Fidel Castro Part 8: Miami Vice
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It's August the 21st, 1967. The dark, early hours of the morning. We're in Miami Beach, on the southeast coast of Florida. Moonlight shines down upon Biscayne Bay, the narrow estuary that separates the beach from the bulk of the city. There's a ripple in the otherwise still water. A diver emerges through the surface. A man in his late twenties. He clambers onto dry land, then walks briskly towards a cluster of nearby buildings.

A few moments later he arrives in a quiet, ordinary looking residential street. He approaches a house. As silently as he can, he breaks into the garage. Once inside, the man plants two small objects, time bombs, set to detonate at 3:45 this very morning. The device is in place, he makes a quick exit. This is Ricardo Morales, aka Monkey Morales, one of the most notorious men in Miami.

a city overflowing with notorious men. On behalf of lethal, warring mobsters, Morales spreads explosive mayhem across South Florida. Tonight is his latest job. This one isn't over money or power, it's sexual jealousy. A certain mafioso has his eyes on a rival's wife. It's fallen to Morales to shake up the rival, let him know that his card is marked. At 3:45 on the dot, there's a violent explosion.

Tremors ripple through the entire neighborhood. Alarm and panic sweep the street. When the emergency services arrive, they find the smoldering front exterior of the house is wrecked. But, miraculously, nobody's been hurt. When investigators examine the scene, they wonder if this hadn't been the precise plan. If so, this is the work of someone who really knows what they're doing. Which is true enough. Morales isn't just some street thug with access to explosives.

He's honed his skills over years, first as a member of the Cuban secret police, then under the tutelage of the CIA, with whom he's been trying to eliminate his nemesis, Fidel Castro. In a variety of ways, it seems Cuba's dictator is having a growing influence around the world. Castroland is going international. From the Noisa Podcast Network, this is part eight of the Fidel Castro story.

And this is Real Dictatus. By the mid-1970s, Fidel Castro's control of Cuba is consolidated and uncontested. The island dances to his beat. Freedom of expression is roundly suppressed. In 1971, a famous poet is imprisoned. His crime is failing to use his verse to praise the revolution. Only once he issues a fulsome confession is he released.

Fidel publicly castigates intellectuals and artists. Their individualism is branded counter-revolutionary decadence. His own freedom of expression, however, is given full reign. Castro's whims result in a wide array of experimental policies and grand projects. He corrals the population into an epic sugar harvest. He attempts to revolutionize the dairy industry and turn Cuba into a hub of coffee production. All of them end in failure.

The economic damage inflicted by such schemes is offset by huge support from the Soviet Union. Secure at home, Castro spends long stretches abroad. Everywhere he goes he seeks the embrace of fellow travelers of the left and those considered critical of US power. There's Salvador Allende of Chile, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. He pulls off a remarkable sleight of hand

Simultaneously, he snuggles close to the Soviet Union, yet tells the world that he's his own man. With the public, he proves popular. In many of the countries he visits, he's still seen as exciting and exotic. This is Cuba's dictator in his latest iteration. No longer a fidel nationalist strongman, he is Castro, revolutionary leader of the Third World, and thorn in the side of Western imperialists.

But there are other parts of the globe where he exists not as an inspirational figure of freedom, but as a detested tyrant. Nowhere more so than in Miami. The story here starts in January 1959, when Fidel Castro first sees his power and his enemies flee. Many of them head straight to Florida, just across the water. Michael Bustamante is associate professor at the University of Miami.

Some of the first people to leave were those that had been closest to the government that Castro overthrew. But as you move into 1960, 61, you have more people from middle class and professional backgrounds who decide that they don't like the way things are going and start to leave. People, frankly, from the same social background as Castro himself.

My dad left Cuba at the age of six in the spring/summer of 1962. My grandmother said she was particularly concerned about the politicization of education. She pulled my dad out of school for several months. They were very typical, you know, middle-class residents of Havana. When they started to see stuff disappearing from grocery stores,

They said, this is not the standard of life that we were up to expect or were accustomed to. And they made a plan to get out. Fidel Castro makes no bones about his disdain for such migrants. In his mind, they're traitors. He brands them gusanos, Spanish for worms. Yet many of these people thrive in the U.S. and transform Miami with their industry and entrepreneurship. Nicholas Griffin is a longtime Miami resident.

and the author of The Year of Dangerous Days, Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami, 1980.

