Original subtitles

[in Spanish] Cuba has always been fighting for its freedom.

[in Spanish] 100,000 died, and even though we lost the war, the country had changed.

There is little question that Meyer Lansky had thoroughly corrupted Batista.

It's not a lie, they didn't promise anything.

They promised a revolution, they did a revolution.

[in Russian] These guys were bound to become either martyrs, or national heroes

Una revolución!

-[man] Fidel Castro! -[crowd cheers]

He told Khrushchev, "You should unleash the entire Soviet nuclear arsenals."

Apocalypse.

[siren]

[in German] Cuba will never bend its knee.

Today's Cuba is known as a tropical island paradise,

and, perhaps, for its 1959 revolution.

But Cuba's revolutionary history is far older.

For almost 400 years, Cuba was a Spanish colony.

Its road to independence was long and painful.

In the end, it took an American intervention

to free Cuba from Spanish colonial rule.

And with this freedom, the Cubans thought their island would prosper.

But why did Cuba's newfound wealth not benefit every Cuban?

How did World War I create tremendous opportunities for Cuba?

And why did it take a military dictator to really free Cuba?

Throughout its history,

the burden of colonialism has weighed heavy on the island.

But the Cubans have never given up on their dream of freedom.

[in Spanish] Cuba was very late in gaining its independence,

and even then, it was under constant threat.

This only served to make Cubans desire independence all the more.

For 400 years, Cuba was the key to Spain's colonial empire in the Americas.

Even when all other colonies became independent,

Cuba remained loyal to Spain.

Its long battle for independence finally broke out in 1868.

Spain sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to hold the island.

In 1898, the United States intervened in the war.

Spain was finally beaten, and withdrew its troops.

American soldiers were soon augmented by US government officials.

Their mission was to help transform the former colony into a state.

The island's economy flourished,

due to American investments, and the end of Spanish taxes and duties.

[Pitaluga, in Spanish] The US military occupation

was a key historical moment for Cuba.

This was the time when, in the eyes of the Cubans,

the image of the United States was defined.

Following the end of the war with Spain, American troops occupied Cuba.

It took three years until US President Theodore Roosevelt allowed elections

to create a Cuban government.

The only candidate for the new office

of President of Cuba was Tomás Estrada Palma.

It was up to him to bring democracy to the island,

as Cuba had never had an elected government before.

[in Spanish] The assessment of him as a president in general terms

is not a favorable assessment.

So much so that his government begins on May 20th, 1902,

and still, for Cuban people,

in the popular mentality, when something negative is foretold, people say,

"A 20th of May is going to fall on you."

Estrada Palma's negative image was born even before his election.

He had lived most of his life in the United States

and was seen as their candidate.

The most promising other candidate

withdrew his candidacy before the election

in protest of America's perceived control over Cuba's affairs.

[in Spanish] The United States,

through a series of political and diplomatic movements,

like the Joint Resolution or the Platt Amendment,

imposed on the Cuban Constitution of 1901,

that Cuba had to hand over territory for the current Guantanamo base.

The United States was establishing its control over Cuba.

The so-called Platt Amendment

was added to the Cuban constitution under US pressure.

It guaranteed the United States the right to intervene in Cuba,

should they think it necessary.

It also allowed the United States to establish military bases in Cuba.

One of these was established at Guantanamo Bay in 1903.

As the biggest US naval base outside of the United States,

Guantanamo was paramount controlling shipping in the Caribbean.

However, together with the right to intervene on Cuba,

it also meant that the newly independent island was not so independent after all.

[in Russian] American business felt completely at ease in Cuba

after its so-called liberation from Spanish rule.

For example, there was an American governor on Cuba,

who basically ruled over all the property in Cuba.

Following its independence, Cuba's greatest treasure was its sugarcane.

Cuba's climate and soils were perfect,

and Cubans had perfected its cultivation for over a century.

