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- [00:01]
Narrator
It's May 14, 2002, late afternoon. We're in the great hall at the University of Havana. An expectant audience talk excitedly amongst themselves. There's not an empty seat anywhere. The university is Fidel Castro's alma mater, the place where his rise to power and notoriety began nearly 60 years earlier. Back then, Fidel had a reputation as a sharp dresser. That was before he settled into his signature look. The green army fatigues, the beard, the cigars. But this evening, the classic costume has been discarded. Instead, Fidel is dressed rather like he used to in his student days. A smart dark suit, bright white shirt, a sober, tasteful tie. As he enters the hall, the audience breaks out into applause. But instead of heading to the podium for one of his filibustering specials, he takes a seat in the front row. For once, he is not the headline act. Rather incredibly, that distinction belongs to a US president, even though he left office 21 years ago. The presence of Jimmy Carter is a big deal. He's the first POTUS, current or former, to visit Cuba since 1928, when he was in the White House, Carter had tried unsuccessfully to permanently reset relations with Cuba. He's still committed to the cause, though that doesn't mean reading from Fidel's script. It's 6pm When Carter begins his speech, broadcast live to the whole island. In heavily accented Spanish, he talks of offering a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. He assures them that they share a common goal of ending the US embargo that has been in place for more than 40 years. But then the speech takes a detour. Carter criticizes the Cuban government's record on human rights. My nation is hardly perfect, he says. Still, guaranteed civil liberties offer every citizen an opportunity to change unjust laws. Fidel watches on impassively. Then Carter mentions by name a group of Cuban pro democracy activists. They've recently compiled a vast petition. Every signature tells the same story. The Cuban people want change. A world famous politician stood in Havana proselytizing democracy and civil rights. Nobody has seen or heard anything like this before. Well, not since Fidel did exactly that half a century earlier. When Carter finishes, Castro smiles. He says something bland and diplomatic. He then whisks his guest off to watch the baseball. Precisely what's going on in the Cuban leader's mind is impossible to say. But one thing is for sure. To Fidel Castro, that pro democracy petition isn't worth the paper it's written on. From the NOUSA podcast network. This is the final part of the Fidel Castro story. And this is real dictators. In our last episode, Fidel Castro's rule of Cuba looked doomed. The collapse of the Soviet Union at the start of the 1990s devastated the Cuban economy for 30 years. Enormous subsidies from Moscow had financed Castro's flagship policies, especially universal healthcare and education, the pride of the revolution. Now Cuba faces economic ruin. Though Castro rebrands the crisis a special period. Backed into a corner, the dictator is forced to improvise. He opens up Cuba to tourists and overseas investors. In a way, he's winding the clock back to a time the revolution claims to have eradicated long ago. While millions of ordinary Cubans struggle for daily essentials, foreign pleasure seekers indulge themselves in luxury resorts and private restaurants. Such are the dire straits of the Cuban economy. Castro even legalizes the US Dollar. He also makes an effort to alter his image. His trademark green fatigues are sometimes replaced with stylish dark business suits. He's trying to tell the world that Fidel Castro, the ancient revolutionary, is a modern. Throughout the 90s, the Cuban people experienced scarcity and hardship as never before. Tens of thousands of them make desperate attempts to flee the island. A staggering proportion die in the process. At several points, Castro seems to be in genuine danger of losing power. Riots break out, anti Castro graffiti appears in various cities. He has never been this vulnerable. Yet the maximum leader holds on. Then, as the 20th century draws to a close, Fidel makes a new friend. His name is Hugo Chavez, a young, pugnacious politician from Venezuela. Fueled by populist rhetoric, Chavez is elected president of his country in 1998. He's an authoritarian, preaching both socialism and nationalism. He also lambasts US Power. He compares President George W. Bush to Hitler and describes Halloween as a form of imperialist terror designed to frighten people into submission. Unsurprisingly, he lists Fidel Castro as one of his great political inspirations. Castro likes the cut of the young man's jib. In no time at all, the grizzled veteran and the firebrand apprentice become thick as thieves. On the occasion of his idol's 75th birthday, Chavez invites Castro to a resort in the Venezuelan rainforest. Here, he serenades his guest with a lusty rendition of Happy Birthday backed by a string quartet. In all my life, says Fidel to the watching journalists, I've never received this kind of tribute. Well, quite. Michael Bustamante, associate professor at the University of Miami.
