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. -[cheering]

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

Apocalypse.

[siren]

[in German] Cuba will never bend its knee.

Cuba has always been an island of extremes.

One big melting pot of karmas, cultures, and conflicts.

To this day, Cuba's nostalgic splendor and its extreme poverty

can be found within blocks of each other.

Even more glaring is the decades-old clash

between Cuba's renowned seaside romance...

often reserved for tourists...

...and the constant threat of police brutality.

How did Fidel Castro go from being Batista's prisoner to national hero?

Why did Ernesto "Che" Guevara, an Argentinean doctor,

become a fanatical guerrilla combatant?

And how did the radio become the decisive weapon in Cuba's revolution?

For more than 500 years, Cuba has been scarred by poverty and oppression.

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

In 1953, Cuba was run by army general Fulgencio Batista.

He had seized power in a military coup.

The Mafia richly rewarded him

in exchange for control of the island's hotels and casinos.

Any opposition to Batista's rule was brutally squashed.

Cuba is the biggest island in the Caribbean.

Here, as elsewhere in South America,

Bolivia, Argentina, and Colombia,

the year 1953 was marked

by severe political upheaval.

[Raffy, in French] Cuba was a time-bomb.

Anarchy was lurking behind a facade of strict authority

under the Batista dictatorship.

He was in power, thanks to the United States,

but the country was in a state of anarchy.

There was an extraordinary number of newspapers, an extraordinary pluralism.

It was not the dictatorship you often hear about, it was something else.

Students, workers, and former soldiers were rebelling.

Revolts were widespread, but more often than not, quickly fizzled out.

[in Spanish] There were too many pseudo-revolutionaries.

Many said they were going to take Batista down,

and they were going to do this and that,

and they were raising money...

...and buying weapons.

Some even said they had weapons already.

But those weapons never reached the real revolutionaries, fighting in the field.

During carnival, on July 26, 1953, a young lawyer named Fidel Castro,

together with his younger brother Raúl and some 100 rebels,

attempted to seize Moncada,

the country's second biggest military barracks.

Their plan was close to madness.

Their opponents outnumbered them by far, and had far more weapons and ammunition.

[in German] When push comes to shove,

a leader had to be clearly and visibly willing to give his life for his cause.

That was the meaning of the Moncada attack.

[in Spanish] Since Moncada, I was convinced comrade Fidel Castro

had to be our indisputable leader, our Comandante.

The attack on the Moncada Barracks was an abject failure.

19 defending soldiers and six rebels were killed outright.

Castro's remaining men fled, with Batista's police hard on their tail.

The pursuit became a bloodbath.

Policemen and soldiers captured and executed 55 rebels on the spot.

The Castro brothers and the remainder of their comrades were arrested.

[in Spanish] Fidel was never elected to any post at university.

He always lost.

But he did attack the Moncada Barracks,

and that was a very important thing in Cuban history.

On October 16th, 1953, Fidel Castro was put on trial.

Being a lawyer, he opted to act as his own defense attorney.

Castro vehemently defended himself,

with perhaps one of the most famous speeches ever given.

He claimed that history would absolve him.

[Zeuske, in German] The speech was only held at the trial

and was then written down from memory. It was reconstructed, in different parts,

and smuggled out of the trial to be used for propaganda.

[in German] That one sentence, "History will absolve me",

gets quoted to this day by politicians on all sides.

In that way, he really left his mark,

and that's something I admire in him.

The court sentenced Fidel Castro to 15 years in prison.

His brother Raúl and other rebels were given sentences of 10 to 13 years.

Castro's father-in-law, Rafael José Díaz-Balart,

was a minister in Batista's cabinet.

Castro's opponents and detractors

claimed that only his intervention saved Castro from the death penalty.

[in Spanish] Díaz-Balart was a minister, and he talked to Batista.

He said, "Fidel is married to my daughter.

You're killing everyone, but please try not to have him killed."

Fidel Castro's wife, Mirta Díaz-Balart,

divorced him while he was in prison, in 1955.

Their son, Fidelito, grew up with his mother.

[Díaz-Balart] Nobody knew what was going to happen.

My sister was around, you know?

Like, I remember maybe, she had the child.

You know, like, we tried to rescue her.