A good many Cubans made a living from sugar,

from the poorest peasant cutting the cane with a machete,

to the sugar barons

whose factories transformed the raw cane juice into white gold.

Sugar represented 80 percent of all Cuba's exports,

with most of it going to the USA.

[Suchlicki] As part of the arrangement between Cuba and the United States,

the US established a quota,

an amount of sugar that they would buy from Cuba,

the price would fluctuate, but the amount of sugar would be arranged

a million tons, two million tons a year,

and Cuba would provide the sugar that the United States needed.

The sugar quota gave Cubans a sense of security going into the future,

but it also made them neglect alternative crops.

Almost all of Cuba's agriculture soon focused exclusively on sugarcane.

[in Spanish] We sweetened the world for many years,

and the world soured our life because of it.

Our country became a monoculture.

We were at the mercy first of the European, then of the American economy.

So sugar became a very important crop

because the Cubans were able to plan the economy,

since they knew how much sugar they were going to sell,

and the price of sugar was relatively good,

they got significant amounts of money.

The United States needed more sugar than they could produce by themselves.

A lot more.

A year's worth of domestic sugarcane production

wouldn't even last the United States a single month.

Sugar was much more than a simple food item.

The United States' pharmaceutical and chemical industries

also required large quantities.

Cuba's war of independence against Spain

cost the lives of almost half a million men.

This caused a tremendous labor shortage after the war.

Cuba required hundreds of thousands of cane cutters

to harvest the vast plantations twice a year.

Working in the fields, a man could earn enough to make it through the year.

It was an attractive prospect, and so Cuba became a mecca for migrants.

[in German] They would have taken anybody.

They took 120,000 Chinese workers

over 30, 40 years, who lived almost like slaves.

They negotiated with the German Empire to take Catholics

from the Schwarzwald mountains in Germany.

They took Spaniards from the Azores, and from Madeira;

they took people from everywhere.

Cuba's call for workers was heard back in its former motherland.

Beginning in 1902, tens of thousands of unemployed Spaniards

and other fortune seekers, set off to try their luck in the Caribbean.

They flocked to Spain's major ports,

such as A Coruña, Cádiz, and Barcelona, from where they set sail for Cuba.

For many of them, it wasn't their first voyage here.

They had fought for Spain as occupying soldiers,

only to now return as economic migrants.

One of them was a peasant from Galicia.

His name was Ángel Castro.

[Pitaluga, in Spanish] Ángel Castro was a Spanish soldier.

He had come to Cuba to fight for Spain.

Conscription in Spain worked as a lottery.

There was a list of names, and every fifth person had to go to war on Cuba.

It was a commitment, a duty that he had to his country.

[in French] At the end of the war,

Ángel went back to Spain, to his home in Galicia.

He wanted to reunite with his sweetheart.

She was his fiancée, they were supposed to get married.

But she had fallen in love with someone else and so Ángel,

hurt and humiliated, can't stay, and so he goes back to Cuba.

Ángel Castro settled in eastern Cuba, where he made a living as a day laborer.

He worked in the cane fields and in the mines.

He saved what he could, and even won some money in the lottery.

His dream was to be able to buy his own house.

For him, like for many others, Cuba was an opportunity to be free.

But their freedom, as well as Cuba's,

depended on the goodwill of the United States.

This further provoked unrest in Cuba, especially in the capital, Havana.

Cuba became independent but it had the amendment into its constitution

allowing the United States to enter.

And they didn't see the United States as an enemy

or as a power that wanted to take over Cuba.

They saw the United States as an ally of Cuba.

[in Spanish] In reality,

the relations between Cuba and the USA were very strained,

because they were dominated by the Americans.

October 6th, 1906.

Contemporary archive footage shows thousands of American soldiers

invading Cuba, without any warning.

The island had no army, and had to surrender without a fight.

Cuba's elected government was dismissed.

The United States acted perfectly legally.

They made use of their right to intervene in Cuba,

as guaranteed by the Platt Amendment.