- [08:06]
Michael Bustamante
By all accounts, the affection between the two was real. Chavez, I think, saw Castro as a kind of a statesman and strategic mind that he could learn from and Indications are that he did. But it also shows to some extent Castro also learning lessons, right? I mean, he didn't advise Chavez to duplicate the Cuban experience. Exactly right. They maintain a kind of a beast, depending on your point of view, a semblance of a multi party system.
- [08:34]
Narrator
Chavez repays Castro's guidance with something far more lucrative. Journalist and author Anthony De Palma Chavez.
- [08:43]
Anthony De Palma
Looked to Fidel very much as a guide, a mentor, even a father figure. For Fidel, it was a manifestation of his own aura and his attractiveness that he had a country like Venezuela and someone like Chavez following him. More importantly, Chavez had oil and money. And when the Soviet Union was no longer providing that extra money, the Venezuelans were. The Venezuelans were sending so much oil that Cuba could sell some of it and use that for foreign currency that they could then use to buy food.
- [09:25]
Narrator
Venezuelan oil helps pull Cuba out of the darkest depths of economic catastrophe. The relationship also burnishes Castro's reputation as a political player. That's crucial for many reasons.
- [09:39]
Anthony De Palma
When he was at the Kremlin, standing next to Khrushchev or Brezhnev, he wasn't the leader of a Caribbean island. He was a international global symbol of anti imperialism, of revolution, of standing up to the powers. If something like ego could be measured, Fidel would have set a record. Because his ego needed to be fed insatiably. He needed to be the center of attention, he needed to receive the accolades of his people and people around the world. And there was never, never enough.
- [10:22]
Narrator
Undoubtedly, Fidel still commands support in Cuba. To his hardcore base, he is the embodiment of national self worth. Less zealous supporters simply can't conceive of life without him. After nearly half a century of dominance, the notion of a Cuba devoid of Castro seems like the sky without the sun. Many of course despise him. Others merely regard him as a relic. Long years of extreme hardship, the authoritarian practices of his regime, the inexorable passage of time, it's all eroded his appeal to the younger generation. But fallen heroes of the revolution, long dead and thus forever young, are embraced, none more so than Che Guevara. Cuban writer Orlando Luis Pardo lassa.
- [11:24]
Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso
In the 90s and in the 2000s, many young people were tattooing Ernesto Che Guevara in their skins. The message was pretty subversive. If Che Guevara were alive, the revolution would be much more humanistic. I doubt so. If Che Guevara were alive, the economy would be much better and open. I really doubt so. If Che Guevara were alive, Fidel Castro would not be the master of puppets and an old guy that we all don't like anymore, because we still think of Che Guevara as a young man that could take a guitar and sing a song with us. I doubt so, but still, many of my friends, instead of having a tattoo of the revolution or communism, Fidel Castro or anything like that, they had a tattoo of Ernesto Che Guevara on their skins.
