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.

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

Apocalypse.

[siren]

[in German] Cuba will never bend its knee.

The island of Cuba.

A bustling melting pot of cultures and a curious colonial paradise.

Throughout its history, Cuba saw the rise and fall of many a hero

and suffered under many a despot.

In 1952, Fulgencio Batista, the former head of Cuba's armed forces,

seized power in a coup.

From his presidential palace,

he would go on to rule Cuba for seven years.

His rule ended on the morning of New Year's Day 1959.

Batista fled Cuba, as a new revolution swept over the island,

led by Fidel Castro.

But how did a tiny band of guerilleros manage to form a whole new state?

What poisoned Cuba's close relationship with the United States?

And how did Fidel Castro, the son of a wealthy landowner,

become a communist statesman?

Fidel Castro became the vector of a revolution

that let the people of Cuba dream of living in freedom and prosperity.

And to this day, the Cuban people have not given up on this dream.

[in Spanish] I know that I shall die as a revolutionary.

I'll always be on the side of the oppressed.

I'll always be on the side of the poor, of the humble.

I'll always be on their side, until the day I die.

Fidel Castro rose in rebellion against Fulgencio Batista.

In 1933, Batista had set out to free Cuba from the yoke of another dictator.

But since taking power in a coup in 1952...

he had turned Cuba into a police state.

The United States supported him,

in exchange for American corporate control over much of Cuba's economy.

Fidel Castro's revolution began in the mountains of Sierra Maestra.

He had barely 100 men.

Rather than sending them into a hopeless battle,

Castro led a spirited propaganda campaign.

His aim was to convince the Cubans that his revolution was legitimate.

In December 1958, Castro and half of his rebels

marched on the city of Santiago.

The other half, led by Ernesto "Che" Guevara

and rebel army chief Camilo Cienfuegos,

Castro sent towards Cuba's capital, Havana.

[in Spanish] We received orders,

meaning, Camilo received orders to head towards Havana...

...when it became clear that Batista was fleeing.

So we headed towards Havana.

We, the troops of Camilo Cienfuegos, took the capital, the city of Havana.

Camilo Cienfuegos's rebels reached Havana on January 2nd, 1959.

Batista had fled, together with his inner circle.

The soldiers in the capital surrendered without a fight.

At the same time, Fidel Castro and his troops entered Santiago.

Here as well, the army chose to surrender rather than fight.

Castro's leading comandante during the march on Santiago was Huber Matos.

He had been a crucial part of Fidel's revolution,

by providing weapons for the guerrilleros.

Now he entered Cuba's second-biggest city by Castro's side.

[in French] And then something very surprising happened.

Fidel Castro declared that Santiago was now the capital of Cuba.

Castro's message was clear. The capital would be wherever he was.

Meanwhile, the people of Havana celebrated his revolution.

But not everybody was happy.

President Batista and his inner circle were gone.

Afraid of what would happen to them,

rich foreigners, mostly Americans, and wealthy Cuban landowners followed.

Among them were members of the American Mafia,

who controlled the island's casinos.

Their boss was Meyer Lansky.

My grandmother said, "We have to leave. We're gonna go back to Miami."

I guess they tried to be as cool as possible.

I will never forget

going down in the elevator and seeing soldiers in the street.

I will never forget that as long as I live. I was eight years old.

And I remember green. Just green and chaos.

Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro was not unknown in Cuba.

He was the son of a wealthy landowner, a lawyer from Havana,

and had been married to the daughter of one of Batista's chief ministers.

But now his wife and her family abandoned him out of fear,

taking Castro's son with them.

The boy, Fidelito, that was in New York.

So the only one of the family that was in Cuba

was myself and my sister, but my sister was married, so no problem.

The one who had problem was me

so I just got the last plane and out, out of Cuba.

Havana, for the moment no longer Cuba's capital,

was under control of Castro's head of the army, Camilo Cienfuegos.

The people of Havana acclaimed him as their liberator.

Fidel Castro, meanwhile, was still in Santiago,

on the other side of the island.

On January 3rd, 1959, he left for Havana.

[in French] For eight days, he talked non-stop.

They say that, at times, he teetered at the podium, but people held him.

But he continued. It was an incredible triumph.

After a triumphant journey across Cuba,

Fidel Castro arrived in Havana on January 8th, 1959

and gave the city back its title as Cuba's capital.

