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 and they did a revolution.

[in Russian] These guys were bound to become

either martyrs, or national heroes.

Una revolución!

-Fidel Castro! -[cheering]

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

Apocalypse.

[in German] Cuba will never bend its knee.

Today, the island of Cuba

is one of the last outposts of socialism in the world.

But immediately after Fidel Castro's revolution,

this was by no means predictable.

During his struggle against the dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista,

Castro expressly claimed not to be a communist.

It was not hammer and sickle he had fought for,

but to finally free his homeland from all outside influence.

So why did he authorize the presence of 43,000 Soviet soldiers on the island?

How did the United States' embargo begin, still in place today?

And how did Castro's friend, Che Guevara,

come to die alone and abandoned in the mountains of Bolivia?

Fidel Castro embodied the age-old dream

of a free and independent island,

a dream the Cubans have pursued for centuries.

[in Spanish] Cuba became independent very late,

in comparison to other Latin American countries,

but then with all the more force.

In less than a century, in 80 years,

it underwent four very intense revolutions.

That makes it unique in Latin America.

[in German] You have to keep in mind one thing.

They were independent, but only from the United States.

They pulled off this truly historic act of liberation on January 1st 1959.

They were successful, to this day.

Cuba only became an independent country in 1902,

and immediately fell under the influence of the United States.

The two countries are just 90 miles apart.

Cuba's exports, mainly sugar, headed for the American continent.

In exchange, American companies built up the island's infrastructure,

and controlled its economy.

No Cuban politicians dared to break with the US

until Fidel Castro began expropriating American companies in 1960.

And even though Castro kept repeating that he was not a communist,

his policies became increasingly radical.

[in German] This radicalization had not been expected by most people,

and I think this is one reason why Fidel Castro

was able to have the success he had.

The old upper classes were not afraid of the things that wound up happening.

They hadn't imagined that there would be a break with the United States.

The American government reacted by restricting sugar imports from Cuba.

It was a serious blow to Castro's economy.

Thousands of Cubans sought exile, most in the United States.

Castro's government, meanwhile, had to look for new trade partners.

In February 1960, Anastas Mikoyan,

a member of the Soviet politburo, visited the island.

It was the beginning of Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union.

[in Russian] The situation changed gradually, not overnight.

The relationship with the USSR was formed over a long time.

The Cubans had no choice because without the Soviet Union's support,

it would have been difficult to remain independent.

Fidel's brother, Raúl, and iconic revolutionary "Che" Guevara,

were both in favor of closer ties with Moscow.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was from Argentina,

and believed in the socialist world revolution.

He wanted to make Cuba a tropical model state for communism

and then export this communism, especially to the Third World.

Fidel Castro appointed him minister of industry,

and head of the central bank.

Guevara's qualifications:

he had written about communist economic theories before.

He was one of many improvised ministers in Fidel's government.

[in Spanish] Che was the only real communist in Cuba, of all the leaders.

He looked at me and said, "You know how I became President of the National Bank?"

I say, "I have no idea."

He said, "One time, I was sitting in meetings with Fidel,

and he asked for a dedicated communist, I thought, and I raised my hand."

"He was asking for a dedicated economist."

Che Guevara compensated for his lack of knowledge

with revolutionary zeal and commitment.

As minister of industry, he was known for often working 16 hours a day.

He allowed cameras to film him as he toured Cuba's fields and factories,

always hoping to inspire the people to work hard.

He was intelligent, very intelligent.

He taught Fidel a lot of things, Fidel depended on him.

Fidel wanted him to take over the Banco, Bank of Cuba.

He said, "You have to sign our new money!"

And that's he went C-H-E on every Cuban...

He said, "That's enough of my banking."

[in Spanish] Personally I didn't like him,

because he seemed to me like an Argentinian.

He was very arrogant,

but he was the only true revolutionary among all of them.

The Soviet Union provided Cuba with a loan, and other economic support.

This helped the island's economy to get back on track.

But the alliance with Moscow was cause for concern,

both among Cuban exiles and the US government.