- [12:13]
Narrator
Orlando and his friends are part of a much broader movement, one that wants change and that directly challenges Fidel's preeminence. In Cuba's towns and cities, pockets of independent journalists and activists stirring the most famous individual is Osvaldo Paya. By the turn of the millennium, Paya is the head of an initiative known as the Varela Project. The movement seeks democratic reforms, freedom of speech, free elections, human rights. Paya isn't a paramilitary freedom fighter. His tactics are in strict accordance with the Constitution of 1976. That's the document that underpins Fidel's rule. According to the Constitution, any citizen can recommend reforms to the National Assembly. But there's a catch. They must be supported by a petition with at least 10,000 signatures. In Castro's Cuba, that requires a Herculean effort. But Paya and his associates pull it off. By May 2002, the petition is complete with 11,000 signatures. They deliver it to the authorities. Just two days later, Jimmy Carter arrives on the island. This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. On that remarkable evening at Havana University, Castro is forewarned that Carter intends to mention Cuba's reform activists. He accepts it with apparent equanimity. He doesn't cause a scene. Duly, Carter's visit ends. He returns to the United States, at which point Fidel makes his move. On June 12, 2002, the streets of Havana are jam packed. People walk shoulder to shoulder, a million of them in total, bearing banners. They sing and shout in unison, chanting political slogans. This isn't a protest in favor of reform. It's a display of fealty to the revolution, to communism, and to Fidel. For around 30 minutes, El Comandante is protesting Alongside them, he paces slowly down the Malecon. After a mile or so, he comes to a raised platform. He clambers up and turns to face the multitudes. It's the kind of scene we've witnessed over and over these last 50 years. The crowd roars its acclaim. Fidel, Cuban flag in hand, roars back at them. Long live socialism. Down with the lies. His messaging is transparent. I'll see your 11,000 signatures and raise you 1 million of my disciples. How many of those present are willing, passionate supporters? Who? Impossible to say. But that's never been the point. As far as Fidel is concerned, on this island, might is right. Fidel now proposes hastily written amendments to the Constitution. One holds that socialism shall be forever and always the Cuban system of government. Another declares that capitalism will never return to Cuba. The process of introducing the amendments involves what's called a referendum. But there are no polling stations or ballot boxes. Rather, officials and government supporters go door to door collecting signatures, a conscious imitation of the reform activists. Consequently, victory is a foregone conclusion. The amendments pass with the backing of 99% of the people, a suspiciously overwhelming endorsement. The reform movement is stopped in its tracks. Over the next few months, the issue recedes into the background. Then Fidel goes in for the kill. In the spring of 2003, 75 journalists and free speech advocates are apprehended by State Security. A majority of them have helped to organize the reform petition. Osvaldo Paya himself is left alone, but he and all other Cuban activists have been put on notice.
- [17:50]
Anthony De Palma
There is a clear message that if you get to be too strong or too vocal, you, you can be eliminated. They make sure that there is no ability for people to organize. They allow the Cubans to express themselves more, but only on an individual basis. So you've got individual opposition coming up, but nothing that coalesces in any way strong enough to be any kind of a threat to the regime, which is pretty firmly ensconced in power in Havana.
- [18:24]
Narrator
The regime intends this to be a show of strength. Fidel's strength. The old lion can still roar, but from the outside, the so called Black Spring of 2003 looks more like a sign of weakness. Fidel continued to occupy every square inch of the island around the world. Castro and Cuba are still synonymous. Yet the extreme difficulties of the special period have loosened his grip. Independent thinkers have grown emboldened. In 2006, the year of his 80th birthday, billboards appear across the island. They read, Fidel is a country. To some he is. But the sloganeering reeks of desperation. And Castro's opponents have slogans of their own. That same year, people across Cuba watch on TV as the national baseball team plays a game in Puerto Rico. Cuba, Fidel and baseball have strong ties. He's known to be a big fan. And the Cuban side's doctor is Antonio Castro, one of the dictator's sons. At one point during the coverage, the picture cuts to a spectator in the crowd. He's holding up a sign, Abajo Fidel. Down with Fidel. The very next day, the government stages another demonstration in Havana. The United States is blamed for the lone protester in Puerto Rico. That Cubans should be exposed to such tawdry capitalist tricks in their own homes is an intolerable insult to Fidel and the revolution. All this over one man and his homemade sign. Meanwhile, Fidel is pushing a campaign he calls the Battle of Ideas. Its aim is to instill the revolutionary spirit into young people who never knew the glory years of the 60s and 70s. There are marches and parades. State officials go door to door instructing people on correct behavior. That includes everything from vociferously denouncing Yankee imperialism in public to installing energy saving light bulbs. At the center of the campaign, of course, is Fidel himself, Professor Lilian Guerra.