By his side were his brother Raúl,

his second in command Ernesto "Che" Guevara

and his comandantes Huber Matos and Camilo Cienfuegos.

That evening Castro made a victory speech before a crowd of 400,000 people.

It was the first time Castro had spoken to such a large audience.

[in French] He gave a long and incredibly democratic speech.

"We're going to give the land to the peasants.

We're going to disarm, we're soldiers of peace."

It was not a communist speech. It was not a violent speech.

And at one point there was an extraordinary moment,

where white doves rose up into the sky,

and we had this Christ-like image of Fidel Castro.

What we didn't see was a man behind him, a bird-handler,

who was making the birds rise up and fly away.

On the stage next to Fidel Castro

stood the man who had liberated Havana, Camilo Cienfuegos.

[in Spanish] Fidel talked for 15 or 20 minutes.

He was telling a story about something, I forgot what it was,

and then Fidel leaned over to Camilo and said, "Am I doing alright, Camilo?"

And Camilo said, "You always do, Fidel."

To this day, Camilo Cienfuegos's words

are inscribed at the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana.

Fidel Castro had managed to unite

all those who opposed Batista under his leadership.

Now the deposed dictator's army and police want to join his cause as well.

But Castro had no intention

of letting the old regime's supporters keep their power.

[in Spanish] Fidel did not take power, he made power.

The army dissolved and fled,

so he made a new army with his own people.

There was no congress, so legislation was made in a council of ministers,

which he entrusts with total judicial power.

When he took control of Cuba, Fidel Castro had no official position.

Instead of appointing himself as head of state,

he formed a government of esteemed Cuban intellectuals and thinkers.

But then, gradually, he deposed one minister after the other,

and replaced them with his own people.

This worried many of his supporters,

particularly when he appointed two communists as ministers:

his brother Raúl and Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

Many revolutionaries did not want Cuba to become communist,

including Camilo Cienfuegos.

[Alcarón, in Spanish] There were other comandantes of great prestige,

but Fidel started making the decisions on his own,

without taking into consideration the opinions of others.

Huber Matos asked him to listen to them.

He demanded that decisions be taken as a collective.

[in French] It may have been Fidel Castro's strategy

not to put all his eggs in one basket.

He wanted to maximize his potential among his followers.

Initially, the July 26th Movement was very diverse.

It was not a communist movement, it was a nationalist movement.

The United States recognized Castro's revolutionary coalition

as the legitimate government of Cuba on January 7th, 1959.

Fidel had not even arrived in Havana yet.

[DePalma] This idea of Fidel

as a young rebel in 1957

who was going up against the corrupt dictator,

who didn't want power for himself,

who said clearly, "I've nothing to do with communism,"

ends up being a hero that people in Cuba could support,

and imagine the impact in the United States

to see this person, young, handsome, magnetic personality.

Even those of Cuba's upper classes who remained

supported Fidel and his government.

[in German] The day after the revolution, the Bacardi family

hung a huge sign on the company wall, saying, "Gracias Fidel."

To them, he was the son of a big landowner, a lawyer from Havana.

He was one of them, in a way,

and they thought he would fall into line after the initial excitement.

And tourists, as well, continued to flock to Cuba.

The island was still a vacation paradise,

despite, or maybe because of, the revolution.

In February 1959, barely six weeks after Fidel's arrival in Havana,

the German liner MS Berlin entered the harbor.

For whatever reason, Fidel Castro himself

took a launch out to greet the arriving ship.

The last stop was Havana Harbor.

There were other, many cruise passengers

and I was standing on A Deck

and I saw a launch come...

smaller boat with many barbudos, bearded ones,

and he bumped up against the ship and he did motion like, "I wanna come up."

And I said, "No. No guns."

Marita Lorenz was 19 years old and the daughter of the ship's captain.

Castro and his men obeyed her order, and laid down their weapons.

Then it was up to Marita to show the Cuban leader around the ship.

The minute I saw him, I fell in love.

I had this feeling I'd never felt before.

The stomach went upside-down, my heart was beating.

I was, "Oh, my God! I never had a boyfriend before.

Not this one. This is a soldier in an island I don't know." You know...

But the way he looked at me and smiled and held my hand...

The MS Berlin left Havana again that same evening.

But this first, brief meeting between Fidel and Marita

would be the beginning of a love story ripe with passion... and vengeance.

[Lorenz] He said, "Do you know who I am?"

I said, "No, I don't follow politics. I just sail around the world."

