after the efforts of a doctor's daughter who's from the low lands and the major organizer of the revolution. and she found accounts she found them food and she would organize mule trains to take himself. over the coming months it would come out that if it wasn't for her but they couldn't organize their way out of a paper bag it was just an expression and it wasn't disorganized and use ammunition guns that were going off left and right but she was able to organize reinforcements.

but he set out the words that fidel and all his friends are dead and then left producing a body and this goes on for months or so, eventually, word went back to havana that fidel wanted an interview to get going. and from havana she didn't want to get up there, to the mountains but she contacted another guy by the name of herbert matthews use the great latin american to this day who knew cuba very well and flew down to havana and the agent said he wouldn't -- and so he said i'm going myself and i couldn't quite believe him and he and his wife were driven by agents to the east pretending to be plantation owners

americans on holiday at different times and he hikes into the mountains and fidel meets him. it's an extraordinary thing, one of the great turning points there without this the revolution would've expired fidel meets him to he still only has like 20 people will cut 20 guys in the really ragged but, he tells his brother right rule the rest raul to get the men to walk back and forth and change outfit so it looks like he has a lot more people than he does they had to walk sideways so they wouldn't see the backs of their shorts had been torn out. so he gets a ragtag army and fidel takes matthew that he has these all over the mountains, 200 soldiers which matthews buys and so we had this extraordinary thing he's on the front page of the new york times with a glowing report.

it's a very romantic revolution and this rebellion is against a senator dyck later and this is the sort of image that continues throughout the revolution and in many ways it's right these guys didn't have anything political in them, this was a goal they could get behind but the political things we associate like communism came much later. but raul as well, but fidel but basically what he wanted was power they later tried to make fidel a communist and he laughed and said i would be a communist if i was stalling and

refused to discuss it further. in his early days, the same day that matthews meets him he comes up, celia in the middle and hikes and is well to me fidel for the first time and at this extraordinary moment he showing off his favorite right and she loves shooting, fishing, she loves the great outdoors and she's a huge political d.o.t., totally devoted to the revolution and it's a romantic connection that begins for one of the great moments as of revolution. there's a lot written about the relationship which is quite extraordinary but this union between cilia and fidel is what becomes a motive of the revolution. he has ideas and spouts them out and put them into action and translates them into something that's practical that

could happen. there's an extraordinary thing that is on the front page of the new york times is the face of the cuban resistance, it's an extraordinary thing that inspires people. the cbs news decides to go up as well and here we have a guy who decides to interview fidel and he's a tv natural and knows how to state things as well so he says he will do it on top of the mountain to the highest mountain in cuba with spectacular views behind him the unfolding coastline and he's sitting there with a bust of the independence hero and they sing rousing songs and it's broadcast to 50 million viewers across the united states. suddenly fidel is this huge presence there, despite the fact that there's only a handful of people in followers. now today you can go up to the sierra meister and it's an

extremely poor place and the other reason they were able to survive is at the farmers the local farmers decided to help them out. they had long felt isolated and removed from the rest of the country, they'd been left out they were exiled within their own land so they had food because they gave support and carried messages and they told fidel in the army was coming in and when not. so in the early nomadic phase we have this amazing secondary army helping them out with supplies and they are all wandering around in the mountains for months and changing camp every night, it's an exhausting time for the revolution. one of the things i found in the havana archives we've all been writing our own diaries with leaders and this is the cuban platoon leader and he wrote a diary as well that was

ever published. he was sort of a romantic he had a girlfriend in mexico he didn't particularly like hardship or being rained on or trudging around but he was devoted to the revolution. he missed his friend and he writes this down in the diary and there are marvelous accounts where he falls in love with every woman he meets in the mountains. farmers daughters, guerrilla volunteers and lovely poems and ends up in a romantic liaison and rally so long that the platoon is left and he has to go get him but it ends when the girl opens up a locker around his neck and sees the image of a photograph of his girlfriend in mexico unfortunately and he writes in his diary it's all for the best although he doesn't quite believe him. he was a very lovable character.