Newly inaugurated US president John F Kennedy

had inherited a planned military operation

to topple Castro's regime from his predecessor,

and now had to decide whether to implement it.

The Bay of Pigs was going to be an attempt

to land a number of Cubans into a place in Cuba,

and then call upon the organization of American State,

use American troops and intervene.

This was the original Eisenhower programmer.

As it evolved when Kennedy took over in that same year in end of 1960,

Kennedy didn't want the US involvement,

didn't want to send the US Navy,

so he said, well, let the 1,200 Cubans fight it out.

After Kennedy gave his go-ahead,

1,334 heavily armed Cuban exiles landed on Cuba's south coast.

But the Bay of Pigs invasion failed and united Cubans behind Fidel Castro.

The state-controlled media used the occasion to vaunt Castro's merits

as the defender of national independence.

Relations with the United States seemed irreparably damaged.

And Fidel Castro declared himself, and Cuba, to be socialist.

[in Spanish] The majority had faith in this leader, in this messiah,

whose name was Fidel Castro, who had begun the revolution.

Even when they set up socialism in Cuba,

many people believed in it and followed it.

[in Spanish] With the victory at Playa Girón, we saw that it was possible,

that the revolution could win.

Of course, the enemy did not stay quiet.

They kept training and preparing themselves.

After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA changed its strategy.

They now planned to assassinate Fidel Castro.

To carry out this plan, they contacted several leading us Mafia figures.

These men had lost their lucrative casinos in Havana

through Castro's revolution.

They went to Mafia figures to try to kill Castro.

The reality is classic Mafia.

They took the government's money but didn't try to kill him.

Some of them were working with him as counter or double agents.

They hoped that by working with him, they would get his casinos back.

It didn't work. You don't succeed that way with Fidel Castro.

After failing to enlist the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro,

the CIA turned to Cuban exiles.

Many of them had lost everything

when they fled Cuba after Castro took power on the island.

And the CIA, as well as the White House, were growing desperate.

[Dezenhall] The Kennedy administration

was very much focused on getting rid of Castro,

but they also didn't want to go to war over it.

They did not want to start a world war,

so the idea was to do things such as what happened at the Bay of Pigs,

having small groups going and invade,

having the CIA try to poison Castro.

During this time, Fidel Castro lived well guarded in Havana's Hilton Hotel.

Having failed with all other plans before,

the CIA now tried to enlist Marita Lorenz,

who had had a love affair with Castro shortly after he took power.

If Castro's death came at the hands of a scorned former lover, they reasoned,

it could not possibly be traced back to Washington.

They said I'm the only one that has the keys to Fidel's suite, the uniform.

They said, "Would you go back? Can you go back? Will he accept you?"

I said, "Of course, yes. I didn't do anything bad to him."

And they said, "Would you go back and put these pills in his food?"

In February 1961, Marita Lorenz returned to Cuba.

In her possession were the CIA's poison pills.

Her CIA handlers waited in the lobby

as Fidel's bodyguards accompanied Marita to his suite.

Before I saw Fidel, I was so nervous being caught with the capsules.

I put them in a cold cream jar, Pond's, and I put them out in a bidet,

and they went down and down and down, slowly but surely.

I felt guilty having them on me.

If Fidel caught me with the pills, I could get killed.

He said, "Did you come back down to kill me?"

I said, "Yes." He said, "Here, kill me."

"There's my gun here."

He gave me the gun that was hanging over the lamp, a .45.

I said, "No I can't kill you. You didn't do anything to me."

"Why should I kill you? Yours is not my life to take."

And then we just hugged, made love and I start crying,

mostly out of fear because I didn't know what to do,

whether to beg him to stay or whether to run for it.

The CIA guys were downstairs in the lobby.

When I was upstairs, they thought I was killing Fidel,

and they were downstairs, reading their newspaper.

And I saw them, I went past them

and I was still crying like that,

and they thought I was crying because I killed him.

But I was crying because I was afraid of them.

And I got on a Cubana airline and went home.

Marita Lorenz returned to the United States,

and thus another covert CIA operation against Fidel Castro had failed.

It had began with the debacle of the Bay of Pigs landing.