- [21:06]
Lilian Guerra
He started appearing on national television with a campaign to promote the use of much more efficient pressure cookers. Okay. You know, I think that perhaps he wasn't at his most brilliant in those years. Maybe he did have some moments where he questioned himself towards the end of his life, coupled with a weakness of power. But prior to that, Fidel wanted to be in control of everything. And he thought that he was. That was the nature of the problem, or one of them.
- [21:39]
Narrator
At this particular moment, Fidel's biggest problem is the march of time. In 2001, then, aged 75, Castro had fallen over in public. He got to his feet and brushed it off with a half joke. Three years later, it happens again. This time it's serious. He breaks his left kneecap and right arm. It's obvious to anyone, Fidel, the fastidious micromanager and inexhaustible human dynamo, is powering down.
- [22:21]
Anthony De Palma
He basically was working all the time as a demigod would. I mean, he was involved in everything. He was involved in deciding the color of the uniform for the military. He was involved in trying to increase the production of milk. He was there selecting which cow was going to be bred with which. At that point, he was still wearing his uniform. He still had the beard. He no longer had the cigar. But it didn't matter. Everybody still imagined him with the cigar. So he really became a meme before there were memes. And I think he regretted the fact that he got old. And I can remember very clearly he stumbled coming off of a stage. And that was the moment when Cubans and everybody else said, well, maybe he's not gonna last forever.
- [23:19]
Narrator
On July 26, 2006, Fidel has a busy schedule. On this day, 53 years ago, he led a doomed attack on a military barracks, the event cited as the start of the Cuban Revolution. This year, as every year, Castro leads the commemorations. He kicks off the day with an early morning speech in the city of Bayamo in the far east of Cuba. At this time of day, he's safe from the ferocious July sun. Still, he's clearly not on good form. From Bayamo, he travels the short distance to Olguin. Another speech about the everlasting glory of the revolution. Yet again, Fidel's performance is perfunctory. He's irritable and pained. Once that's done, the Maximum leader is taken to an aeroplane. He's to be flown to Havana next for a final ceremonial event. The plane takes off. Fidel grumbles in his seat. At some point during the flight, he succumbs to acute pain. His blood. He clutches his stomach. There's no doctor on board. Perhaps because the flight is relatively short, just 450 miles, so fidelity. Three weeks shy of his 80th birthday has to ride it out. The pilot is forced to make an urgent landing. Castro is rushed to hospital. His diagnosis is alarming. He has a perforated intestine caused by diverticulitis, an excruciating abdominal complaint. The next day, he goes under the knife. The operation is unsuccessful. Among the Cuban leadership, the atmosphere is grave. No announcement is made. But Cubans know something is amiss. Fidel is absent from the airwaves. Observant citizens in Havana notice the racing of white government cars between official buildings. On July 31, Fidel lies in his hospital bed. Nobody knows whether he'll pull through, but gossip is spreading. The government feels the need to take control of the situation. That evening, Castro's spokesman makes a live TV address to the nation. Fidel is to take a prolonged break from his duties. It's stressed that the absence is only temporary. But over the last half century, the Cuban people have become experts at reading between the lines. Citizens around the country try to adjust themselves to the news. After 47 years in power, Fidel Castro is out of the Picture.
- [26:39]
Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso
Suddenly, the fact that he was hospitalized and it was being announced to the people, it meant that probably he was going to die. And it was very frightening. They started mobilizing the army. Several of my friends were taken to the. It's called the military reserve. And so it was kind of a strange fear, one that some chaos could come to the Cuban society. So that paranoia instilled into the Cuban people from the Cold War, I think resurfaced at that moment in 2006.
- [27:08]
Narrator
There's evidence that Fidel had suffered from painful intestinal problems since the 1970s. Perhaps his ailments spurred his intense interest in medical science. In the 1980s, he had added the secrets of longevity to his list of obsessive interests. An impressive biotech research facility was established in Cuba, headed by various members of the Castro family. Fidel himself can and does lecture for hours about its work. Over the years, Cubans have heard whispers about the leader's supposed ill health. Like every other facet of his life, it's difficult to separate truth from fiction. It's certainly the case that he gave up cigars sometime in the late 1980s. Why is unclear. In subsequent years, there have been rumors of strokes and heart scares. Whatever the prior state of his health, in 2006, he reaches crisis point. The failed surgery of July is followed by numerous other operations. None of them improves his condition. He develops stomach swelling and blood poisoning. Castro's pride complicates the prognosis. His resistance to have a colostomy bag fitted forces the surgeons to try complex and risky procedures. Despite the severity of his situation, he does not die. Slowly, his condition improves, aided by the very best health care available in Cuba. But there's no getting around it. Fidel Castro is fatally diminished.