so, he had extraordinary insight into this amateurish do- it-yourself revolution in one of the other great things i found out is that after the story was published a lot of people, americans were inspired to come down and enjoy the revolution. three kids, three teenagers decided to run away and join fidel and they decided this was a good idea for a good pr thing so they let the three american kids join and then they write a letter to an open letter to the u.s. government saying that they love the revolution that it's the founding fathers all over again and published in the new york times and it's very much calling for americans to stop supplying the dyck tater with arms the planes were

refueling in guantanamo bay, they were training secret police and it was not an ideal situation, so the three kids were there but fidel eventually decides that one of them couldn't hack the mountain life that he decides it's too dangerous having them there because they were wounded and it would be a pr disaster so he lets them go and one guy stays for another three months and then finally he sent back to the united states to do fundraising speeches because they've set up an office in new york on the upper west side near columbia university. all the students keep turning up trying to volunteer for the revolution for the summer holidays only to be back to classes in full. only if you make it down there but there are great stories of kids in berkeley to steal their parents car and try to drive to miami to join the revolution.

but, anyway, we have another rarely photo because not many people that he was a medic, he wasn't initially that important but it turned out he had an extraordinary talent for guerrilla warfare and he is an extraordinary care for a very committed the theory in many ways with a sentimental side as well and he loved dogs and he would take the dogs around everywhere and one of the saddest stories is an army patrol is going by and the dog starts whining so he says you have to get rid of the dogs of the guy who owns the dog has to strangle the dog as the army is going by. it's a weird and it don't and he was a good writer as well,

poor arctic soul as i said and quite good-looking, he was the first of the revolution later. there are amazing photographs and it was the most photogenic revolution because the chinese and russian revolution with paintings and statues are a golden age with american photographers that find their way in for time and extraordinary magazines , many of them no longer exists but they would do beautiful photo spreads the guys are in paris and match at one stage, it's an extraordinary thing in this is the first execution of the revolution, they had a trial a series of trials that lasted for 12 days there were a bunch of guys impersonating them going around telling people that they were revolutionaries stealing stuff which was alienating farmers they put them on trial and their

ringleaders were executed and they capture the execution but it's kind of an incredible image. but, this is again in the early days when there were 100 of them floating around. but, they try to get people and one of the things i found interesting is to figure out how they did it they would do things like having this great support base and in the cities and try to convince people to start burning the sugar plantations to undercut the economy. they put out these helpful leaflets with phosphorus on the back of rodents and send them into the sugarcane fields. or, using a slingshot and you would put them together and they would burn and put it in the field and again, they're 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 all over

in the air force and a lot of these bombs would go off and they did go off but they did almost no damage and the fact that the vietcong found out many years later that it gets absorbed in the mulch. so, they would find unexploded bombs and take them apart and create booby-traps out of condensed milk cans using strap and they would hang them and they figured out how to explode them from a distance and again, one of these extraordinary sort of things condensed milk was a favorite food they would get them up from the low lands and it was like the nectar of the gods and sweet and rich they would make other ditches and great recipes that survive,

raul did one, sausage guerrilla style where he would get a spicy hot dog, chop it up, sauti it in a tablespoon of lemon balm and honey and serve that up that was his favorite dish. often it would be one sausage and he wrote about accidentally discovering a chain of sausages and he said it was the greatest feast he ever had in his life. so, food was a big exception from them so they managed to make it through the end of 1957 . just hanging around, they would win in a way they would take photographs of breakoff camp with his man and he is saying happy new year 1958 and takes the photograph to distributed around as a mocking photograph and he has a