The Cubans arrive in such numbers, they basically reinvent Havana in Miami. And that comes down to rebuilding the schools that they were forced to abandon, rebuilding businesses that they abandoned. They even invented things like reputational banking. If a Cuban tried to go and get a loan from an Anglo banker in Miami, it wasn't necessarily possible. So what they did was they pooled their money, built their own bank, and then instead of going through normal American regulations,

It was very much of a case of, "Hey, I knew your uncle Osvaldo back in Havana. I know I can trust you. Here's your $10,000 to go and start a business." And they sort of took care of themselves. Yet Miami's go-getting Cuban population contains an explosive element. There are those here who've taken up arms in attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro. One of those people is Monkey Morales, the gangster from this episode's opening scene. He's 19 years old when Castro comes to power.

and a recent recruit to Cuban military intelligence. It's here he gets his first experience of handling explosives. Initially, he approves of the revolution, but Castro's march towards communism alarms him. Before long, Morales joins the rush to Miami. As his son Rick explains, Morales swiftly signs up to the US government's efforts to oust Castro. Upon arrival in Miami, he's approached by paramilitary team

that the CIA is trying to put together of people that have expertise in certain things. Pilots, bomb makers, snipers, people with expertise that they can use in future plans. So he's immediately recruited into that. Morales is not among the Bay of Pigs invasion force, but he finds the collapse of the mission devastating, humiliating.

Yet, he refuses to give up his fight against Castro. In the mid-1960s, he's sent by the CIA to the Congo in Central Africa. There's a battle raging between the pro-Western government on the one side, and on the other, leftist rebels supported by Cuba. Morales gets through the campaign without physical injury. Yet, his experience of the conflict never leaves him. It's a bloody, brutal affair. Those close to him say he bears psychological scars that never fully heal.

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Morales makes his way back to Miami, still only in his mid-twenties. He hopes to be a part of the US invasion of Cuba. His desire to overthrow Castro is as strong as ever. But Washington has lost its appetite for regime change.

Miami has this bizarre setup where the CIA openly trained hundreds and hundreds of Cubans. They've all got these skill sets of everything from guerrilla warfare to bomb making, all things for counterinsurgency. But then they've got nowhere to go and there's this gradual realization that the U.S. government is never really going to let them have another go at Castro. But in this unique place, Morales discovers his skills are surprisingly transferable.

Miami is home to a number of the most formidable gangsters in the United States. Turf wars frequently break out across the city. It's a terrifying situation for ordinary Miamians, but a gilt-edged opportunity for an angry young man with specialist skills. Mafia members would hire my dad because he was an expert in planting the bomb in a way that it would not kill anybody. In the thick of the Miami madness, Castro is out of sight, but he's never out of mind.

Cuba's leader lives in Morales' head 24/7, so he doesn't hesitate to get involved with a new phenomenon: anti-Castro paramilitary groups, many of which are right here in Florida. At times, they hit targets back in Cuba. In May 1970, an exile group sinks two Cuban fishing boats and captures the 11 men on board. Before crowds in Havana, Castro rages against the worms. His disgust is genuine.

But the situation is politically useful. He frames the exiles as pirates, mercenaries in the employ of the United States. Yet more often than not, the exile groups take aim at opponents right here in Miami. Suddenly they turn their attention to the town that they're in.

Anyone vaguely suspected of pro-Castroism or even modest rapprochement with Cuba is considered a target. And in a way, had the CIA not created this generation of bomb makers, maybe it would have displayed itself in less harmful manner. But instead, you get such series of bombings, and we're by far the capital of bombing in the world throughout the 70s, to the point where the Miami Herald keeps a baseball box score of bombings on the front page for how many have gone off this week or that week.

Some of the attacks are not only wildly violent, but astoundingly brazen. One group even fires bazookas at ships from countries that trade with Cuba. You had groups that were trying to sink British ships, Japanese ships, Canadian, Polish, in Miami Harbor, wherever they could do it, to start a war over Cuba. And that's where my dad came in. When he's not busy doing the bidding of mafia dons,

Morales spends his time planting bombs for the anti-Castro movement. It's a family business. His brother-in-law is also involved, albeit for a rival set of anti-Castro extremists. It leads to some darkly comical situations. So there was a bombing in Washington, D.C., which turned out to be the worst night for my family because my father and his group had planted a bomb.

Morales strikes a deal.

He evades charges for the bombing by pledging to go undercover for the police. He now starts to infiltrate anti-Castro terrorist groups, reporting back to the authorities. His evidence leads to a kingpin of the movement, a former university classmate of Castro's being sent to prison. But it has little effect. As the 1970s unfold, the volume of anti-Castro terrorism in Miami skyrockets.