- [28:54]
Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso
I can say that as a critic of Fidel Castro, he felt like a titan. A man in his 60s, still handsome. But suddenly what we saw was like a living corpse. It was painful to see Fidel Castro like that. We had somehow embraced unconsciously the idea that the revolution and the party and Fidel were immortal. And by extension, by proxy, all the Cuban people somehow was also young and full of life. And suddenly, it was not true.
- [29:26]
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- [29:44]
Narrator
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- [29:50]
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- [29:57]
Narrator
He hangs on to life, but not to power. In February 2008, he announces that he is to step down for good. Technically, the decision of who should replace him is in the gift of the National Assembly. But Fidel's wishes are known. His brother Raul is Cuba's first new leader in 49 years, a spring chicken of 76.
- [30:26]
Lilian Guerra
Well, Raul has had some struggles. I mean, he was an alcoholic for a big chunk of his early years in the revolution. Raoul has been probably erroneously portrayed as some kind of family man, because that's the image projected of him. The only guy that we saw in photographs with his kids, with his wife was Raoul. We didn't have the equivalent for Fidel. So I think Raul was assigned a certain image that was not necessarily in sync with who he was, but that was the image that he projected publicly. Ultimately, you know, when Raul does take the command in 2006, he immediately ensures that Fidel's people will be marginalized. The buddies that Raoul still has, three of them, who are all in their 90s, and they are the ones that he trusted from the beginning. They have consolidated what is today not a grassroots dictatorship. It's a traditional military dictatorship in which the military controls the economy and in which the military benefits from that control.
- [31:30]
Narrator
Fidel is gone, at least in theory. Residents of Havana see him out and about, pacing around in tracksuits and night trainers, AK47 wielding guards close by. His continued presence in the media is even more conspicuous.
- [31:50]
Michael Bustamante
He kind of kept showing up. He started writing a column in Cuba's Communist Party newspaper. His speeches always tended to be somewhat improvised and rambling, but these lacked a kind of coherence in a special way. At times. At other times, they were very sharp and very clearly rebukes of some of the decisions that his own brother was making, Right? So he made his voice heard, you know, even when he was off stage.
- [32:19]
Narrator
Fidel lingers like background radiation. Publicly, Raoul welcomes his brother's inability to disappear. But Fidel's unfiltered contributions are sometimes a distraction.
- [32:33]
Lilian Guerra
He had been so surrounded by yes men that it's only when he has handed the baton to Raoul and he doesn't have all the power that he suddenly gets interviewed by foreign journalists and then there are a couple of slips that he makes. One was to admit that there had been an official persecution of homosexuals and that perhaps these camps that they were held at from 1964 to when they started to 1969, maybe that was a mistake. You know, after he made a couple of slips like this, suddenly foreign journalists weren't allowed to hang out with him anymore.