Since then, it seemed that no matter what the CIA tried to topple him,

it only served to strengthen his position further.

The Cuban secret services became more efficient at repelling each attack,

and every minor victory was fully exploited

by Castro's propaganda machine.

The Kennedys failed so often because Cuban intelligence was so good,

they knew all the plots the second they were conceived.

There are stories of Fidel waiting on a jungle airstrip in Cuba

for an American assassin to secretly land there.

He would meet him at the airplane and say, "Are you here to kill me? Go, try it!"

He was there before they were there.

They had infiltrated so many of these groups

that there's no way we could've been successful.

Cuban agents time and again capture Cuban exiles

sent onto the island to conduct sabotage.

The Cuban propaganda machine

would whip up public fury about such attempts.

The slogan was "paredon": up against the wall.

However, no reliable statistics exist on how many people were executed.

[in Spanish] I participated in foiling three attempts.

One was by the CIA, and the other two we didn't know.

These attempts were realistic, they really could have killed Fidel.

I don't know if there were more than three real attempts.

In Cuba, they say there were 600 or 700 or so, which is nonsense.

It's not possible.

There is a Castro math if you will,

in terms of when you look at even his own speeches

where he will say that he survives so many assassination attempts,

another regime's officials will say, "No, it was 700, almost 750."

They can't even get the number straight.

Between assassination attempts and US-sanctioned sabotage,

the conflict between Cuba and the United States,

between Castro and Kennedy, escalated even further.

Castro threatened reprisals if the United States

didn't stop their assassination attempts.

[Brian Latell] Fidel knew that Kennedy was trying to kill him.

He said, "The American leadership should know

that if they continue to try to assassinate Cuban leaders,

the same thing could happen to them."

In addition to covert operations,

President Kennedy also applied economic pressure.

The United States extended their embargo against Cuba,

from just banning weapons sales

to include nearly all commercial enterprise.

Minister of industry Che Guevara set out once more

to inspire the Cuban people to work harder,

to make up for the embargo.

President Kennedy, however, made one exception, for himself.

The day before the embargo went into effect,

he had an aide buy every box of his favorite Cuban cigars

to be had in Washington, DC.

[Menier, in Spanish] Cuba is a poor country.

It always has been and always will be.

The embargo is logical.

If you intervene in a country's businesses,

like Fidel did with his expropriations of US firms,

thousands and thousands of them,

then of course they are going to react.

But the embargo should be in parentheses,

because if Cuba has dollars, it buys wherever it likes.

The main effect the embargo had

was to restrict Cuba's access to the American banking system.

Thus, trade with American companies came to a halt.

The rest of the world, and especially the socialist Warsaw Pact partners,

were not affected by the embargo.

This meant that the embargo alone

was not enough to bring down Fidel Castro.

As instructed by President Kennedy,

the US military planned a new invasion.

A full-size dry run of this was staged, and filmed, in 1962 in Puerto Rico.

The operation was called ORTSAC,

"Castro" spelled backwards.

[Menier, in Spanish] Fidel, and me too, thought there would be another invasion.

What chance did Cuba have of fighting them? None.

They would sweep over the island, they would have totally destroyed it.

But Cuba wouldn't have given up. Let me tell you, at that time, in 1962,

Cuba would not have surrendered.

We would all have died first, including myself.

He was afraid the next time

it wouldn't just be brave, young Cubans from Miami, intervening in Cuba,

it was going to be the American military,

American Rangers and the Airborne Divisions.

He was afraid he was going to be facing something that he knew could defeat him.

The only protection he conceived of, the only possible protection,

was to have Soviet forces on the island defending him.

Fidel Castro sent his minister for industry,

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, to Moscow.

Officially, it was to negotiate new trade contracts.

But behind the scenes, Guevara made a military pact

with Soviet prime minister, Nikita Khrushchev.

Soviet nuclear missiles were to be installed in Cuba.

They were to protect both the island and the Soviet Union.

The United States had already installed nuclear missiles in Turkey,

which could reach Moscow in a matter of minutes.

The Soviet missiles were intended to be a counter-measure.