This amendment had been a hot-button issue

when Cuba's constitution was written,

and now, this first invasion of Cuba

seems to confirm the worries of many Cubans

that their country was not truly free.

[in French] The official reason was to regulate Cuban domestic politics.

Something had happened that often happens in the Caribbean:

an elected president tries to secure a second term

by any means necessary.

[in Spanish] The fact of the matter is

that Cuba was the world's biggest sugar producer at that time.

This economic interest had to be protected.

The United States claimed that internal strife in Cuba

was the reason for their invasion.

There had, indeed, been riots since the last presidential election.

People spoke of widespread electoral fraud,

and Cuba's president, Estrada Palma, was under pressure.

But without an army, he could not get the unrest under control,

and was forced to step down.

The United States appointed a governor.

He promised new elections, but until then,

Cuba was once again in American hands.

The second American occupation had two consequences.

One consequence is the belief that Cubans weren't really free,

that they were very dependent on the United States

and that it wasn't a real independence for Cuba.

And the second one is that the Americans that intervene in Cuba

engage in significant corruption and bribery

and trying to pacify the Cubans through giving them jobs.

Together with the army, many new American investors arrived in Cuba.

They wanted to benefit from the island's economic boom.

The American military governor supported them.

He granted them lucrative public contracts,

including the outfitting of Cuba's newly founded armed forces.

The railways, some ports and much of the sugar industry

were also brought under US control.

The Americans enrolled the Cuban elite,

largely doctors and army officers of Spanish descent,

and entrusted them with governing the island in their name.

Many poor Cubans wondered what the war of independence

had ultimately given them.

[in French] The Americans have always seen Cuba a bit like an American province.

US companies settled there on a grand scale,

particularly in this region to the north-east of Santiago.

To succeed in Cuba, one had to be white,

and be able to make deals with the Americans.

Spanish immigrant Ángel Castro saw his chance to do just that.

He lived in Cuba's east,

where most American companies were located.

The biggest of them was United Fruit.

The company preferred to work with Spanish migrants, like Ángel Castro.

[in German] Galicians are known for working like mad. They will take any job.

They're an extremely hard working, and oftentimes very frugal people.

Ángel Castro put this to good use. He had nothing more than a horse and cart,

and took jobs on the outskirts of American companies, in particular United Fruit.

And he made a lot of money there.

[Clerc, in French] Ángel Castro basically played the Americans' game.

He eventually was made manager of an American plantation.

He learned a lot.

He was smart, he watched and learned,

and he got to know a lot of important people.

Ángel Castro's business with United Fruit flourished.

The company had been founded in 1899,

and had come to Cuba that very same year.

In Cuba, United Fruit invested mainly in sugarcane.

Elsewhere in the Caribbean and Central America,

their main business was bananas.

[Bucheli] They basically dominated the banana market,

at least within the United States more than 70 percent of the market share

for most of their history.

And in Central America and the Caribbean,

they were often the main investor, particularly in small countries.

And they were the main ones building infrastructure,

such as railways, such as telegraph systems,

such as even company towns around this production.

And that is why many rulers in those countries,

particularly authoritarian rulers, welcomed this firm in the beginning,

because it was providing something that they didn't have.

To portray itself in a positive light,

United Fruit invested heavily in PR campaigns,

such as the propaganda film "The Living Circle".

[voiceover] Also flowing northward in this living circle of trade

are hardwoods, hides, cocoa beans,

sugar, bananas, essential oils for making perfumes,

and chicle, a necessary product for making chewing gum.

The good earth of the tropics and the eager markets of the north

are an unbeatable combination.

A cup of coffee is as much a part of the American way of living

as a daily newspaper. And a table without a sugar bowl is hard to find.

Bananas are a favorite at breakfast

and add flavor and nutrition to countless recipes.

[narrator] What the film doesn't show is that, far from only investing money,

United Fruit amassed substantial political power

in Central America and the Caribbean.