- [33:12]
Narrator
Though still immovably present, Fidel is no longer the man who tells the wind which way to blow. His island, his Castroland, is slipping from his grasp. One of his former bodyguards leaves Cuba for the United States. The stories he brings with him make headlines around the world. He claims Fidel leads a double life. He has multiple homes and enjoys limitless luxuries beyond the grasp of ordinary Cubans. It's also claimed that Castro is among the world's biggest crooks. He works with drug traffickers to send Colombian narcotics into the U.S. such claims are not new. For many years, it's been suggested that Castro either knows about or is actively involved in drug smuggling. Some suggest the illegal revenue helped fund his foreign adventures in places like Angola. Others say that Fidel takes a giant cut of the profits as a gift to himself. In 2006, Forbes magazine guesstimates that he commands a fortune of $900 million. Whatever the case, the bodyguard alleges that Castro isn't motivated by money. Flooding the United States with drugs was primarily a way for Fidel to corrupt and destabilize American society. Other claims by the bodyguard paint Castro's life as an endless sequence of oddness. He receives frequent gifts from fellow anti American strongmen. Cases of wine from the President of Algeria, pots of Iraqi jam from Saddam Hussein. Every day, Fidel's clothes are apparently collected by a car and driven to a government facility. There they washed, dried, ironed and scanned for radioactive contamination. Being supreme leader for half a century can do strange things to a man. Further peeks behind the curtain are provided by the ex girlfriends of Fidel's sons. One sells camcorder footage of life at the Castro residence to a US TV station. Scenes from the secret life of Castro show Fidel in his night clothes. There was no mad excess here, no dictator chic decor. It's all just very bourgeois, the precise thing he's meant to despise. But the sale of the home movie represents something more than merely a glimpse of Fidel. The domesticated Castro once thrived on his control of the media. But his rapid decline coincides with the Rapid rise of new technology. The digital wild west is a bewildering new landscape. In the age of the Internet, the Castro brothers struggle to find their bearings. Until his late 20s, Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso works as a research scientist. He's a biochemist, a scientific field of enormous interest to Fidel. But it's the new technology of the Internet that changes Orlando's life and puts him on the radar of Cuba's surveillance state. In the late 90s, Orlando was exchanging emails with friends who've left Cuba worms, as Fidel calls such people. When the authorities discover these contacts, Orlando is dismissed from his research center. Suddenly frozen out of one career, he switches to his other passion, writing. Before long, he's part of a young group of independent bloggers in Cuba. That's a radical move. Internet access is restricted and monitored. To write their blogs, they frequently use resources at foreign embassies or buy access on the black market. Orlando, like many of his peers, has one particular subject that riles the state Security Fidel Castro.
- [37:39]
Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso
I'm fascinated by the name of Fidel Castro. I wanted to talk about Fidel Castro while he was alive because Fidel Castro was talking to me during 40 years. So it was like an urgency. Let's talk and let's speak about Fidel Castro in good terms, bad terms, ironical terms. Sometimes talking a little about how a man can create a nation to his image and likeness. So sometimes was almost like a humanizing the dictator and not so much only criticizing him.
- [38:13]
Narrator
In November 2009, Orlando is in central Havana. He's with a fellow independent blogger, a young woman named Joanne Sanchez. A black car draws up next to them. Three men leap from the vehicle. Dressed in plain clothes, they don't identify themselves. They grab hold of Orlando and Yoani as they're bundled into the back of the car, Yoani shouts for help. The men are state security officers. And what follows is terrifying.
- [38:50]
Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso
There was a lot of physical violence, especially against me, in my neck. Probably they destroyed something there because I have been having like a vertigo, pain in the neck and in pain in the head since then. If I felt like they were asphyxiating me. And that happened like in a few minutes. It was like a half an hour or maybe 15 minutes detention. And they drop us, throw us in another part of the city. We didn't even know where we were then during the visit of THE POPE In 2012, I was arrested for no reason. I was walking outside my house and then they took me, handcuffed me, and they put me in prison. For three days.
- [39:28]
Narrator
Six months later, Orlando is apprehended again. This time he's detained for 24 hours. When the state security officers say he can go, they insist on driving him home.
- [39:49]
Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso
Eventually they got me into a police car and they took me not to my house but to highway. And it was midnight and I was alone with all three strong officers of the state security. And I feared the worst, like a beating or just dropping me there. And it felt very intimidating. They were driving in a crazy way, the car, but they were playing with my feelings and my fears. And eventually they brought me back into the city and to my house. So nothing happened in other countries. The friends of the Cuban revolution always tell me in other countries they would have shot you, shot you on the spot. Yes, thank you so much for not shooting me that night in September 2012. It was very, very scary.
- [40:39]
Narrator
Orlando repeatedly applies for an exit visa, allowing him to leave the island. Every time is denied. But in 2013, the law is changed. Exit visas are a thing of the past. It's a landmark development. For the first time since the early 1960s, Cubans no longer require permission to leave the island. Orlando is able to travel to New York for a conference about the future of Cuba. After Fidel Castro, he never returns.