As ordered by their general secretary,

the Soviet military leadership began to plan the operation in secret

and issued deployment orders to a nuclear armed division in the Ukraine.

[in Russian] In May of 1962, in divisional headquarters,

there was a rumor that we were going to be sent somewhere.

The soldiers were told that their deployment

would take them to the city of Anadyr, in remote Siberia.

As no feasible land route connected

the 43rd Guards Missile Division's home bases in the Ukraine with Anadyr,

the deployment would be via ship.

In may 1962, the division, along with all its equipment,

was loaded in secret onto almost 300 commercial ships.

They crossed the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

Once they were in the Atlantic, the soldiers realized

they were not going to Siberia after all, but to Cuba.

[in Russian] We really brought skis, coats, boots and hats with us.

When we arrived at the port in Cuba, and started to unload,

Cubans ran to see what we had brought.

They wondered why we had all those fur coats,

why we were unloading skis.

The Soviet soldiers had brought far more than winter coats and skis to Cuba.

Their cargo included 36 nuclear warheads,

as well as missiles and bombers

to deliver them to targets in the United States.

US spy planes discovered that Soviet shipments to Cuba had intensified

but not the reason behind this increase.

[Kurinnoy, in Russian] The Americans started flying over our ships.

We were transporting an automobile plant,

or that was the official story at least.

Other ships were carrying agricultural equipment.

The crew was in civilian clothes.

The Americans flew over us all the time, even at low levels.

At first, we were afraid of them. Then we stopped caring.

Altogether, the Soviet Union deployed some 43,000 soldiers in Cuba,

in almost total secrecy.

They set up a number of bases around the island.

Along with their nuclear cargo,

they also brought modern anti-aircraft weapons

to defend themselves.

The Cuban government, despite the secret nature of the operation,

gave the Soviet troops a warm welcome.

[Kurinnoy, in Russian] Posters were hanging everywhere:

"Nikita, Fidel. Amigos."

And we hung these posters, ourselves, too.

The Cubans were very kind, very interesting people.

They would give you everything.

They treated us like their brothers.

The Soviet missiles were to be made operational as soon as possible.

Each of the 36 atomic warheads deployed to Cuba

was equivalent to 50 times the power

of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In September 1962, the deployment was completed.

Most of the missiles were ready to launch.

Until now, the US government had only ascertained

that the Soviet Union had military advisors in Cuba.

The nuclear threat, however, remained unknown.

The Soviets looked at Kennedy as a young, naive,

didn't know what the hell he was doing in the world.

He says, "OK, we'll put some missiles in there and we'll show him."

On September 13th, 1962,

President Kennedy held a press conference.

A journalist asked how the USA would react if Cuba had nuclear missiles.

This country will do whatever must be done

to protect its own security...

[Brian Latell] It was a gamble by Khrushchev.

His plan and his hope

was that they could get the missiles into Cuba, secretly,

without the Americans knowing,

that they could get them up and running, they could become operational,

and then Khrushchev planned to travel to Cuba,

with Castro, I guess, at his side,

to announce to the world, but to the Americans,

"We are now at a position of nuclear parity with you."

But shortly before Khrushchev's visit,

an American spy plane photographed a missile site in Cuba.

The next day, President Kennedy was shown the photo.

At that point, neither he nor his advisors

knew the missiles were operational.

JFK had to face the most difficult decision of his presidency to date.

Kennedy met with his group of advisors.

It was called The Executive Committee, the EXCOMM.

And Kennedy met with them on the morning of October 16th in the White House,

and that's when most of these men found out

that the Soviets in fact, in collusion with the Cubans,

were in the process of developing nuclear weapons facilities in Cuba.

Once he saw that the Russians had introduced missiles into Cuba,

he decided that the security of the United States was at stake,

that this would change the balance of power,

that all the defenses of the US were oriented toward the Soviet Union,

now they had to be oriented toward Cuba.

Kennedy's advisors proposed a conflicting range of options.

His generals demanded an immediate invasion of Cuba,

or at least the bombardment of the missile sites,

preferably without a declaration of war to guarantee the surprise effect.