The US federal government suggests that between 1973 and 1976, more than 100,000 politically motivated attacks are carried out by anti-Castro groups in South Florida alone. It's estimated that 45% of all the world's terrorist bombings in the year of 1974 are perpetrated by Cuban exiles. Their extremism left a legacy of violence that achieved nothing, full stop.

Their extremism, though, I think often is too superficially explained. It's like, oh, these crazy Cubans, this and that. No, it comes from a particular place. These are guys who sort of cut their teeth in the early anti-Castro movements in South Florida in the early 1960s, which were being amply funded by the Central Intelligence Agency. As the 60s go on, U.S. federal funding, covert funding for these sort of Cuban exile operations starts to dry up.

So there's a sense that the United States government has betrayed us. We can't count on them. We got to go out on our own and do it on our own, right? And that leads some of them into these like more radical, sort of overtly terroristic kind of postures. As Miami's paramilitaries wage war, Castro finds myriad ways of promoting himself and the Cuban revolution abroad. One of those is sporting success, something that's dear to Castro's heart.

In part, it's because he understands the importance of so-called soft power, cultural prominence on the world stage. But Cuba's athletic victories also reflect his cherished idea of himself, the ultra-macho action man who powers to effortless achievement. Stories of his physical prowess to ten a penny. One particularly stubborn, though apocryphal, story: Paz Castro was an elite-level baseball player, so good he was offered a pro contract in America.

His daughter Alina reports that she once saw her middle-aged father line up in a contest against the national basketball team. The game is a sham, designed to caress his ego. Alina cringes in her seat as Fidel shifts his dad bod around the court, the nation's best players expertly allowing him to score at will. Though it's not only athletes in their prime that Castro likes to test himself against.

There's this film that's made in '73 to sort of promote this project of building these new schools across the country. And one of the scenes shows Castro visiting the school. And at some point he starts playing ping pong with these kids who couldn't be more than like six, seven or eight. You'd think a guy would like, you know, let the kids win. But no, he's pretty competitive with a seven-year-old. In the first week of October 1976, Cuban athletes are doing their country proud. This time it's the national fencing team.

In an international tournament in Venezuela, they sweep all before them. On the morning of October 6th, the team is at Caracas airport. Cubana Airlines Flight 455 is scheduled to take them home. They're a young bunch, several of them are teenagers. Their mood this morning is exuberant. They can't wait to share their success with friends and family back home. Fidel will certainly be pleased. With their medals around their necks, they board the plane.

The flight is smooth. There's no end of chatter and laughter among the young Cubans. The plane soars above the Caribbean Sea. Then, at 1:24 PM, an almighty explosion shakes the aircraft. The pilot makes a frantic call on the radio. Then there's a second explosion. The plane plummets from the sky. It hits the water, smashing apart on impact. None of the 73 people on board survives. Nine days after the attack,

Fidel Castro stands before a sea of mourners. In the Plaza de la Revolución, he denounces Cuba's enemies abroad, and its traitors. Two Cuban exiles have been arrested. They are suspected of being the masterminds behind the attack. Years later, Monkey Morales will also claim to have been involved. The details are murky. Hard facts are elusive. But Morales' son believes his father's story.

His involvement, according to him, was that he allowed the people to procure the explosives. In the eyes of a Cuban revolutionary like my father, that plane is fair game. They were considered, in my father's eyes, 73 communist pigs and future revolutionary communist pigs because they would just grow up in the system like they are now and continue the same thing. Castro was able to turn the attack on Cubana Airlines Flight 455 into political capital.

From now on, he commemorates each anniversary. 1976, the year of the Cubana Airlines bombing, might be the moment when Castro's powers peak. The economic hardships of earlier times have eased somewhat. Indeed, the Cuban economy is experiencing growth. A surge in the global price of sugar helps. The assistance of the Soviet Union is invaluable. Castro's political standing is shifting too.

Since 1959, he's ruled Cuba as Prime Minister. The role of President exists, but there's no doubt who is in charge. Now, with his 50th birthday approaching, his famous beard graying, he moves to redefine his status. In February 1976, he recommends that the roles of President and Prime Minister be abolished. Castro has now bestowed a wealth of new titles. First Secretary of the Communist Party.