In the streets of Cuba,

Batista's police continued to crush any signs of revolt or rebellion.

Prison, on the other hand,

was relatively comfortable for the Castro brothers and their rebels.

[in German] They were well connected in prison. They also had a good library.

They were able to read a lot, and talk.

And then Batista, who always wanted to be loved, particularly by mothers,

announced on Mother's Day, which is very important in Cuba,

that he would release the prisoners. And so Castro got out.

After 18 months, President Batista declared an amnesty

for the men and women who had attacked the Moncada Barracks,

despite the fact that they'd killed several soldiers.

Fidel Castro and his younger brother, Raúl, were free men again.

[in German] This is possible in any normal legal system.

And especially in more flexible legal systems,

such as you have in Latin America.

The amount of power a president wields means he can do anything.

A political pardon is part of the ritual.

Fidel Castro celebrated his amnesty like a tremendous victory.

Together with his brother and his comrades,

he boasted he would leave Cuba for Mexico,

and prepare for a new revolution from there.

[in French] There was a period of a few months, very short,

where they both measured each other up.

Batista looked at Castro and tried to judge if he had calmed down.

If prison had mellowed him out.

But we know that prison never mollifies political opponents.

On July 26th, 1955, two years to the day after the attack on Moncada,

the Castros gave their rebellious group a new name: the 26th of July Movement.

[in German] Fidel is a man of direct action,

of doing what you say you will do and not just saying it.

And when he said something, he made sure that everyone was convinced,

even if it took 48 hours to do so.

Everyone may have fallen asleep, but he would continue to argue.

Then he looked people in the eye and said, "Are you convinced now?"

As they had announced upon being freed from prison,

the Castro brothers left Cuba,

together with other members of their group.

They went to Mexico, where they planned to train, recruit,

and become the spearhead of the revolution.

[in French] Some of his supporters had to go to Mexico as well.

Some wanted to return, like Castro.

Some simply did not like the political climate on Cuba anymore.

Mexico had been liberated by a revolution 40 years earlier.

The Cubans wanted to follow this example.

Several other exiled Cubans joined Castro's 26th of July Movement.

They too saw Fulgencio Batista as a brutal dictator.

In Mexico, the Castros also met an Argentinean doctor

named Ernesto "Che" Guevara,

who would later go on to become an icon for the revolutionary left.

[in French] Fidel Castro and Che Guevara met at the home of some Mexicans

who had supported the Mexican revolution.

They supported revolution in general.

They shared a Latin American nationalist sentiment

and an anti-Americanism sentiment, which was almost the same thing.

[in Spanish] I think that he was Argentinean.

That was initially a bit strange for us,

because we're Latin Americans, but from an island.

We're Caribbean.

In the summer of 1955, the group reorganised in Mexico.

Fidel Castro was its unquestioned leader.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was still in the shadows.

It took some time to convince the other Cubans to accept this foreigner.

[in Spanish] We had the privilege to live together with Che

in a house we had in Mexico City.

He was a very special person.

He had a great personality.

Different but human. Very human.

[in German] Che Guevara was a doctor, and a convinced Latin American Marxist,

not a classical Soviet-style bureaucratic communist.

This role suited him. And he had been recommended by Raúl,

so he was one of the few outsiders to be accepted.

Che Guevara was just 27 when he met the Castros.

He had just completed medical studies and crossed South America by motorcycle.

Now he wanted to join the fight

for the rights of the oppressed and underprivileged,

especially among the agricultural workers.

Che Guevara became the theorist of the group.

Fidel and Raúl were intent on putting their ideas into action.

From the beginning, Raúl Castro was especially close with Guevara,

as he too was a communist.

[in German] Raúl was always second.

He was the little brother, that has to be said.

But he had his own personality.

He had joined the communists much earlier, the young communist group.

He was more radical than his brother.

During his youth,

Raúl Castro visited Europe to meet with other young communists.

In the 1950s, the Iron Curtain divided Europe into East and West.

The cult of personality of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin

continued even two years after his death.

During his trip, Raúl was approached

by a man employed by the Soviet embassy in Mexico.

[in Russian] I met this young man, he was 22 years old then, quite by accident.

We were both passengers on the same ship, the Andrea Gritti,

en route from Genoa to Latin America.