A naval blockade was also mentioned

as a less aggressive solution to stop further military deliveries.

But, according to international law, a blockade, too, was an act of war.

JFK's brother, attorney general Robert Kennedy,

was opposed to this.

He thought no action should be taken.

He believed the missiles were not yet operational

and, in any case, were not the Soviet Union's only nuclear threat

against the United States.

It was a moment when it could have been world atomic war,

and Robert Kennedy said,

"Can we do to Cuba

what Japan did to us at Pearl Harbor,

and can we live with that?"

American intelligence reports soon showed that the Soviets had deployed

their tried-and-tested medium-range missiles on Cuba.

This would allow them to hit most targets in the continental US

with a degree of accuracy that would be impossible

with their new and yet untested long-range missiles,

based in the Soviet Union itself.

Even with this apparent threat, Kennedy did not want to risk war.

But from a political point of view, his back was against the wall.

One month previously, he had promised an intervention

if such circumstances arose.

Numerous influential senators and government officials

also demanded an immediate attack on Cuba.

But Kennedy hesitated.

On October 22nd, 1962,

Fidel Castro received an official visitor from North Africa.

The president of Algeria and Fidel Castro

paraded in the streets of Havana.

Together, they demanded a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons.

Not a word was said about the Soviet Union's missiles in Cuba.

[in Spanish] In that moment, Fidel was willing to blow himself up,

because Fidel is a megalomaniac.

Sometimes, people don't understand this,

but he would rather die as a Latin American superhero

than live like...

The same day, Kennedy made the crisis official

in a television broadcast.

To halt this offensive build-up, a strict quarantine

on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba

is being initiated.

All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port,

will, if found to contain cargos of offensive weapons, be turned back.

The news shocked many Cubans.

The army prepared to defend the homeland.

Fear of war spread rapidly.

[Masetti, in Spanish] I was a child. My mother and father were never at home.

My father had been called upon for the Missile Crisis.

He even participated in interrogations.

And I remember that there was this climate of war

and we didn't really know what was happening.

In order to protect their nuclear missiles,

the Soviet army had installed its most advanced anti-aircraft defenses.

Their orders were clear: they could only return fire if America attacked.

[in Russian] It's hard to say what guided the military leaders of the United States,

why they began sending seven to ten spy planes over Cuba every day.

They believed we wouldn't shoot them down,

but they knew that we could.

But the Americans' reconnaissance flights

now confirmed that the missiles were operational.

Kennedy placed the us nuclear forces on DEFCON 2,

the second-highest alert.

Khrushchev, meanwhile, ordered his ships

to ignore the American quarantine.

The world was on the brink of nuclear war.

[in Russian] General Grechko commanded the aerial defense forces.

His nerves were frayed.

He ordered a US plane to be shot down.

We knew it would have very serious consequences.

An American plane was shot down and the pilot was killed.

The US and Soviet governments accused one another of wanting to start a war.

Behind the scenes, American and Soviet diplomats were working hard

to find a solution to the crisis.

Fidel Castro soon learned of these back-channel talks.

He felt betrayed that the great powers were negotiating without him.

[Latell] Castro told Khrushchev,

"If the Americans intervene,

if they do a military intervention in Cuba,

you should not wait for them to attack you.

As soon as they intervene in Cuba,

you should unleash the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal

against American targets."

Apocalypse.

Sirens, air-raid shelters, gas masks.

The world prepared for an inevitable nuclear war.

[in German] I clearly remember how the normal people

were afraid of war.

Because Kennedy himself had threatened to use nuclear weapons.

We must never forget that.

And, yes, Khrushchev was a hot-head, too.

On October 27th, 1962,

Soviet prime minister Khrushchev proposed a deal to President Kennedy.

He was prepared to withdraw his nuclear missiles from Cuba.

In exchange, the USA would lift the quarantine,

and promise never to invade Cuba.

The US also had to withdraw its missiles from Turkey,

but was allowed to keep this part of the agreement secret.

Kennedy accepted the deal.

The threat of a nuclear war was over,

but Fidel Castro felt he had lost out.