President of the Council of Ministers and of the Council of State, and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. A new constitution is introduced too. It's very different from the old liberal one of 1940, the constitution that Castro promised to restore when he first came to power 17 years ago. The 1976 version introduces new forms of local representation for the people. It also defines Cuba as a socialist state.

with the Communist Party at its apex. Meaning that to challenge the party leader is to defy the constitution. In his fresh guise, Castro opens a new chapter. Half a world away, Cold War tensions are spilling over in the African nation of Angola. Portugal recently ended its long colonial rule here. The country is now locked in civil war. With backing from the US, the apartheid government of South Africa intervenes.

Their aim is to remove the leftist president. Castro senses a new cause to chase, and a chance to elevate Cuba's standing in world affairs. The levels at which he invests Cuba into the fight are truly astonishing. By the end of 1976, tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers turn up on Angolan shores. Among them are many Afro-Cubans.

Fidel is eager to point out that the first black people to set foot on Cuban soil were those brought in chains from this very patch of Africa. There is a grim poetic justice in their descendants returning to wage war against white supremacists. This is no ordinary military operation. It is effectively a new front of the Cuban Revolution, albeit one fought in a country almost no Cuban knows anything about.

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Join me, Paul McGann, as we explore life and death on Titanic. I'll delve into my own family story following my great-uncle Jimmy as he tries to escape the engine room. We'll hear the harrowing tales of the victims and the testimonies of the lucky survivors. I saw that ship sink, and I saw that ship break in half. Titanic, Ship of Dreams. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso grew up in Cuba in the 1970s and 80s.

He recalls how Castro's military adventures were considered a natural extension of the revolutionary struggle. Military intervention in a country was called in Cuba international solidarity. Teachers in school were explaining to you that the first territory of America that was liberated was Cuba. And therefore we had like a responsibility or a duty to fight with other workers and farmers of the world.

I had many family members that were in Angola, in Chile, in Latin America. They just went there. "Oh, your uncle is, he's working in Angola." And it turned out that he was a soldier in Angola, that he could have died easily. Depending on the time that you spend fighting in other countries, you could have some benefits when you come back to Cuba. It could be a new house. It could be some bank account savings.

You could go to special hospitals created by the government for veterans or for members of the armed forces. But people, I believe, at that time were doing that because of honor, because of prestige, because of faith in the revolution. It's a new mission, a new task that Fidel Castro, more than the government, is requesting from everybody. Cuba's impact on the Angolan War is swift and considerable. Yet the conflict rumbles on for years.

More and more Cubans depart to serve. Not just soldiers. Government officials and engineers head for Angola too. Doctors, teachers, scientists. In time, most families in Cuba have some link to the African country. Many question the wisdom of it. Why send so much over there, when there's so much needed to be done here? But only the brave and the foolish voice such doubts in public. And anyway...

What the average Cuban sees and hears about Angola is only what Fidel will allow.

We could see all the repression, all the wars, all the terrible things happening all through Latin America, totally true things, but we never saw a battle taking place in Angola. Our soldiers were there, our warriors were there, but we couldn't see the brutalities of war, the terrible things that happened, tortures, many things. So it was always a very biased reality of representation, but yes, war and sacrifice was part of the logic of the revolution.

Castro's involvement in Angola incenses the United States. In the early 1970s, Washington had explored the possibility of ending the long-standing embargo against Cuba and resetting their relationship. Not anymore. Peter Kornblur, senior analyst for the National Security Archive. Fidel Castro had the opportunity to normalize relations with the United States through secret talks.

I believe that Castro did want better relations, but he chose to remain as a key player and leader in third world anti-colonial struggles in Africa. And at that point, the United States actually considered invading Cuba for its audacity to have its own foreign policy.

Let's face it, Fidel Castro was on the correct side of history. He supported the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa long before anybody else did. This was a matter of principle for Castro. It also, of course, elevated him to be a prominent leader, not just in Cuba, but in the third world in general. Meanwhile, in Miami, some Cuban exiles begin to reconsider the wisdom of their war against Castro.

A handful of them go back to Cuba. They meet Fidel face to face for the first time in nearly 20 years. The meetings cause outrage in Miami, to many exiles. The idea of ever engaging with the dictator is anathema. Then, as a new decade begins, there's a bolt from the blue. An extraordinary new chapter, which profoundly affects Cubans at home and abroad. In the Miramar district of Havana,

There's a place known as Embassy Row. As the name suggests, it's a diplomatic hub dotted with many foreign embassies housed in impressive mansion buildings. At the Peruvian embassy, the morning of April 1st, 1980 seems like any other. The flags by the iron front gates move imperceptibly in the light breeze. The day drifts along quietly. Not far off, a city bus motors down the road.