His cabin was next to mine, we were about the same age.

We had a common language, since I spoke Spanish.

In Mexico, the KGB had close ties to the Cubans.

[in Russian] Through Raúl Castro,

I also met Che Guevara and Fidel Castro,

because they spent so much time together.

They were very interested in a Soviet man in general.

They asked a lot of questions.

Fidel Castro was convinced that all Cubans would come to support the rebels' cause.

But unlike Che Guevara and his brother Raúl,

he did not believe in a communist revolution.

[in German] He was not a communist. Despite the myth,

and despite what so many of my dearest and well-meaning colleagues say,

who even may have known him better,

before 1960, '61, '62, he was absolutely not a communist.

The Mexican authorities had no desire to see armed activists in their country,

and promptly had them arrested.

The Castro brothers and Ernesto Guevara found themselves in prison once more.

[in Russian] The impression I got when meeting him,

just like with Che Guevara and Raúl, was quite remarkable.

I remember I was talking to a close friend of mine afterwards,

with whom I shared all my impressions about the Cubans.

I told him that these guys were bound to be

either martyrs or national heroes.

And that's what happened. One became a martyr, the other became a hero.

[in Spanish] When Fidel was released, he proposed to set up

a new weapons training camp in Yucatan.

With his men training in the Mexican hinterlands,

Fidel Castro flew to the United States to raise funds from sympathetic Cuban exiles.

[in Russian] Fidel went to the United States.

He visited the places José Martí had been to,

where he had collected money for war against Spanish colonial rule.

There he met Cuban exiles who lived in the US,

gave speeches, and explained his program.

And then, he passed around a hat and said, "Well, help the revolution if you can."

In 1956, Fidel Castro used the money he had collected

to buy a boat for their trip back to Cuba.

He bought the Granma, a 60-foot cabin cruiser,

from a sympathetic arms dealer.

To the Cuban rebels, the boat came to be known as Granma.

Today it is one of the revolution's most celebrated monuments,

on public display in a museum.

[in German] It was an old, derelict boat, and it was far too small.

It was bought for a very low price for a boat of this size.

Still, it was entirely overloaded when all 72 or however many they were boarded it.

It was badly planned, badly organized. Like almost everything else.

[in Spanish] When we saw the ship, it was shrouded in fog,

and we couldn't see it clearly.

But we knew we had a boat, and we were very pleased.

In 1955, Batista's armed forces numbered no less than 35,000 men.

His army and air force were well supplied

and armed by Cuba's closest ally, the United States.

Relations between Cuba and the United States still prosper,

as exemplified by high-ranking visits.

Here President Batista can be seen

boarding the guided missile cruiser USS Canberra.

But Castro was not intimidated by such odds.

On November 25th, 1956, he and his men set sail for Cuba.

Years later, Cuban history fans relived the expedition.

With 82 men aboard, as well as provisions and weapons,

the Granma was dangerously overloaded.

[in French] They were a small band of guerilleros,

and they embarked on this old yacht, the Granma, which would become legendary.

[in Spanish] We were very anxious,

because it had been said in 1956 that we would either be free, or martyrs.

[in Russian] When they departed from Mexico on the yacht Granma to Cuba,

they knew that they would be met by the underground resistance on Cuba.

The crossing took two days longer than expected.

The overloaded boat suffered in the heavy seas.

[in Spanish] We were almost four days in a very heavy storm.

Everyone was seasick.

I think only a few comrades were spared.

I can't swim but I've worked at sea,

and I'm not easily seasick.

But I was seriously ill. I threw up almost the whole trip.

After seven days at sea,

the Granma reached a bay in southeast Cuba...

...the beach of Las Coloradas.

Today the entire region is a national park and is called Granma Province

after the boat and its landing on December 2nd, 1956.

Castro's landing has been staged time and time again,

such as seen here in a Soviet television feature.

Under cover of darkness,

82 guerilleros, among them Fidel and Raúl Castro,

set foot on solid ground.

[in French] Che Guevara had a sense of humor.

He said that it wasn't a landing, it was a shipwreck.

[in Spanish] Sailors told me later

it was a miracle that we survived, with so many men on board.

Because of the delay, Fidel Castro's reinforcements in Cuba had left again.

The men were on their own.