[Bucheli] Cuba was about sugar.

At the national level,

United Fruit did not have the power it had in Central America.

However, at the local level, it was very different.

There was this municipality called Banes

that basically it had the local government in its pocket.

It became not only the main political power,

but even the main funding source for the government for many things.

So Banes became kind of like the most important place of United Fruit,

in which the firm really showed its big power.

And that is where Castro's family actually developed their business.

Working for United Fruit, Ángel Castro expanded his business.

In 1910, his company already had 300 employees.

Castro had risen from poor migrant to respected businessman.

Through his contacts, he got to know the daughter of a United Fruit manager.

Her name was María, and she was the village teacher.

They were married on March 25th, 1911.

[in French] Ángel Castro was practically illiterate.

His wife taught him to read and write.

She was a fairly intellectual woman,

and also played the piano.

He began reading newspapers

and even became a bit of a local celebrity.

He was certainly influential

and often seen at dinner parties with the Cuban elite.

Cuba developed and grew alongside its American neighbor.

In 1906, the year of the US invasion,

American investments reached 150 million dollars,

more than anywhere else outside the United States.

American companies controlled Cuba's economy,

and the American ambassador dictated policy to the Cuban government.

Insurrection against America's dominance of Cuba was inevitable,

and a new rebellion was on the horizon.

The Platt Amendment, authorizing an American invasion at any time,

hung like the Sword of Damocles over the Cubans' heads.

[in Spanish] It was a very sore point in Cuban society.

For a whole generation, for intellectuals,

thinkers and the common people,

it became the focal point of all criticism.

Cuba was the United States' number-one sugar supplier.

The world market, however, was dominated by Russia and the German Empire,

whose sugar came from sugar beets.

But that changed in 1914, when the First World War broke out.

Fighting wasn't limited to the trenches.

Warships and blockades ravaged naval trade.

The beet sugar trade collapsed.

For Cuba, the elimination of its chief rivals was a unique opportunity.

The island was in a position to become the new world market leader.

Demand was growing dramatically.

In the first 20 years of the 20th century,

the American demand for sugar was growing at a rate of five percent a year.

So the potential was huge.

And actually, they had this boom during World War I,

but they had already been preparing for this growth of the American market.

During the war, the price of a pound of sugar rose from three to 22 cents.

From American investors to the Spanish plantation managers

and even the poorest Cuban peasants,

the whole island profited from the war in Europe.

But the success came at a price.

Both forests, and most coffee plantations,

were sacrificed to make room for more sugarcane.

Cuba became a monoculture country.

[in Spanish] Sugar production went through the roof.

The world sugar price skyrocketed, reaching 22 cents per pound.

That was an astronomically high price.

This period was known in Cuba as "the time of the fat cows".

The exorbitant price of sugar encouraged worldwide competition.

Java, the Philippines, India, Puerto Rico, Brazil,

everyone wanted a share of the sugar market.

The situation was exacerbated when World War I came to an end in 1918.

Formerly closed trade routes reopened,

and the world market was flooded with sugar.

Prices slumped, and Cuba had to deal with the consequences

of its sugar monoculture.

The island had more sugar than it could ever hope to sell.

The problem with sugar is that the prices drop and rise,

and when the prices drop, the Cubans suffered.

[in Spanish] The New York Stock Exchange collapsed. This causes a crisis for Cuba.

Banks fail, a lot of businessmen commit suicide.

Cuban society is destroyed as an economic entity.

What follows is known on Cuba as "the time of the skinny cows".

The principal victims of the crisis were Cuba's sugarcane cutters.

Tens of thousands of them were the descendants of African slaves,

and now found themselves out of work,

and with no hope of getting any aid from the government.

[in German] For the most part,

the Cuban work force consisted of former slaves and Galicians.

They were being exploited,

and were constantly involved in wage disputes and labor conflicts.

Many unemployed Cubans joined the island's army.

It was the only job option available to them.