[in Russian] We agreed to remove missiles from Cuba.

Fidel and the Cuban people were not happy.

"You brought the missiles here, and now you suddenly take them back?"

[in French] Castro, with his revolutionary zeal,

later called Khrushchev a faggot.

I think it's a term we're not supposed to use any more,

but he said it; it's "maricón" in Spanish.

In order to appease Fidel Castro after the missiles were removed,

Khrushchev invited him to the Soviet Union

on an official visit in the summer of 1963.

The Cuban leader was given a rousing welcome

like no other statesman before him.

Castro travelled around the Soviet Union,

from Moscow to Leningrad to the remote steppes of southern Russia,

and distant Siberia.

Castro was showered with presents, including traditional tribal clothing,

and even a baby bear.

Everywhere he went, the propaganda cameras were there to film him.

The vodka flowed, and honors rained down.

[in Russian] Fidel was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union,

and given the Order of Lenin in gold.

He was named an Honorary Doctor of Science

at Moscow State University.

Overall, the trip was triumphant, and Khrushchev managed to soften

the negative impression of his prior decision.

Their relationship in general was very warm.

Hero of the Soviet Union

was the highest order the country could bestow.

As a show of both acquiescence and defiance,

Fidel would go on to wear it proudly for many years,

but only when meeting with Soviet officials.

One year later, it was the industry minister,

Ernesto "Che" Guevara's turn to be invited to the Soviet Union.

He thought Khrushchev had been mistaken

to back down during the missile crisis.

Guevara dreamed of worldwide revolution, not of realpolitik.

[in French] Curiously, there was a huge difference in interpretation.

Guevara thought that the Soviets

were not the idols of revolution any more,

that they didn't do enough to help the third world.

US president Kennedy, meanwhile,

sought to free the Cuban exiles still in prison on the island

after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

Castro was willing to let them go, for a steep price.

[Suárez-Rivas, in Spanish] Castro made us pay.

Those that he considered "lumpen" cost $25,000.

The middle class cost $50,000.

For the richer men, $100,000 dollars.

And for each of the three leaders of the brigade,

$500,000.

After sending over $53 million US worth of food and medicine to Cuba,

the remaining members of Brigade 2506

were allowed to return to the United States

where they were welcomed by President Kennedy

on December 29th, 1962.

[Rodriguez] I believe that at the Orange Bowl,

when he received our flag in custody,

and he promised to return that flag very soon in a free Cuba,

that's when he did sign his death sentence. He did mean it.

He opened the Armed Forces of the United States for the Brigade.

The idea was to use us in the new invasion of Cuba.

Despite this promise, however,

Kennedy did not authorize further invasion plans for Cuba.

Instead, he tried to explore ways for the US to co-exist with a Cuba

under Fidel Castro.

But it was complicated without official diplomatic relations.

Kennedy heard about the imminent visit to Cuba by a French journalist.

[Daniel, in French] He sat down at that famous oval desk,

and I was across from him, fascinated and intimidated,

and he immediately said,

"They tell me you're going to Cuba." So I said, "Yes."

President Kennedy saw Jean Daniel

as an opportunity to send Fidel Castro a message.

[Daniel, in French] He says, "You know, what you must understand,

something that Castro doesn't understand,

and something that American people especially don't understand."

"For me, communism is not my enemy. I don't give a damn.

I'm not a communist, of course,

but for me, Castro's relations with communists don't matter.

So what does matter? War and peace."

The next day, Jean Daniel flew to Havana.

But on arrival, he found out

that his interview with Fidel Castro was postponed.

It would be weeks before he could meet the Cuban leader.

On November 20th, 1963,

Fidel Castro suddenly showed up at the journalist's hotel.

He was aware of Daniel's meeting with Kennedy.

[Daniel, in French] We're across from each other,

and I see Castro, incredibly curious.

He kept saying, "How did he say that?

Did he emphasize that?

And what did he call me?

What was he saying about me?"

The conversation went on until dawn.

The Frenchman had the feeling

Castro could be interested in a deal with Kennedy.

The two men met again the next day.