whimsical sense of humor. at this stage he's wearing a instead of the famous beret because he's so sentimental. one of his comrades had been killed so he decided to keep the and many months later he loses it in this sort of heartbroken. so, we have these guys hanging out in the mountains but in havana very little is changing, havana and is a sin city of the western hemisphere and you see the other mafiosi, they are running these casinos still there for prostitution is rife and the gray and green for example, a lot of that goes there through shanghai but they

have live sex shows and it's an extraordinarily decadent place with an underground growing their as well. the support is at its weakest in any case up in the mountains, fidel is preparing for a five or 10 year war he decides to get a permanent base of about 300 men at this stage and he decides they have to have somewhere they can whole lot. so celia comes into desired this beautiful camp in a very isolated place and they can still go there today. they have go trail clambering up and and they charge along and someone opens up and this is what it's like in 1958. this is the main plaza where you would hang out there and read the newspaper people that

would come up so as you can also see he started to grow his beard early on, they are throwing their razors overboard and decided they might as well keep growing their beards until the revolution was one. but given this character, fidel is wearing is wearing his cap and getting a distinctive look that will become world famous eventually. this was a hat that celia made for her and fidel thereby a bubbling brook and a chinese philosopher's hat very dreamy, very cool the bed is still

there in the kitchen is still there and they have a fridge that was finally brought up . >> the guide will show you around and it's also barricaded off and the guys just wandered off at one stage so, oh well i will climb over and go in the bedroom and i was like oh okay the mattresses there so i just had to lie down on fidel's bed to get some coming through but you can lie there and there is a gorgeous window open, propped open and filled with flowers and this was a tropical seen such a political place and it was here that he acted as if he was president of cuba to give orders and some who came were

incredibly impressed with the sense of authority and they were joined by a nurse and who join the revolution. they were working in the cities but they were often in suspicion and initially they will even the male police who couldn't conceive of the idea that women had political ideas at all so they never bothered the women. they would build their own petticoats to carry ammunition to smuggle food and guns around for the revolutionaries but in eventuality they did figure them out and and mit chemistry graduate spoke fluent english in the states and became the major operative in santiago and was one who is organizing all the stuff because frank had been murdered, grabbed on the

street and plug twice in the head for $3000 bounty. so, she is there organizing it until finally suspicion is falling on her and manages to get out in the nick of time and goes to the mountains as well. at the same time he does a spread of all of the guerrilla gals looking like flower children and this 60s look of a counterpart of a handsome guerrilla guy. a lot of other women were going up in uniform, sewing uniforms another were joining and wanted to fight. and the west pointe, their own platoon a dozen of them go out and to come back the whole time. >> meanwhile, they have

revolution to get through but they've become more and more popular and so they would drift into villages like a pie, fiesta, they crack open the beer until the summer of 1958 when he decides he will finally get rid of these guys just by hanging around they are winning in a strange way, showing how wiki is. he gets 10,000 soldiers and sends them to the mountains and calls this operation and of fidel. they plow into the mountains and fidel gets word of it because he has spies in the army so they set up around the common density and they sit booby-traps along mountain trails and a 300 men if they could stand the spartans and

this demands well of the spartans. but that was the idea but the overwhelming odds with their and they also had a contingency plan but in the end they were able to terrify so much that they start to lose while and they start to give up and surrender and they have this tremendous idea that treating them well, feeding them and giving the medicine and sending them back the guys go back and then they say hey, we gave up and they are quite decent in the not hurting us but everyone else in the army starts to realize the wire we dying because he's obviously corrupt and basically raping the country. they start to lose faith so, eventually the whole assault fizzles out and they give up and decide to leave fidel in

the mountains, assuming that they., fidel has other ideas and within weeks of this incredible victory or survival he decides to send -- the other great leader who is extremely popular in cuba he sends them down into the low lands on what seems like a suicide mission to trudge across the open drain and to set up bases further into the island so, if you go around there now it's extremely beautiful white exposed so they were often found that the people in the low lands weren't that friendly and the propaganda went out and at this stage this is up where he loses his hat and words of beret.