Inside are a driver and five passengers. There are plenty of empty seats, but the driver isn't stopping for anyone. Without braking, the boss careens onto the pavement and plows through the embassy gates. Caught unaware as the guards scramble, they open fire. Nobody inside the boss is hurt, but one of the guards is fatally wounded. Eventually the furore subsides and the truth comes out. This isn't an attack on the embassy.

The six people on the bus are not terrorists, but asylum seekers. They wish to leave Castro's Cuba. Since the mid-1960s, it's become harder and harder to do that. Exiles represent a brain drain that Castro will not tolerate, plus it's bad PR for the dictator. So people are having to resort to extreme measures to try to leave the island. These six people say they can't stomach life in Cuba any longer. They ask the Peruvian embassy for help,

To the apparent surprise of the Cuban authorities, Peru agrees. The asylum seekers are not handed over. They're allowed to stay at the embassy, under the protection of the Peruvian government. When Castro hears this, he's enraged. He orders the gates of the embassy building be bulldozed. Once again, panic spreads.

Fidel Castro is furious and he makes this extraordinary statement where he's like, if Cuba is such a socialist nightmare, anyone who wants to leave can leave. And meanwhile, if you're not going to hand back those people sitting in your embassy, he tells the Peruvian government, then I'm removing all my guards. And within 24 hours, you have the

The grounds of the Peruvian embassy absolutely covered in people, every square inch. People are standing in mango trees, getting a perch wherever they can, and it's 10,000 people. And of course, photographers are taking pictures of this. It ends up on the front pages all over the world. And it almost feels sort of like the end of this Cuban experiment because it brings the truth to the lie that, you know, everyone in Cuba is perfectly happy and it's a sort of a tropical paradise. The situation is spiraling out of control. Castro is dumbfounded, appalled.

He's also severely embarrassed. He orders the embassy perimeter to be sealed immediately, but there's no ignoring the ten thousand people crammed into the embassy grounds, each of them desperate to leave. Fidel attempts to style it out. He arranges a huge march. A million or so people file past, hurling abuse at those behind the gates. It's good for the cameras, but orchestrated hate does nothing to solve the practical problem.

How to deal with the 10,000. As a solution, Castro turns to Miami. He offers the Cuban exile community a deal. If they can make their way back to the island, they can pick up as many of their relatives as they want, on one condition: that they each take with them one of the 10,000 people holed up in the Peruvian embassy. Over in Miami, the news triggers a whirl of activity.

Within that first week, there are no boats left in South Florida. People are driving north to Georgia trying to buy boats and tow them down and launch them. But because the federal government aren't stopping them, it's basically a free-for-all. It's done in everything from 12-foot vessels to 112-foot vessels. These are all amateurs. Some of these guys have barely driven a boat before, but they're all heading down there because, you know, this is your uncle, your aunt, your mother, your father who you're rescuing. Of course you're going to go down.

So it's this total armada of chaos. In Cuba too, the operation takes on a momentum of its own. An avalanche of people from all over the country, from all backgrounds, pack up and move to the port of Mariel, where the boats are due to arrive. In the city of Sancti Spiritus, in central Cuba, lives nine-year-old Rogelio Martinez. He doesn't know it yet, but his life is about to change forever. Decades later...

The adult Rogelio, a playwright, has vivid memories of his childhood in Cuba. Putting the buckets of water out in the morning so that the sun would work on them all day and then we would have the water for the baths. The kids running whenever the train would pass, it's stuffed with sugar cane, so stuffed. And all the kids would just run right across the road and start pulling the sugar cane out. So those are all good memories.

He also remembers the ever-present figure of Fidel. When he spoke, people listened. And I imagine that I saw him as a heroic figure. I mean, someone who is a rabble-rouser, who speaks with incredible confidence, who's defiant. These are qualities that I would imagine children admire. You're seeing somebody who's godlike. His parents clearly feel differently. They loathe the Castro regime.

A fact they shield from their son. You were living multiple lives. Inside the house, there was no criticism of the government. I'm sure there were whispers when I was asleep or when I was out. At some point, I must have been a little bit older, my mom did say to me, whatever is said in this house can never be said outside this house. I remember that so vividly, so clearly. Rogelio Zant is able to leave Cuba in the late 1970s.