He said, "I am Cuba."

I am Fidel Castro Ruz.

I come down from the Sierra Maestra.

I am Cuba, I will fix Cuba."

But fixing Cuba was not an easy task.

There was no lack of unresolved conflicts.

After the collapse of the Batista regime,

the Cuban people stormed the prisons of his secret police.

What they saw left many speechless.

Many of Batista's policemen feared reprisals,

and denounced or even arrested their former colleagues.

Fidel Castro had revolutionary courts set up.

[in Spanish] When Fidel came to power, I was 15 years old.

I knew that it was a change from Batista. Nobody liked Batista.

When Fidel came to power, he was initially well liked by the people,

but that changed once the executions began.

The supposedly worst offenders of Batista's hated police and armed forces

are summarily executed when Castro's troops take over Havana and Santiago.

Initially, it was very bloody against Batista supporters.

They executed a number of them.

There was a joke going around in Cuba that Raúl was in charge of eastern Cuba

and Fidel called them and said, "I don't want any bloodshed."

And Raúl started to hang people instead of shooting them

so there wouldn't be blood.

This is a story, but it has a lot of reality in it.

They killed a lot of enemies in the first few months of the revolution.

The subsequent revolutionary trials were public,

as Castro claimed that his justice had nothing to hide.

But in front of thousands of spectators in Havana's biggest sports stadium,

the trials soon turned into a farce.

Soon, it was no longer only Batista's secret police henchmen being put on trial.

A simple accusation against someone would often suffice,

and the outcome was often clear from the start.

[in German] It's estimated that 3,000 people were killed.

They were henchmen of the old regime,

but no one today knows exactly who they were.

Even those close to Castro feared being caught up in the violence.

[in Spanish] We began to be afraid of what to do, what not to do...

...and what to say, what not to say.

The motto was: Fidel said so and that's enough.

If the comandante said so, it is so, even if it's a lie.

You had to support this lie.

On February 16th, 1959,

Fidel Castro named himself Cuba's prime minister.

During his revolution, he had been deliberately vague

about what he had in mind for Cuba's future.

But now, firmly in power, Castro began an extensive reform program.

In one of his first reforms,

Castro expropriated many American companies on Cuba.

Decidedly not what the US government had had in mind

when they recognized Castro only months earlier.

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

They didn't promise a good life.

They promised a revolution. They did a revolution.

Many expropriated properties were divided up and given to Cuban farmers.

Castro did what communists around the world had called for

and thus became more radical than a lot of them.

Practically overnight, American companies lost almost 500,000 acres of land.

The next wave of reforms hit Cuba's wealthier classes.

It was intended to help Cuba's urban poor.

[Hoffmann, in German] And it was possible to achieve this too and rapidly.

The reforms were aimed at improving the daily lives of the poor,

and for the lower middle class. For example, rents were lowered in Havana.

This obviously hurt property owners,

but for those who now had to pay less rent, it was an immediate improvement.

For Cuba, these first few reforms marked the beginning of a new conflict.

The US government protested against the expropriation of their companies.

When protests were not enough,

the United States threatened to introduce sanctions.

And in Cuba too, not everyone was willing to follow Castro's course.

Many of those expropriated lost all income.

After Castro took power,

only a few hundred Cubans had fled the island.

Now thousands fled.

Those unable or unwilling to live under Castro's reforms.

[in Spanish] We didn't receive the rent.

Landlords couldn't get the rent from their properties,

or rather there was a limit. I think it was 600 pesos.

It was equivalent to $600 at the time, and not enough to live on.

To ease tensions with the United States,

Fidel Castro visited Washington, DC, in April of 1959.

One of his first goals,

the monument of his idol, US president Abraham Lincoln.

Fidel Castro's goal during his visit was legitimacy.

He wanted to be recognized by the US as Cuba's head of government.

After touring Washington, DC,

he hoped to meet with President Eisenhower.

For many Americans, Castro was a media star.

But President Eisenhower simply did not trust Cuba's revolutionary leader.

I know you are worried, first of all, if we are communist.

And of course, I have said very clear...

...that we are not communist. Very clear.

Alongside Fidel in Washington was Marita Lorenz, by now his mistress.

He was upset because... Eisenhower wouldn't see him.

Not even a cup of coffee.

Eisenhower wanted to play golf and couldn't accept his uniform.

He got a call from Raúl in Barbados

and he said, "Come back. You're wasting your time.