is was at the beginning stage of calvary were he had terrible asthma he had to be carried and they would let him around and called him a son of a bridge and said get moving and told him to drag him physically any same more of a liability than an asset that they say perhaps because of the asthma but he goes to the mountains and he said that there and organizes all of the forces and in the project he meets lena march, 26 years old from santa clara a former teacher but at one stage

was driving by in a jeep in a season by the road and he says he will get by in the road jumping and she hobson and in a sense she says she never got out of the jeep, she ends up working at the camp and they end up getting married for his children. they were in havana hanging out with their oldest child who does a motorcycle tours in cuba . >> i mean well fidel is chilling out in the mountains and taking interviews and organizing things until in november he starts down to the low lands to try to take the fight to the army and over in the east in the center of the island chile decides to attack the main town, santa clara where the roads intersect,

basically the heart of cuba. there is wandering along giving orders by north and none of the guerrillas had ever taken the city before let alone the hundreds of men but they sort of creep in and start fighting and soldiers -- he comes up with this other sort of very simple millions idea. but the whole struggle up and down cuba, his armored train was back-and-forth caring troops, hundreds of gallons, bombs, hang grenades, this is a moving arsenal and it sent to santa clara so he figures out where he is and they start to retreat with the train and he got a caterpillar from the agricultural school and he got them to tear up the tracks so the train comes barreling down at full speed and is derailed.

and, it racks and all the guys are in there and jump out there throwing molotov cocktails and women used to carry the men and supporters would make molotov cocktails for them to pass them out the window to be used. this happens like 30 december, 1958. it filters out and they managed to seize and it's like aladdin's cave. they have hundreds of guns, machine guns, bazookas, it's an extraordinary thing and then back to havana on new year's eve and the dictator at this stage they were sort of arrested and put on trial decides to cut and run so, he has a regular new year's eve party.

if you seen the godfather part two, is accurate yields a regular new year's eve party has chicken, rice and a cup of coffee with brandy then reads this statement that he's about to leave havana and abandon cuba. there are three dc fours waiting on the airstrip and he has a list of names of who's going with him so what happens is everyone expresses disbelief and people start running to the airplanes idling away and pilots have no idea where they're going to go in there and they do the list of names some assault the military rush off to try to get money but he seemed to lose money already in swiss bank accounts they finally they all pile into the three planes and had often two of them go to florida, not to miami which is extremely pro- fidel at this stage. to go to jacksonville in palm

beach but the other one to the dictator the americans finally decided a couple weeks earlier that they could no longer support batista not only that, they would let him into the country so he flies to the dominican republic who welcomes him with open arms but suddenly suddenly everyone starts to filter out and they announce they just lay beethoven's knights the word gets out and people that come out with guns and they started take over and fidel himself is in the east in a farm and hears about it on the radio and guys are coming in and it's like, yeah, he thinks it's a military coup and then he realizes he's got to do

something so he goes to santiago where he gives a rousing speech on the evening of new year's day where he claims a victory for the revolution and make sure to do it in a place where the spanish surrendered after the spanish-american war. part of the whole ruse of the revolution is the cubans have been trying for decades to get rid of the spanish and the united states intervened at the last minute and he saves the day that they decided to occupy cuba for three years in the military occupation and they refuse they remain square and it was considered one of the great insult and so it makes certain to do this and do the declaration with all the cubans there and the guerrillas there

and instead of flying straight to havana he gets the idea of going overland in this caravan of taking a weekend stopping at key points along the way and giving speeches, his skill now comes out the endless two-hour speeches begin and they love him and each step of the way he gets more and more support until finally he comes into havana this of course is famous they've been sent to occupy the main barracks they each have like 100 guys, 100 guerrillas and 5000 soldiers threw down their arms, each of them in one of the observers says it's enough to make you burst out laughing. no one can quite understand is no resistance at all.