But their conditions barely improved.

They suffered under the leadership of the officers,

who were almost universally white, and of Spanish descent.

The American companies that dominated Cuba's economy

ensured that these Cubans had enough money to lead comfortable lives,

despite the crisis.

This ensured that American businessmen

and their Cuban associates of Spanish descent

could keep control of the island and its economy.

[in Spanish] Here on Cuba, we didn't really have a national "bourgeoisie".

The middle class was very weak, and it was not really concerned with the country.

They were focused on the United States.

In the 1920s, Cuba was still dependent on the USA.

But the contrary was no longer true. Since the end of World War I,

the United States was able to buy their sugar elsewhere.

America's biggest worry now was the growing threat of communism.

With its armies of poor, unemployed workers, Cuba seemed like fertile terrain.

[Suchlicki] After the Bolshevik revolution,

the Soviet Union organized communist parties throughout the world,

so the Cuban Communist Party was organized.

Unemployment was particularly high in Cuba's east, where Ángel Castro lived.

He had gone from occupying soldier, and poor economic refugee, to rich landowner.

"Don" Ángel's sugarcane cutters paid the price for his wealth.

[in French] This poor Galician shepherd has become "Don" Ángel.

He has many Haitians working for him, whom he treats in the old-fashioned way,

by which I mean practically as slaves.

On Cuba, this is a time reminiscent of the Wild West.

Landowners had the power of life and death over their employees.

Ángel Castro had five children with his wife, María,

but by the 1920s, the couple had separated.

Since 1922, Ángel had an affair with his cook, Lina.

In 1923, she gave birth to a baby girl,

followed by three boys: Ramón, Fidel and Raúl.

They did not yet bear the Castro name,

and the family home was off-limits to them.

Instead, they grew up among the children of their father's poor employees.

[in French] It was a huge problem back then to be married,

but have an illegitimate child.

Divorce was not looked upon very highly.

Legally, it was difficult as well.

This is why he stayed with his wife and his family,

but he also raised his son Fidel,

who lived in a hut a few hundred meters from the manor house.

For years, Fidel saw his progenitor only as the owner of the land he lived on,

but who rarely had time for him.

For years, he was not recognized by his father.

[in German] Being an illegitimate child was seen as a flaw.

This, I think, explains a lot about Fidel Castro's psychology.

He was an illegitimate child for so long.

His father had to bribe several notaries, which was common at the time,

to get a proper birth certificate and have him legitimized.

The sugar crisis in Cuba began in 1918, with the end of the First World War.

It would last many years.

Many Cubans realized the astronomical pre-war prices were a thing of the past.

Something had to happen.

Cuba had to carve out a new path towards a future that didn't depend on sugar.

In 1924, Cuba was gearing up for a presidential election.

One man emerged as Cuba's potential savior. Gerardo Machado.

Machado was one of the military leaders on the side of the Cuban forces

fighting for independence against Spain.

After the independence, he emerges as a small political leader,

not a very important one.

[in Spanish] Machado was a man

who presented himself as Cuba's savior during the Great Depression.

The agriculture was almost entirely sugar.

Sugar was basically all the country had.

There was even a saying back then: "Without sugar, there is no country."

That reflects the scope of a crisis that began in 1921,

and becomes permanent by 1925.

The Cubans feared that sugar was no longer the future of Cuba.

Gerardo Machado was a war hero, who had fought for Cuba's independence.

His campaign in 1924 was modern and well orchestrated,

as this newsreel footage shows.

He appeared as a general, and openly flaunted his relations with the army.

Machado promised to free Cuba

from the domination of both sugar and the United States.

[Pitaluga, in Spanish] He presented his government agenda.

The goal was to "save" both society, and the sugar agriculture.

Instead of relying almost solely on sugar,

Machado wanted to invest heavily in Cuba's infrastructure.

He promised, "Water, roads, and schools."

What's more, he also wanted to get the United States

to renounce their right to intervene on Cuba.