They don't wanna see you."

I did see him, though. He spent the night with me.

That was nice. That was good, but then again he's gone and I felt alone.

And people photographing me going out of the hotel room.

And the CIA warning me, "Stay away from that commie bastard!"

Instead of meeting Castro personally,

Eisenhower sent his vice-president, Richard Nixon.

Nixon was a very, very brilliant figure,

and his instincts as an international politician were very, very good.

So he sat down with Castro in the Capitol building in Washington.

Nixon was the vice president.

Castro came to see him at the Capitol Building

and... he took Castro's measure.

And he took Castro's measure very skillfully, very accurately.

Nixon was supposed to push Castro into a more US-friendly direction

to make Castro see how Cuba should behave in regard to the United States.

Furthermore, Eisenhower gave him the task of finding out, once and for all,

where Castro stood politically.

Nixon's verdict was devastating. According to him,

Castro was "...either incredibly naive about communism

or under communist discipline. My guess is the former."

[in French] It seems that, already at the meeting

between Fidel Castro and Nixon in 1959,

Nixon understood that Castro

was at heart anti-American, if not communist.

The American government wasn't alone

in worrying about Cuba's relations with communism.

During his revolution, Fidel Castro had been deliberately vague

to unify all opponents of the Batista dictatorship under his banner.

But the reforms introduced by Fidel Castro,

his brother Raúl, and minister for the economy Ernesto "Che" Guevara

alienated a good many Cubans.

The Castro brothers were not the Cuban revolution.

They were part of a coalition of largely democratic organizations.

But what happened once the coalition won in 1959,

the Castro brothers were more ruthless in eliminating their opponents

until they were the last ones standing, so to speak.

Raúl Castro became Cuba's Defense Minister,

a key government post.

He was Fidel's younger brother and alongside Ernesto "Che" Guevara,

embodied the revolution's left wing.

The little brother, they used to call him names but he's...

Raúl was intelligent. He spoke different languages.

He didn't boss Fidel around.

He was just very intelligent and quiet.

And serious.

Camilo was a little... [laughs] bouncy.

But Raúl was serious and quiet.

Camilo Cienfuegos was named head of the Revolutionary Army

and thus put under the orders of the defense minister, Raúl Castro.

And yet, he vehemently opposed Raúl and the Cuban government's leftist drift.

[in Spanish] Camilo's popularity among the people was so great...

...that it obscured Fidel Castro's.

I remember how during one of Fidel's speeches,

Camilo was beside Fidel...

...and the people started calling,

"Let Camilo speak!"

And the applause lasted for 20 minutes.

Camilo Cienfuegos, still adored by the people as the man who freed Havana,

and his close friend Huber Matos, who had helped Fidel Castro take Santiago,

are vocal about their dislike of Fidel's policies.

Matos even went so far as to tender his resignation to Castro.

But Castro had already decided

that he would not let his comandante go so easily.

[in French] Castro made a choice, radical in a way,

to arrest the well-known commander Matos in October,

because Matos denounced the growing influence

of the Communist Party on Castro.

To carry out the arrest,

Fidel Castro sent none other than Camilo Cienfuegos,

who was close friends with Huber Matos.

It was a test of his loyalty

and Cienfuegos carried out the order, as this photo shows.

After the arrest, on October 28th, 1959, Camilo Cienfuegos flew back to Havana.

Here, he was set to meet with Fidel Castro,

and talk about what the future of Cuba would look like.

His plane disappeared in mid-flight,

in clear weather, and with no distress signal.

Neither the plane, nor his body was ever found.

[in Spanish] Camilo Cienfuegos's accident was far from being an accident.

What happened to Camilo Cienfuegos was precisely planned...

...by the Cuban government.

By Fidel in particular.

[in Spanish] Camilo's death is a mystery.

I have information that suggests Fidel killed him.

Others say it was an accident. It's hard to say.

What we do know is that...

...Camilo had problems with Raúl Castro, very serious problems.

Huber Matos was made a pariah and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.

Cuba, meanwhile, grieved for Camilo Cienfuegos.

But most Cubans had more serious problems than political orientations.

Much of the population lived in extreme poverty.

The main reason for this

was that the United States had cut much of their trade with Cuba,

to Fidel Castro's dismay.

The first year Fidel was in power, he never mentioned the word communism.

He wanted trade agreements.

He wanted sugar for tractors, tractors for sugar.

He wanted to build up Cuba, build hospitals.