[in French] Of course, Fidel Castro didn't exactly announce the date of his return.

But to make an impact,

in order to get noticed after he landed,

he did release a manifesto beforehand,

saying he would topple the dictator,

but not saying when.

So, in a way, the tyrant was forewarned.

Instead of their comrades,

the Granma crew find themselves face to face

with soldiers from Batista's army.

[in Spanish] They had automatic weapons,

and ours were bolt action, single-shot guns.

So we were ill-prepared

to come face to face with the army.

As in the attack against the Moncada Barracks three years previously,

Castro's men stood no chance against the army,

and faced disaster yet again.

In 1956, when he arrives on December 1st, Batista already knows,

and so his planes come in and most of the people are killed or captured.

This close to the coast, with little cover,

Batista's air force has no trouble targeting the rebels.

[in Spanish] In the morning, they began to bomb and strafe the entire area.

It was very difficult for us.

We had been seasick for four days,

and three days without food.

And we had no water.

[Menier, in Spanish] One day I woke up,

and I learned that Fidel had landed in the east.

So I say, "The Sierra Maestra is here, and the sea is here,

and Fidel is here. This will fail, they will all be killed."

After the Granma's landing at Las Coloradas,

most rebels were indeed killed in the fighting,

which took place at Alegría de Pío.

The few survivors fled to the wilderness of the Sierra Maestra mountain range,

around Cuba's highest peak, the Pico Turquino.

Out of the 82 passengers of the Granma, more than 50 were killed.

Batista's armed forces initially did not know who among the rebels were dead.

Castro's attempt to seize Cuba, once again, seemed to have failed.

The New York Times and most other news organizations around the world

run an article saying that the uprising was quashed by the government

and most of the rebels were killed, including their leader Fidel Castro.

[in French] Of the 82 men on board, several dozen were killed,

perhaps even the majority. Some managed to regroup,

others just gave up and went home,

saying they'd oppose the regime in other ways.

But on the other side, there were some that gradually, after a few days,

managed to regroup

and head for a pre-arranged location.

This was the start of the Sierra Maestra campaign.

[in Spanish] We didn't eat every day.

We ate whenever we could. If there was no food, we didn't eat.

Once again, as after the Moncada attacks,

the Castro brothers had eluded death, as had Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

They hide in the remote jungle,

living off the land, and keeping as low a profile as possible.

Castro knew that he had to regain strength and recruit new men,

before continuing his revolution.

Cuba was censored. There was no free news, so nobody knew what was happening.

The government was saying, "Oh, we killed everybody in the Sierra Maestra.

We killed Fidel Castro. These were communists.

They're trying to take over Cuba."

On February 24th, 1957, a front page article

in "The New York Times" announced Fidel Castro's survival.

Through contacts in Havana, he had managed to smuggle in

"New York Times" journalist Herbert Matthews.

What Matthews actually writes in this article...

Now, it's a series of three articles.

The first one runs on a Sunday in February 1957

on the top half of the front page of The New York Times.

Probably the biggest setting for a news event

anywhere in the world at that time.

So he's getting coverage all around the world.

Matthews, in the article, presents Fidel as a Robin Hood,

who only wants to help the people, doesn't want any power for himself,

wants to restore the constitutional government,

and is a friend of the American people.

Matthews's articles in "The New York Times"

give a boost to the 26th of July Movement

and make an almost mythical figure out of Fidel Castro.

It is said that Castro sent his 18 soldiers in circles through the jungle

to make Matthews believe he had a far bigger army.

Now, imagine 18 men, one of them with a white shirt...

...coming around the first time. White shirt.

The second time, white shirt?

I can't believe...

I cannot believe that any reporter would be fooled by that.

So they had that there.

So all of that information together sort of indicates that it's a myth.

To continue presenting himself as Cuba's savior,

Fidel Castro imitates the island's national hero, José Martí,

who, a century earlier, had ignited Cuba's fight

against Spanish colonial domination.

[in Russian] From the organization of a military expedition abroad,

then the transfer on ships or yachts to Cuba,

to the guerrilla fight that would expand into civil war.

In all of this, Fidel imitated José Martí.

[in Spanish] For budding young revolutionaries,

Martí was an idol, because he had done what they wanted to achieve.