Elections were held on November 1st, 1924.

Gerardo Machado emerged the clear winner.

[in Spanish] He was elected president

and immediately pushed through his program.

Core tenets were high import tariffs, putting sugar prices

under government control, reducing the sugar harvest,

and a public works plan to absorb the extensive unemployment

generated by the sugar crisis.

Machado's first, and most ambitious project,

was to build a highway across Cuba,

connecting its distant provinces with the capital, Havana.

With Cuba's national highway, Machado wanted to create an alternative

to the railway, which was owned by US companies.

Afterwards, Machado had a new parliament building constructed,

followed by many other famous buildings.

Machado's construction boom was largely financed by American banks.

Under his leadership, Cuba's economy recovered.

The island became a model for Caribbean development.

Cuba soon had the most modern telephone network in the Americas,

and more radio stations per capita than any other country.

However, a new crisis loomed at the height of Machado's success.

On October 24th, 1929, the American Stock Exchange collapsed.

It was the start of the Great Depression.

[in French] The 1929 crisis hits Cuba as early as 1930.

Machado has been in power for a few years.

He tightens down because he sees that social tensions are mounting.

[in German] And that's when he begins to try and get things under control

through government-controlled paramilitary groups.

From then on, it's a slow drift towards a dictatorship.

In October of 1932, almost three years to the day

after the beginning of the Great Depression,

Cuba was struck by the worst hurricane in its history.

President Machado personally oversaw the reconstruction efforts.

He organized aid to hard-hit areas

and tried to portray himself as Cuba's savior once more.

But the people had lost confidence in their president.

[in French] He takes ever more drastic measures

and thus slowly becomes a dictator.

He was no dictator before.

He was elected and did not seize power.

He became a dictator to quell social unrest on Cuba.

The American banks that funded Machado's construction boom in the '20s

now wanted their money back.

Machado had to make budget cuts to pay his debts.

He laid off thousands of civil servants,

who promptly took to the streets in protest.

They were joined by thousands of other Cubans,

fearing they too could lose their jobs.

It was the beginning of yet another rebellion in Cuba.

But unlike his predecessor in 1906,

Machado had an army and a powerful police force,

and no qualms about deploying them against unarmed protesters.

Well, the American reaction wasn't...

The Americans didn't react, the Americans were concerned about events in Europe,

Hitler and what was happening in Europe,

and they were more interested in stability in Cuba.

Machado's police force killed a student leader during a demonstration.

His death lit a fuse.

Havana's university students joined the demonstrators,

followed by Cuba's intellectual elite.

They accused Machado of being a dictator, and his regime as "tropical fascism".

[Suchlicki] One of those was Grau San Martin,

who was a professor of medicine at the University of Havana.

He was not actively in politics

but he supported his students who were very active against Machado.

So as result of that, when Machado's dictatorship fell apart

and the Cuban regime fell apart, the students looked at Grau as their leader.

As a doctor, Grau treated poor patients for free.

As a politician, he was also committed

to defending the rights of the less fortunate.

Grau was arrested several times for revolutionary activities.

Under the pressure of Machado's regime,

he finally fled Cuba and sought exile in Miami.

But the riots in Havana continued, unabated.

[Suchlicki] In one thing the intellectuals are united

is in their opposition to Machado.

They felt that military regimes shouldn't develop in Cuba,

Machado was a colonel in the army, he was developing a military dictatorship.

The burgeoning insurrection in Havana went barely noticed in eastern Cuba.

After 12 years of marriage, landowner Ángel Castro

wanted to divorce his wife, María.

He'd been living with his cook, Lina, for many years.

Their children were growing up between different worlds.

Fidel and Raúl lived between the wealth of their father

and the poverty of the Afro-Cuban sugarcane cutters that worked for him.

And they still bore their mother's name instead of Castro.

This at least their father wanted to change.

[Raffy, in French] You have to understand

that this is the bond that unites the two brothers.