- [41:16]
Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso
So it was very almost difficult to believe that I was in a plane and certainly difficult to believe that I was landing in New York next day and participating in a conference, talking to the press. And I was kind of. It was like a nausea, like a vertigo, like, I can't believe this. I was very happy, of course.
- [41:38]
Narrator
Orlando leaves Cuba a year after fellow activist Oswaldo Paya dies there. In 2012, Paya is killed in a car crash. Eleven years later, the Inter American Commission on Human Rights will state his death as murder carried out by the Cuban government. When tributes are paid, US President Barack Obama calls Pyre a tireless champion of Human Rights. Four years later, in March 2016, Obama becomes the first incumbent US president to visit Cuba since the Castros took power in 1959. He pledges a new era in US Cuba relations. Cold War enmity can be a thing of the past. There is immense excitement across the island. But when Obama makes a speech to the Cuban people, Fidel declares himself unimpressed. Now approaching 90, his health continues to deteriorate. Yet he summons the strength for one last howl of indignation against the United States. His argument, as ever, is rooted in the revolutionary past. He publishes a 1500 word article in Granma, the official state newspaper. Fidel scorns Obama's syrupy message of reconciliation. Americans cannot be trusted, he says. As evidence, he cites the Bay of pigs invasion, now 55 years in the past. But perhaps for Fidel, there is no past, present and future. There is only the revolution, a parcel of time unique to itself. If so, it's an illusion. On November 25, 2016, Cubans received the news they'd all been expecting. But nobody can truly believe Fidel Castro. El commandante is dead. Ileana Yazza has been a supporter of Fidel since she met him in 1959. To her, Fidel embodies national pride. He has never wavered in his fight for Cuban equality and against US imperialism. When she hears the news of his passing, she weeps. She hangs a black trimmed Cuban flag on her front door. I am so thankful for Fidel. Fidel opened a new life to Cubans. Fidel opened doors. We fought racism, which fought a lot of things. Fidel turned us into an open mind country. And I, I regret so much that he passed away. But for other Cubans, emotions are very different. In Miami, there are celebrations on the street. Fidel's sister Juanita has been living in the city for more than 50 years. She left Cuba in 1964, accusing Fidel and Raoul of turning her beloved beautiful island into an open prison. TV crews approach her for comment. She says she understands the jubilation in Miami, but the dictator is also her brother, was her brother. Her sorrow is beyond her control. Castro's rule has likewise driven Orlando from his homeland. But he senses a complex array of emotions among his compatriots when news of Fidel's death hits.
- [45:47]
Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso
After so many years of Fidel Castro blaming the Cuban people and Cuban intellectuals of betraying the revolution or exiles betraying the revolution, in a way, the body of Fidel Castro, his figure, also betrayed the Cuban people. Now that's the feeling that I can, I can perceive in my people inside the island. Like Fidel shouldn't have died like that, shouldn't have grown old like that. He penetrated into our consciousness because it was 24 hour presence. It was like dealing with day to day issues. A hurricane, a building, a hospital. Fidel used to speak like an expert of hurricanes and sometimes even explain why he believed that the course of a hurricane was going to be more to the north than to the south. And it was really sad to see that our whole life expressed or condensed in the figure of a body, of a man, tall, strong, with a strong will to talk for hours, with the wits to talk for hours and explain the Reality is gone.
- [46:51]
Anthony De Palma
He was the government, he was the revolution. He was the ideology. In fact, when he died, they recreated his famous march from Santiago to Havana. They took the ashes from Havana down to Santiago on jeeps and they took a couple of days. They had children standing along the roadside as the cortege passed, who had printed on their own foreheads, jo soy Fidel. I am Fidel. They understood, or at least the regime tried to get the impression across that Fidel was Cuba.
- [47:29]
Narrator
Historian Michael Bustamante is in Cuba at the time of the funeral.