Castro had himself and his men filmed at the foot of a statue of Martí.

To the American press,

Castro presents himself as a friend of the United States.

To the Cuban people, he describes the US as Spain's successors.

And just as Martí had fought against the Spanish occupation,

he would free Cuba from the United States and their puppet, Batista.

[in German] After 1952, Batista needed the United States to adopt a position,

which was essentially, "He is a bitch, but he is our bitch."

Fulgencio Batista, America's bitch,

was still on good terms with the government in Washington.

Here, there was little concern

over a group of rebels hiding out in the Cuban mountains.

Cuba was like Canada now.

Cuba... Canada is a friend.

We don't expect Canada to become an anti-American country

against the United States, so the mentality of the United States was:

"Ah, there's a little revolution there. Batista is our ally, he's our friend.

He'll take care of it. We don't have much to worry."

The Americans continued to support Batista.

They effectively controlled the lives of Cuba's wealthy classes,

as well as its tourism and exports.

For its part, the Soviet Union began to spread anti-American propaganda

in Latin and South America.

Once the Castros went back to Cuba...

...the Russians... the KGB started providing them with intelligence.

[in Russian] Initially, the guerrilla movement developed

because it wanted to get rid of the Batista dictatorship...

...and pro-American regime.

Expelling the Americans from Cuba was the main issue.

[in French] Fidel Castro played along with the Soviet Union,

but he always played several games at the same time.

In the beginning, only two or three new insurgents

joined Castro's group per month.

Among them was Fidel's secretary, Celia Sanchez.

They posed for journalists with their weapons,

making intimidating statements about the regime.

Castro saw himself as the leader of all those who opposed Batista,

and who would join him for the revolution.

[in Spanish] He used to say that the revolution is neither left nor right,

it is a step forward.

And afterwards he said that he had been a communist his whole life.

He's never been a communist and never will be.

What he has always been is a great opportunist.

[in French] It was the start of the Sierra Maestra campaign,

but it was very small. They say they were 12.

Of course, in a very Catholic country, founded by Spain,

the 12 were obviously the 12 disciples of Christ.

Really, there were probably a few more left out of the 82.

To motivate the group, Castro, a former Jesuit student,

even adopted religious rituals.

[in Spanish] Naturally, the rebels brought those traditions to the Sierra Maestra.

They were very simple people, people from small towns,

and then Fidel appeared with that image

of Our Lady of El Cobre.

The rebels even wear the image of Our Lady of El Cobre on their uniforms.

It's a showcase of innocence and piety,

but neither side placed much stock in either.

The rebels were ruthless.

This famous photo shows Raúl Castro blindfolding a man about to be shot.

[gunshot]

Enemies, both Batista's soldiers and anyone designated as a traitor,

were often executed.

And Batista's army assassinated anyone even suspected of supporting Castro.

[Alarcón, in Spanish] I was working in one of the fields

when I heard shots.

I hid behind a tree, and tried to see what was happening.

I saw the soldiers who were shooting at my house.

I was too afraid to do anything.

Then I saw my wife, a simple farm girl.

They took her out of my house,

dragged her outside, through the garden. She was already dead.

The dog ran to defend her.

A soldier saw this and shot him. He killed my dog too.

After burying his wife,

farmer Dariel Alarcón joined the revolutionaries,

providing food and shelter.

[in French] Fidel Castro was clever, or humane, enough

to treat his people decently,

and he soon found reinforcements,

which meant that, after such a bad start,

the guerrilla group was getting organized in an effective manner.

As before, Fidel Castro's biggest successes

come not in battle, but from his propaganda.

[in French] Already in the '50s,

the beginning of the age of television, of mass media,

Fidel was one of the few people

who understood that winning in politics meant working the media.

[Castro] It is not the same to fight for liberty as to fight against it.

All the people of the Sierra Maestra are with us.

We have struck the spark of the revolution.

We gladly suffer cold and rain

and the hardships of life in the mountains.

This is only the beginning.

The last battle will be fought in the capital.

You can be sure.

Castro's movement was but one among several opposition groups.

In Havana, numerous opponents to Batista,

among them unions and opposition parties, were working in secret.

But the dictator was not intimidated.

He even claimed to have no opposition at all.

There were strikes, there was demonstrations.