[in French] They were serving a big platter of seafood

when the telephone rang.

It was the president of Cuba, Osvaldo Dorticos.

He said, "Seriously wounded?" "Yes."

"Very seriously?" "Yes."

"Call me back."

Castro hung up and he said,

"It's very serious."

That was the first thing he said. And then, while looking at me,

"They're going to say it was us. They'll say we did it."

It was the 22nd of November 1963.

President Kennedy was on an official visit to Dallas, Texas.

At 12:30, gunshots rang out.

John F Kennedy was fatally wounded.

The shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald,

had been in contact with the Cuban embassy in Mexico.

He basically told the embassy personnel, who are really Cuban intelligence,

that he'd kill Kennedy for the revolution

'cause he knew Kennedy was coming to Texas,

and his exact words were, "I'll kill that bastard Kennedy."

Oswald had lived in the Soviet Union for more than two years.

He was a political agitator more than a hitman.

Whatever chances there may have been to ease tensions

between Castro and Kennedy,

none exist under Kennedy's successor Johnson.

Cuba and the United States were, and would remain, sworn enemies.

On December 11th, 1964,

Ernesto "Che" Guevara reiterated this in a speech at the United Nations.

But his criticism extended both to the US and the Soviet Union,

whom he saw as having strayed from the course of world revolution.

[in French] Che Guevara starts opposing Castro.

It began when he questioned if the Soviet Union's imperialism

was really that different from American imperialism.

[in Spanish] Che Guevara was, as we say in Cuban slang,

a tree that cast a large shadow over Fidel.

Che Guevara was a man who knew exactly

what communism was in practice.

On February 24th, 1965,

Guevara attended a conference in Algiers.

He again severely criticized the Soviet Union

and called for global revolution.

It would be his last public speech.

On returning to Cuba, Guevara was coolly welcomed

by Fidel Castro and Cuban president Dorticos.

[in Spanish] They went to a house in Havana, and met for 40, or 42 hours.

When he came out,

Che was no longer Comandante, no longer a minister,

he was practically nothing.

After resigning from office, Che Guevara simply disappeared.

For months, no one knew where he was.

When asked about his comrade and former second man,

Castro said that Guevara would reappear when he was ready.

In secret, Che Guevara continued to work on spreading revolutionary ideas,

particularly in the Third World, and above all, in Africa.

He envisioned many small-scale revolutions,

aimed at drawing the US and its allies into wars that they could not win.

Guevara's first objective was the Congo,

where he wanted to support the Simba, a communist rebel group.

[in Spanish] The Congo idea is related to Che's idea

that war should be developed on several fronts.

He had the experience of the Sierra Maestra,

of how Fidel created several fronts in Cuba

and forced the enemy to disperse its forces.

[in Spanish] It's what he meant when he said, "One, two, three, many Vietnams."

It was a revolutionary slogan from an unforgettable historic moment.

But Guevara's revolutionaries in the Congo

came up against serious difficulties.

The rebels willingly accepted the weapons he had brought from Cuba,

but they were wary of Guevara, as he was not Congolese.

And he, in turn, underestimated the complexity of the tribal rivalries

that divided the rebel groups.

[Masetti, in Spanish] Fidel Castro knew perfectly well

that it would have been very difficult for the guerrilla movements to succeed,

because they were inspired by a false interpretation of the Cuban revolution.

They thought that with a few men and much determination,

a few military maneuvers in the mountains and the cities,

they could take power.

Disease and fierce fighting decimated Guevara's revolutionaries.

In November 1965,

only six out of twelve men were left alive.

[in Spanish] When Che left Africa,

he was very sick.

He didn't go to Cuba.

He went to Prague, Czechoslovakia.

There's a place there called Karlovy Vary.

And there was a Cuban doctor with him.

He didn't want to go back to Cuba.

An emissary from Fidel Castro

finally managed to persuade Guevara to return to Cuba.

Once back, he immediately turned his sights on the next country

where he could stage a revolution. Bolivia.

This poor South American country, he reasoned,

would be fertile ground for a revolution.

And once this happened,

the United States would have to intervene,

triggering a popular uprising.