He wanted building material, paint, cement.

To obtain construction materials, Cuba needed a new trade partner.

Castro's first choice

was the United States' sworn enemy, the Soviet Union.

On February 8th, 1960, the Soviet minister Anastas Mikoyan landed in Cuba.

Accompanying him was an old friend of the Castro brothers,

whom they had met in exile in Mexico,

and who had helped them during their revolution.

[in Russian] When the first Soviet government delegation went to Cuba,

it was led by Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan.

He knew about my previous contact

with Raúl Castro, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro.

So he invited me to come along. I was his translator.

Well, I was also his advisor, if you will. And even his bodyguard.

Officially, Anastas Mikoyan was on Cuba to inaugurate a trade fair.

But behind the scenes, the stakes were much higher.

[in Russian] First of all, it was the foundation

of all future relations between the USSR and Cuba.

Before that, we had no intention of opening diplomatic relations.

Secondly, we gave Cuba a loan of $100 million.

And thirdly, it was a complete re-orientation of the Cuban economy,

which eventually led to socialism.

It was the end of Cuban's alignment

with the United States.

Cuba formed a new alliance.

And pictures of the partying Soviet minister are broadcast around the world.

In Washington, Vice-President Nixon saw his hunch confirmed.

He secretly advocated an American intervention in Cuba,

as he saw it as the only way to prevent Cuba from becoming a Soviet outpost.

But President Eisenhower disagreed.

He didn't want to risk a war because of Cuba.

[in French] I think Fidel understood that the only solution,

being 150 kilometers from the world's most powerful country,

was to form solid ties with the USSR.

It was clearly risky,

because the United States could react very badly and very quickly.

In order to defend Cuba, Fidel Castro counted on more than just his new army.

Revolutionary militia were trained throughout the island

with wooden rifles, as real weapons were sadly lacking.

The USA had imposed an arms embargo during Batista's era

and not lifted it since.

Cuba therefore attempted to procure weapons on the world market.

[in Spanish] Already in 1960, revolutionary militias were being formed.

They started in university.

That was the first militia.

Later they went to the work places and they were in the thousands.

Thousands of Cubans marching through the streets.

They received weapons too... from Russia and from Czechoslovakia.

On March 4th, 1960, the French freighter La Coubre,

carrying 76 tons of Belgian ammunition, was anchoring in Havana Harbor.

Cuban dock workers were unloading the ship when the unthinkable happened.

A Cuban cameraman filmed the event.

The death toll was at least 75, with hundreds injured.

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara led the funeral procession.

On that day, a world-famous photo of Che Guevara was taken.

Fidel Castro claimed the explosion of La Coubre was a deliberate attack

and accused the United States.

This was the last straw for the US government.

[Latell] Castro crossed the red line

for conservative Republicans and for many Americans.

He was crossing a red line.

It was clear that he was on a course,

taking Cuba and himself into the embrace of the Soviet Union.

So the Eisenhower administration began planning for his overthrow.

[in French] The Eisenhower administration gave the go-ahead

to set up an operation in Guatemala.

It was basically a CIA operation

to finance, train and equip Cuban exiles

who would then land on Cuba.

More than 1,300 exiled Cubans volunteered.

Only a few of them had any military experience.

The CIA filmed the recruits' training as they prepared to form an elite unit.

[in Spanish] We had infantry training, parachute training too.

We trained with heavy weapons too.

Some of the men went elsewhere to learn to drive tanks,

since we had five tanks for the invasion,

and our air force had its own base as well.

During training, the exile Cuban's unit got a name. Brigade 2506.

[Rodriguez] The number actually 2506 for Brigade 2506

comes from Carlo Rodriguez Santana.

He was looking for an area for training in Guatemala.

He fell from a cliff and got killed.

And because he was the first casualty of the brigade

and his number happened to be 2506,

they used his number for Assault Brigade 2506.

The invasion was also counting on support from within Cuba.

Numerous former revolutionaries had turned against Castro.

They fled to remote mountain areas, waiting for an opportunity

to launch a counter-revolution against Castro's drift towards communism.

But the Cuban leader was well aware of what was happening.

[in Spanish] The Cuban government, or rather, Fidel

let anyone who was against them flee to the Escambray Mountains.

Why? Very simple.

He wanted them all in the same place.

There were not only ex-Castro veterans among the counter-revolutionaries.

Some were ex-Batista soldiers on the run.