For years, they had no father,

they were not recognized as legitimate children.

They were bastards, or semi-orphans.

[in German] First and foremost, Fidel Castro becomes a revolutionary

by rebelling against his father. Against his father's will,

and especially against the exploitation of the people who worked for his father.

I mean, he grew up among them, among the sugarcane cutters,

among the Haitians and so forth. That's why he is so good with people.

His father had hired them, but he treated and paid them very badly.

In 1933, Ángel Castro sent his rebellious son Fidel Castro

to live with a teacher in Santiago, the biggest town in eastern Cuba.

The elder Castro hopes that this will guarantee a better education for Fidel,

who is only six years old.

[in French] Life in Biran was a farmer's life,

and not only a farmer's life, but a bit archaic.

So obviously Ángel wanted his sons to go to school, which is important,

but he himself was a man

who perhaps didn't really see the point of going to school.

In the summer of 1933, demonstrations against Machado

continue in the streets of Havana.

They were supported by many Cubans in exile in Miami,

such as Professor Ramón Grau.

In order to quell the rebellion, President Machado declared martial law.

The regime's opponents were arrested and tried in military courts.

The minutes of many trials were taken by a non-commissioned officer

called Fulgencio Batista.

[in Spanish] Batista had very humble origins.

He was one of the few Cubans descended from indigenous peoples.

That's why people called him Batista the Indian.

[in French] Batista's story is as interesting as that of Fidel Castro.

Batista called himself a son of the people, which is true,

he came from eastern Cuba, very close to the Castro farm.

As an NCO of color,

Batista sympathized with the revolt against Machado.

He was by no means the only soldier to do so.

[crowd cheers]

In August 1933, the first military men sided with the rebels.

The generals panicked, fearing a revolt within the army.

To avoid this, they urged President Machado to resign.

[Zeuske, in German] The high-ranking patriotic officers all said,

"We, too, could be president. It doesn't have to be Gerardo Machado."

That is how he lost his support among the army.

President Machado fled to his last ally, the US ambassador to Cuba.

Machado knew that only a US intervention could save him now.

But instead of backing him, the US ambassador too,

called for Machado to resign.

Cuba's contested president saw only one way out.

[in German] A president who is not generally accepted anymore,

who only nominally has power,

is being guarded in his seat of government, knows what's going on.

He knows what people outside think, and what can happen to him.

Cuban political culture demands that you need to be willing to die for your ideals.

It's expected of him to die, if he wants to defend his policy.

He has no intention of doing so, so he flees.

[in Spanish] Once Machado was gone,

the Cuban people believed that their revolution had won.

But soon, the people, the intellectuals, the thinkers,

realized that the country was still the same.

With President Machado gone, the generals now ruled over Cuba,

and the demonstrations continued.

The military tried in vain to quell the uprising

by handing out harsh prison sentences to its leaders.

At these trials, military court stenographer Fulgencio Batista

got to know many rebel leaders.

Through them, he became familiar

with the rhetoric and arguments of insurrection.

[Zeuske, in German] He is extremely well connected,

so he didn't find it hard to convince other underpaid colored soldiers

to start an uprising against their white superior officers.

On September 4th, 1933, Fulgencio Batista made a rousing speech

to soldiers in his barracks, calling for rebellion.

The non-white soldiers and NCOs arrested their white officers and generals.

Batista declared himself chief of staff of the armed forces,

and became a key figure in Cuba's new power structure.

Batista also called Ramón Grau back from exile in Miami,

and appointed him president.

[in French] He was subtle.

He preferred to work behind the scenes, from within Cuba's largest military base.

It was Batista who decided who would become president.

Not all the officers surrendered peacefully.

Four hundred of them took refuge in Havana's Hotel Nacional.

They wanted to plead with the American ambassador for a US intervention

to put down Batista's coup.

US President Roosevelt mobilized the army. But he did not want to attack.