There was terrorism. There was violence in the cities of Cuba.

So it was a movement, anti-Batista movement.

Nobody was a great supporter of Batista

so a lot of people joined the anti-Batista movement.

[in Spanish] All these things led to a state of non-conformity,

a state of struggle. We had been trying to achieve things

through dialogue and discussions, in a peaceful way.

The only alternative left was to take up arms, was the path of violence.

On February 26th, 1958,

an international motorcar grand prix was held in Havana,

in front of spectators and journalists from around the globe.

The race favorite, Argentinean superstar driver Juan Manuel Fangio,

went missing before the race.

[in French] The Cuban opposition in Havana captured Fangio.

They did not want to harm him,

but to bring attention to their cause.

The police were puzzled and the press had a field day.

Castro sympathizers had kidnapped Fangio.

They released him the following day.

Fangio broadcast that he had been very well treated,

and did not hide his support for Fidel's cause.

The publicity is so positive for Fidel

that even those... incidents

that might have turned people away from him are overlooked.

The kidnapping of the racecar driver,

it was seen as sort of a casualty of the effort to overthrow Batista.

Castro became a media star among the various dissident groups.

But no one outside the Sierra Maestra knew how tiny his army really was.

[in Spanish] When I joined the group with Fidel and the rebel army...

...I was number 63.

There were very few guns, half the men were unarmed.

But the group had grown.

Before, in my house, there were only 40 and now there were 60-something.

And so I joined up.

I had no experience at all...

...so they made me a machine-gun assistant.

Soon I was made Camilo Cienfuegos's machine gunner.

Camilo Cienfuegos was one of the Cuban exiles

who had joined Castro's movement in Mexico.

Before going into exile,

he had been shot by Batista's police forces during a protest.

During the fighting in the Sierra Maestra,

he rose to become one of the group's main military leaders.

Clashes against the army were frequent,

as Castro's movement grew in size and strength.

Constant guerrilla warfare

and the feeling that they were fighting a losing battle

sapped the strength of Batista's soldiers.

Even though they still outnumbered Castro's movement by far,

Batista's forces never attacked Castro's headquarters on Pico Turquino.

Proof for Castro's group of their superiority.

Batista went and gathered up workers or people without work,

and he made soldiers out of them.

He gave them rifles and poor wages, so they would go and fight.

They had no experience, and it turned out that many of us

had more experience in fighting than they did.

Batista had at least 35,000 soldiers,

not counting the police and secret services.

The rebels, meanwhile, posed proudly for the journalists,

confident of their ultimate victory.

Batista's army was increasingly unable

to contain, let alone eliminate, Castro's rebel group.

[in Spanish] A soldier earned 33 pesos a month.

He risked his life for 33 pesos a month.

We were fighting out of idealism, that's very different.

One man fighting for his ideals

is worth 20 soldiers fighting for 33 pesos.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara had come to the island as a doctor,

to help wounded rebels.

By 1958, he was fighting on the front lines.

More importantly, he founded a pirate radio station, Radio Rebelde,

which became the revolutionaries' main mouthpiece.

[Che Guevara] During these 16 months in the Sierra Maestra,

the world's journalists have come here

and taken an interest in all aspects of this guerrilla war.

Today I would like to take the opportunity of a Cuban journalist visiting us

to greet the people of Cuba for the first time.

They are a people that I have decided to defend,

because I know them through the actions and thoughts of our leader Fidel Castro.

[in Spanish] Guevara was known for always doing himself what he asked of others.

It was very important for him to set an example.

This allowed him to lead others.

He didn't say, "You, do this," but rather, "Let's do it together."

This gave him a certain moral authority in combat.

Thanks to Che Guevara's Radio Rebelde,

more and more Cubans listened to news of Fidel Castro and the movement's successes.

Hundreds join the group until, in the summer of 1958,

Castro feels strong enough to go on the offensive.

[in Spanish] During the spring...

...of 1958... we were feeling strong.

Strong enough to split up into several platoons.

The press campaign was also aimed at the United States.

There was a growing interest in helping the Cuban Robin Hood.

In the United States, the impact is that people begin to see Fidel

in a heroic light and Batista in a negative light.

Eventually, in 1958, it leads to the US Congress making the decision

to stop all arm shipments to Cuba, leaving Batista without support.