Others simple peasants, caught by chance between the two fronts.

They received weapons from the CIA.

The agency hoped for a popular uprising against Fidel Castro during the invasion.

[in Spanish] It was difficult initially.

The first counter-revolutionaries had, just like me,

been part of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement.

It was the most dangerous moment for the revolution.

The CIA were counting on the Escambray rebels.

Their mission was to tie up

a maximum of Castro's soldiers and militia in combat.

The heavily armed Brigade 2506 would then attack Cuba from Guatemala.

Their target was the town of Trinidad, near the Escambray Mountains.

Here, they were to join up with the rebels and establish a bridgehead,

before appealing to the international community for help.

This appeal would serve as a pretext for the USA to officially invade Cuba.

The American government, the CIA and the Cuban exiles

were all convinced the plan would work.

[in Spanish] I heard a speech by Che Guevara, and I remember thinking,

"How stupid can this guy be?

He doesn't know this will be one of his last speeches."

We knew we might have personal problems

and be wounded or even killed

but the idea that we could lose never occurred to us.

As the CIA prepared the invasion of Cuba,

a presidential election campaign was underway in the US.

Having served twice, President Eisenhower was barred from running again.

Vice-President Nixon wanted to succeed him.

His opponent was a younger senator called John F Kennedy.

As a candidate, Kennedy should have been informed of the invasion plan.

But Nixon was certain of his victory and prohibited it.

In September 1960, shortly before the election,

Fidel Castro, as well as heads of state from around the world,

flew to New York to address the United Nations.

The American public welcomed Castro enthusiastically.

And he knew how to cash in on his fame.

[Latell] There's no better actor than Fidel Castro.

When he checked out of a very expensive first-class hotel,

we would say today a four- or five-star hotel,

and went uptown to Harlem, he checked into the Hotel Theresa.

It was there at the Hotel Theresa,

in black Harlem, African-American Harlem,

that he began appealing to another whole American constituency.

Fidel Castro was warmly welcomed in Harlem.

He made a PR coup out of his move to the Hotel Theresa,

presenting himself as a man of the people.

The next day, he had a prestigious visitor.

Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev, also here to speak at the United Nations,

visited him at the Hotel Theresa.

[Clerc, in French] It was an amazing encounter.

Firstly, Castro was six foot three and Khrushchev about five foot five,

so when Castro hugged Khrushchev,

it was like a bear trying to smother him.

Not a Russian bear, Castro was the bear,

smothering a man who, carelessly, had stepped on his territory.

As Cuba is a member of the United Nations, Castro was free to visit the United States

and talk before the UN's general assembly.

His speech went down in history.

He said he would make only a brief statement,

and then spoke for four and a half hours.

A record that still stands today.

But more telling than his speech was another message Castro sent that day.

At each vote, he followed the lead of the Soviet Union.

[in Spanish] In exchange for his survival,

Fidel Castro did what Moscow asked.

He said that Moscow was very good, the USSR was very good,

communism was very good.

And it was in his own interest, because the USSR supported him,

both economically and with weapons.

On November 8th, 1960, the American people elected a new president.

Contrary to what Nixon had anticipated, it was a race to the finish line.

Only a few thousand votes separated him and his opponent

but in the end, John F Kennedy became president of the United States.

Only after he had won the election

was Kennedy informed of the plan to invade Cuba.

The Bay of Pigs was shocking thing to me.

I had to help Kennedy produce his book Strategy of Peace.

There is a whole little section of it on Cuba

that I had helped write but it was in Kennedy's name.

I knew that he had one foot in the Cold War

and one foot in another vision of one world.

In the spring of 1961,

1,334 exiled Cubans, trained by the CIA,

were ready to take back their homeland.

But Kennedy was reluctant to give the go-ahead.

In public, he stated he did not want to intervene on Cuba.

There will not, under any conditions,

be an intervention in Cuba by United States armed forces.

This government will do everything it possibly can,

and I think it can meet its responsibilities

to make sure that there are no Americans involved in any action inside Cuba.

Finally, on April 4th, 1961,

Kennedy approved the operation on two conditions.

The target would not be the town of Trinidad,

but a remote beach at the so-called Bay of Pigs.

And Kennedy reduced aerial support.

Only eight US bombers, disguised as Cuban planes,

would accompany the landing.

April 15th, 1961. 6 a.m.

The eight bombers took off in the direction of Cuba.