- [47:34]
Michael Bustamante
It was a very odd week to be in Cuba, odd because things were very quiet officially. You couldn't get alcohol, though people were still selling it under the table. It wasn't necessarily a sense of release, as you might expect. You know, I saw people who genuinely seemed affected by the death, but I also saw high school kids who were, like, literally bussed to the mass memorial that was held in Revolution Square and looked like they'd rather be anywhere else. Like sort of obligatory field trip to a funeral. His remains were going to be deposited in a mausoleum next to the mausoleum of Jose Marti. But along the way, and the whole thing's being broadcast, the military jeep that's towing this thing with Cubans lying on the street, it broke down at one point, and then some soldiers had to push it.
- [48:21]
Narrator
I mean, it was hard not to.
- [48:22]
Michael Bustamante
See that as some kind of metaphor. And I think. I think that's the way that many Cubans increasingly relate to the memory of this guy.
- [48:34]
Narrator
Once Fidel has departed, minds turn towards Hal to bring him back.
- [48:40]
Anthony De Palma
There is not a single Fidel Castro Boulevard anywhere in Cuba. And with one exception, in Santa Clara, there's no statue of Fidel anywhere. And the reason for that is that Fidel made it known that he did not want to be memorialized in that way. It was presented by the regime as a demonstration of his humility. I think he lived long enough to see what happened in Baghdad after the invasion, when the statues of Saddam Hussein were torn down and defiled in the street. And the image for a man of an ego as large as Fidel's of thinking even after he's gone, that there might be a moment when his statue would be covered in pig blood or pulled down and trampled and broken up or dragged through the street streets was so abhorrent that he decided, I'll put my ego aside and make sure that that never happens.
- [49:44]
Narrator
And anyway, who needs statues when there are millions of people made in your likeness?
- [49:51]
Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso
The exile Cuban writer Rene Arisa he mentioned how terrible it was to realize at some point after believing that you were so different from, from Fidel Castro. Finding out that in your impulses, in your manner, in your speech, in the tone of your voice, starting to recognize traces of Fidel Castro. Just like when we grow old, we start recognizing traces of our grandparents and parents and suddenly starting to recognize, oh my God, what this man did to us. We will never know fully the impact, the extent of the impact that, that he penetrated into our consciousness.
- [50:34]
Narrator
In 2018, Raul Castro resigns from the post of president. Three years later, at the age of 89, he steps down as leader of the Communist Party. Miguel Diaz Canel is his hand picked successor, still in power today. The US embargo persists. The so called Cuban thaw of the Obama years is a thing of the past. Times continue to be tough for the Cuban people. Between 2022 and 2023, more than a million Cubans, 10% of the population, leave the island. The Cuban spirit remains undimmed. Ingenuity and vivacity seem woven into the country's DNA. Yet five decades of Fidel Castro's rule have left monumental legacies, ones that make forging a path without him painfully difficult.
- [51:41]
Lilian Guerra
If we're in agreement, then we're not Cubans and yet we're not divided. Pluralism, I think, was an essential part of Cuban culture. The right to protest, to rotas on the street, to protest in the classroom, was something that not only cherished, but there were beneficiaries of that, like Fidel Castro. The only kind of protest, quote, unquote, you can have in Cuba from 1960 forward is to protest the United States rule, to protest the embargo, to protest the injustices committed in other countries. So to me, the most devastating legacy of the Cuban communist rule has been the criminalization of the right to protest Fidel Castro.
- [52:26]
Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso
He led us into this labyrinth. Now we are alone. That's the betrayal of Fidel Castro to the Cuban people. Cuban society is more than ready to, for a change, anything. An extraterrestrial. Yes, we will vote for an extraterrestrial if the communist authorities will be courageous enough as to allow democratic elections in Cuba. We don't even know what we want, but we are ready for a change. We want a change.
- [53:01]
Narrator
Thanks for listening to the Fidel Castro story. Real dictators will be back soon with the story of Jean B. Del Bokassa. In the Meantime, head to Noiza.com to discover your next immersive history podcast. That's Noiza.com home of the Noiser Podcast Network.
- [53:27]
Lilian Guerra
SA.