Fidel Castro gives the order to launch the offensive.

His group, numbering several hundred men, split in two,

with half marching east and half west.

Fidel and Raúl Castro left Pico Turquino with two units and headed for Santiago.

Two other groups, commanded by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos,

marched north, towards Havana.

The Cuban army had mobilized all its forces to counter the action,

which Castro had announced on the radio.

[in Spanish] The army came up with an operation

called FF. Fin de Fidel, or Finishing Fidel.

It involved more than 20,000 soldiers along the whole front

to annihilate the guerilleros.

July 1958 saw an eight-day gun battle.

Once more, Castro's men were at the verge of defeat and had to withdraw,

only to announce on the radio they had won the battle.

[Raffy, in French] Fidel Castro was an expert in media manipulation.

He decided which stories were told.

He was a lawyer, a man of great rhetoric, a storyteller.

And he was quite capable of fooling people

by transforming something mediocre into something extraordinary.

Castro's rebels had once again run from Batista's army,

but their radio station called it a glorious victory.

News of this was repeated continuously on Radio Rebelde.

Since the army apparently was unable to kill or even stop Castro,

the people of Cuba started to believe him.

The other half of Castro's troops, meanwhile, fared much better.

Led by Che Guevara, the rebels captured an armored train carrying weapons

in the city of Santa Clara.

It was the rebels' greatest military victory

and led to many of the defeated soldiers joining Guevara's troops.

In eastern Cuba, meanwhile,

Fidel and Raúl Castro marched the remainder of their troops

towards Santiago.

[in Spanish] The whole eastern part was at war,

and we felt that we controlled the whole situation.

And then, once again, the United States intervened in Cuban politics.

As Batista was no longer in control,

the American ambassador asked him to resign and be replaced.

[in French] Batista saw that it was over.

In the night of 31st December to 1st January,

with a few of his buddies, his ministers,

his cronies, as we say in English,

he fled to Santo Domingo,

meaning the closest tyrant around, the nearest dictator.

The era of Fulgencio Batista was over.

The dictator fled with his closest allies and $300 million in cash.

The United States, however, did not manage to designate a successor.

On January 1st, 1959, Fidel Castro and his rebels took the town of Santiago

without meeting any resistance.

The units of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, meanwhile,

marched on the capital.

[in Spanish] We received orders to head for Havana...

...when it was sure that Batista was fleeing and abandoning power.

The Cuban state was disintegrating,

but there were still 15,000 soldiers and considerable police forces in Havana.

Many people expected a coup

from one of Cuba's generals or a senior police officer.

[in Spanish] First of all, there weren't many of us.

It's a fact that nobody believes today.

On January 1st, 1959,...

...the day of victory, we were, in Havana, less than 300.

Hmm? And on a national scale we weren't even 1,000.

It's not that Castro defeated the Cuban army.

It's that the Cuban army collapsed internally.

Demoralized, didn't wanna fight, didn't wanna continue to support Batista.

So you had a collapse of the institutions, the army of Cuba

and then Fidel was able to enter Havana.

In both Santiago and Havana,

army and police offered no resistance to the victorious rebels.

Castro's movement, along with the other opposition forces,

joyously celebrated their victory.

[in Spanish] Fidel had some 500 guerrilleros.

And I'll tell you, if Batista's people had wanted to fight,

and all the rich people,

then we would still be firing shots in Havana.

Castro's 26th of July Movement

declared itself Cuba's liberators and seized power.

Actually, this city is like any other city of this size in this part of the world,

despite the fact that just 28 days ago,

a revolution threw out one government and brought in a new government.

Upon arriving in Havana, Castro faced the international press.

He was asked about executions and assassinations carried out by his men.

I want you to know... what happened during the war.

There is not one army in the universal history of the world

that has been such noble with the enemy.

This was pure revolutionary rhetoric.

Fidel Castro knew that his time as Robin Hood was now over.

This was not a naive Robin Hood saying, "My real struggle will start

when I come to power, and that is going to be against the United States."

Thus, another revolution had swept over Cuba.

This one, in January 1959, was the last to date

and remains the best known in Cuba's history.

But with its promises, its reforms,

its crackdowns and repeated crises,

it was not unlike those of the previous centuries.