Their objective was to neutralize Cuba's small air force.

They succeeded in destroying numerous aircraft.

But the attack alerted Fidel Castro.

The Cuban leader mobilized his army for war.

He also gave the order to arrest anyone even suspected of being a dissenter

and publicly made martyrs out of the victims of the bombings.

[in Spanish] It was April 15th, two days before the landing.

San Antonio and Santiago de Cuba were bombed.

There were several dead and injured.

One man wrote the name of Fidel with his own blood on a piece of wood.

An unforgettable story for those who were there.

Everyone knew the attack was imminent.

On the morning of April 17th, three ships approached the Bay of Pigs.

Aboard were 1,334 heavily armed Cuban exiles.

[in Spanish] I disembarked at dawn

and the first exchanges of gunfire had already taken place.

We shot down one of their planes right next to my boat.

I remember a Sea Fury that crashed from anti-aircraft fire.

We got into a landing-craft,

like the ones from the war, the ones that open at the front.

Fidel Castro himself took command of the battle.

But the Bay of Pigs was a strategically favorable landing zone.

[in Spanish] From a military point of view, it was difficult.

There were only three roads to the beach, three paths,

more like tracks. And we had no choice.

There was no other way to deploy the troops.

We had, at that point in time, enough explosive in Cuba

that we could have blown bridges on the way to Playa Girón,

which meant we could have delayed tremendously

a vast amount of Castro troops.

But by the time the invasion went in, they didn't tell us anything.

After successfully landing at the beach,

Brigade 2506 was close to establishing a bridgehead.

Victory seemed within their grasp.

[in Spanish] We had taken the beach.

We controlled all the area that we were supposed to control.

Castro's response was massive.

We pulled out when his tanks arrived on the beach.

We only had bullets, we had nothing to fight them with.

114 Cuban exiles died in the Bay of Pigs landing.

More than 1,200 were captured.

On Castro's side, casualties were even higher,

particularly among the badly trained militia.

Over 4,000 men were reported killed, injured or missing.

Fidel Castro presented victory in the Bay of Pigs

as an unmitigated triumph.

And the failed American attack unified the Cuban people behind their leader.

It gave Castro and the revolution

a legitimacy that they had never had before.

The underground opposition in Cuba was pretty well neutralized.

About a 100,000 were thrown into prison.

The Cuban Revolution achieved a level of respect and legitimacy

all over the world. And especially in Latin America, he was seen as a hero,

like no Latin American figure before him.

After the victory at the Bay of Pigs, the only real opposition left in Cuba

were the rebels in the Escambray Mountains.

With his position secure, Castro ordered that they be eliminated.

And in order to pin their uprising on the US,

Castro sent not just soldiers, but also film crews.

[in Spanish] In the Escambray Mountains, at the last minute, they closed in.

We located the bandits and surrounded them.

A death battalion went in and hunted them down.

The battalion came up against the bandits and it was all over.

[in French] It was brutal. No one will ever know how many people died.

No one kept records,

neither officially nor among the counter-revolutionaries.

But to stay in power, Castro needed more than just victories on his island.

He needed a firm international ally.

On May 1st, 1961, just two weeks after the victory at the Bay of Pigs,

Castro called for a public celebration.

Soviet film crews captured the lavish celebrations,

as he declared his revolution, and thus Cuba, to be socialist.

Later Fidel Castro and Che Guevara

topped off the day's events with two bottles of Coca-Cola.

[in Spanish] Fidel was like a teacher.

He talked about socialism.

But the historic truth is that most of us did not know what socialism was.

We knew nothing about socialism.

We were 90 miles, or 180 kilometers, from our closest neighbors...

...and everything we had heard about socialism had been bad.

US President John F Kennedy

had to accept responsibility for the invasion's failure.

For Kennedy, it was a disaster he could not endure.

And so he ordered plans for a new invasion to be drawn up.

Why we got stuck on this,

I think for the Kennedys,

it was sort of their manhood was being tested by the whole fiasco.

And beyond the manhood,

there was the damage it may have done

for the reputation and the power of the administration.

Fidel Castro had successfully rebuffed a first invasion of his country.

In order to protect Cuba from further American attacks,

he allied his country firmly with the Soviet Union.

In the future, it was to be Soviet soldiers,

and above all, nuclear missiles, that would guarantee the island's independence.

And thus, Cuba had become what the Americans feared the most.

An outpost for Soviet socialism, right on their doorstep.