Seeing the Hotel Nacional crowded with his opponents,

Batista sent 2,000 loyal soldiers to arrest them.

The American ambassador fled both the hotel and the island.

An American newsreel team was present when Batista's soldiers opened fire.

[gunfire]

The battle lasted two days,

until the officers within the hotel ran out of ammunition.

With this victory, Batista eliminated almost all opposition in one stroke.

Together with President Grau,

he now wanted to lead Cuba into a brighter future.

The beginning of Grau ended the fighting,

but began the real revolution because Grau was young, was idealistic,

and wanted a series of laws and regulations

which he issued from the presidential powers,

not through the Constitutional means, nor Congress,

and so on, he was issuing decrees weakening the power of the United States.

[crowd cheers]

Grau and Batista undertook a vast reform program.

They wanted to turn Cuba into the most modern democracy in the world.

[in German] In one hundred days, they push through a huge number of reforms.

Women's suffrage, labor laws, the eight-hour-day, and so on.

In my opinion, no system, neither then or now,

can sustain one hundred days of extreme reforms.

Giving workers greater rights lay at the heart of the reforms.

This was a major concern for the American companies

that dominated the Cuban economy.

It also worried the US government, afraid of seeing communism in Cuba.

[in German] If there was a revolution on Cuba that was entirely unexpected

and that threatened to bring communism to power, it was this revolution.

It was not Castro's revolution.

The mass revolution on Cuba happened from 1933 to 1935.

The United States did not see it coming at all, and did not want to see it succeed.

When Batista ordered his soldiers to open fire against the Hotel Nacional,

the United States did not intervene.

But when President Grau introduced new labor laws,

they sent their ambassador with an ultimatum to Batista.

[in Russian] All politicians have the same concern.

They want to stay in power.

When Batista had to be a leftist, he aligned with the communists.

When it was more profitable to ally with the US, during the Cold War,

he didn't hesitate to switch sides to get their support.

The United States was concerned about what was happening in Cuba

and they saw Batista as a stabilizing force,

the guy that could control Cuban society,

so Batista decided, with American support, to get rid of Grau.

Batista switched sides, and sacrificed his revolutionary comrade Grau.

On January 15th, 1934,

Batista forced President Grau to resign, after only four months in office.

Batista annulled most of the reforms, and installed a new president.

And then another. And another.

In Havana, as in Washington,

no one had any doubts as to who was running the show in Cuba.

Fulgencio Batista.

Batista emerges at that time as the de facto leader of Cuba.

Not a popular leader but he controlled the military

and, through the military, he controlled Cuba.

Batista's army upheld order in Cuba.

The United States' fear of seeing communism in Cuba was allayed.

And even for most Cubans,

Batista's regime was preferable to the chaos of revolution that had preceded it.

[in French] From the moment that Cuba's communist ministers

were under the control of Batista,

of someone whom the United States trusted, there was no more opposition.

[in Spanish] His prize was to become dictator of Cuba,

but not directly, because it was not possible.

He appointed an old man as president of the republic,

under the control of the United States.

Batista had the trust of the US government.

However, he also continued to work on the reforms

he had once promised the Cuban people.

One by one, Batista reintroduced these and many other reforms

over the next few years, such as more rights for workers,

women's suffrage, the eight-hour day.

(Zeuske, in German] Batista was very well liked back then.

He helped the underprivileged, especially those of color.

He creates health programs, he even pushed through a land reform program.

The seeds of everything that Fidel Castro will do later on, on a much bigger scale,

were already sown by Batista.

But Batista's greatest achievement came in May 1934.

By this time, he had only been Cuba's strongman for seven months.

He forged a new treaty with the United States,

and removed their right to intervene in Cuba from the island's constitution.

Cuba was still under the thumb of its military leader,

but for the first time in its history, it was a free and independent country.

And so began the Batista era.

It was not, nor would it be for years to come,

the brutal and reactionary dictatorship

that Cuba's next revolution would overthrow in 1959.