On November 11th, 1966,

Ernesto "Che" Guevara flew to La Paz under a false identity.

He was accompanied by a veteran team of Cuban revolutionaries.

[Alarcón, in Spanish] One of our main objectives was to study Quechua

so we could communicate with the region's indigenous people.

Fidel had promised

to do everything

to guarantee our safety

in Bolivia.

He told us we were going to fight

for 10 to 15 years, at least.

Because we had to liberate all of South America.

Fidel Castro promised the support of the Bolivian communist party.

But the party did not want a civil war.

The Soviet Union, too, declined all aid.

In the end, Guevara was forced to move his rebel group into the remote jungle.

Here, again, the guerilleros received no support.

And the local population did not even speak Quechua,

the language they had learned.

[in Spanish] When we got to Bolivia,

95% of everything Fidel had promised had disappeared.

Firstly, we didn't go to the Alto Beni region.

As if by magic, everything had changed.

Despite everything, Che Guevara ordered attacks

against the Bolivian army.

His men succeeded in winning several skirmishes.

When the Bolivian president learned who he was dealing with in the Andes,

he asked for help from the United States.

Guevara's plan to provoke a US invasion seemed to be working.

In 1967, the CIA believed that Che Guevara had been killed in Africa.

Until the day that they captured in Bolivia

Regis Debrais, the French journalist,

and Ciro Bustos, the Argentinian newspaper guy.

They were the ones who confirmed that Che Guevara was in Bolivia.

Once that was confirmed, and of course,

the Bolivian army had very little training in anti-guerrilla operations,

they had no expertise whatsoever,

that's when they immediately sent a special forces unit from Panama.

But the United States did not send troops, only CIA agents.

They assisted the Bolivian army in tracking down Guevara's group.

On October 8th, 1967, they closed in on their target.

1,800 Bolivian soldiers surrounded the guerilleros.

Che was wounded in the leg and taken prisoner.

Guevara was interrogated by Felix Rodriguez,

a CIA agent, Cuban exile,

and a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

[Rodriguez] I stood in front of him and said,

"Che Guevara, I'd like to talk with you."

He looks at me very arrogantly.

"Nobody talks to me, nobody interrogates me."

I said, "Commander, I didn't come here to interrogate you.

Our ideas are different, but I admire you.

You used to be head of a state in Cuba,

and you are like this because you believe in your ideas,

even though I know they are mistaken."

I just came here to talk to you."

So he looked to me for about 30 seconds, 45 seconds

to see if I will laugh. When he saw I was serious, he said,

"Can you untie me, can I sit?"

So I asked for a soldier from the outside to come in

and I told him, "Untie Commander Guevara."

He looked at me. I said, "Untie Commander Guevara."

So he went down, he untied him,

and we had little bench that was there and we sat him in there.

It was kind of hard because he had been tied down for a long time,

so was hard for him to stretch and be able to...

But we sat him there and then we started talking.

Felix Rodriguez claims that his mission

was to ensure Guevara's survival.

The CIA was aware of the divisions between Che and Fidel Castro,

and wanted to exploit it.

But the Bolivian president, in overall command of the operation,

ordered Guevara executed.

So I looked at him and say,

"Is there anything you want for your family if I can pass the message?"

So I will say in a sarcastic way he said,

"Well, you can tell Fidel that he will soon see

a triumphant revolution in America."

And then he his changed expression and he said,

"You can tell my wife to remarry and try to be happy."

He approached me, we shook hands.

The wound in his leg didn't seem to bother him anymore.

We shook hands, then we embraced,

and he stood at attention, thinking I was the one that would shoot him.

I left the room, and Mario Terán was right next to Lt Perez.

I said, "This is an order from your high command

to eliminate the prisoner.

Don't shoot from here up, shoot from here down,

because he is supposed to die of combat wounds."

On October 9th, 1967,

Che Guevara was executed by a Bolivian soldier.

Nine days later, on October the 18th,

Cuban television announced the news.

Fidel Castro made a martyr out of his former revolutionary companion.

"The children of Cuba," he said, "should strive to be like Che."