From the United States, she manages to send parcels to her family on the island. They include capitalist marvels such as Colgate toothpaste. Rogelio eats it as though it's peanut butter. Once Fidel announces the boat lift, Ante snaps into action. She sends a telegram to Rogelio's mother. She finds a boat. All of a sudden, a new reality emerges. The family can leave Cuba for good. Rogelio's mother is determined to grab the opportunity.

Furtively, she begins to pack up the family belongings. Rogelio grows inquisitive. His mother tells him what's going on, but swears him to secrecy. This is no time for loose lips. Ostensibly, Fidel has given his word. Anyone who wants to leave can leave. In reality, things aren't that straightforward. Castro has his spies out. Each street has a CDR, a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution.

state-backed curtain twitchers, whose duty it is to inform on their communities. They ensure that leaving will be an ordeal. Like Rogelio, Orlando Luis Pardo Lasso is nine years old at the time. He experiences the boat lift from the opposite perspective. He stays in Cuba while those around him start to leave.

In April 1980, some of my friends disappeared. My classroom had like around usually like 30, 35. And suddenly there were only 20. Where are my friends? Where is Suhaila? Where is Willy? Where is Enriquito? They're not coming back. First day. Second day, their families are traitors. They're leaving the country. They're abandoning their homeland.

fourth, fifth day, we need to go to their houses to yell. This was called acto de repudio, act of repudiation. We need to throw rotten tomatoes. We need to throw eggs at their houses. We need to

stick there some messages like Escoria, Gusano, Scum, a warm Berman, something like that. And of course, we need to accuse them of being pro-Jankies or wanting the Jankies to invade our country. It was really shocking at that time.

I was not going to throw any stone at them or eggs. My family prevented me from doing so, but that was the climate. So I witnessed fascism in 1980, or I could say I witnessed communism working. And Fidel Castro was part of this. He designed this operation. He conceived it. And when you step forward and say,

Thank you. I'm leaving. Thank you, Commander-in-Chief, for allowing me to leave your revolution. No, no, no. Sorry, you are not leaving like that. You're leaving after several days or weeks of repudiation and very ugly things that somehow damage deeply the fabric of our society. We couldn't look at each other's eyes the same way. Like, yeah, yeah, you're a very good man. You're a very good person.

doctor even, but I saw you yelling. I saw you yelling at that family. And so I like you less, my friend. I still love you, but I like you less. In Sancti Spiritus, Rogelio's family are subjected to their own acts of repudiation. They graffitied our house. They threw eggs on our house. And we knew at that point we had to leave that house and go to my grandmother's house.

But my mom also was defiant and she was also tough and she also cared deeply about her child. And so she knew that she had crossed the point of no return. One morning, shortly before the family are due to depart, the military police show up on the doorstep. They found out that her husband, Rogelio's father, has an engineering degree from Havana University. There's no way he's leaving. He's needed for the revolution.

Rogelio's mother makes the snap decision to lie. She insists there's been a mistake. Her husband doesn't have a university degree. He's certainly of no use to Fidel Castro. The officers take her at her word, but not for long. That night they came back and they confronted my mother and they said, you lied. He does have a degree from the University of Havana. And this went back and forth.

And she said, no, no, he doesn't. He graduated from the University of Havana, but he never went to pick up his degree. So he actually doesn't have a degree. And the older military just said, you're not telling the truth. But a young guy, his name we'll never know, stepped forward and said, I think she was confused. I think she thought that's what we were asking.

"That little moment, that little moment changed the whole course of everything. That person could never know what those few words did to an entire family." The authorities relent. They allow Rogelio and his mother to leave, but his father must stay behind. The family is split up. Rogelio leaves for the US via the port of Mariel, where the vast boat lift is taking place.

Over six months, roughly 125,000 Cubans make the crossing. If you think about the numbers then, Miami is a city with roughly 350,000 people in it. And it's like dropping the city of Providence, Rhode Island on top of the city of Miami. And, you know, we don't have the jobs for them. We don't have the housing. We don't have the school places. And it causes absolute chaos in Miami overnight. A small minority of the new Cuban arrivals are drawn into the Miami underworld.

The world of drug dealing and organized crime that Monkey Morales is immersed in. His chaotic lifestyle means he flits in and out of his family's lives. His son Rick recalls one trip to a shopping mall that reveals to him just how dangerous his father's life is.

We're heading back to the car and as any young kid does, I took off into the car first and all I heard was a scream, "You can't touch the car till we check for a bomb." So I get under the car with him and he's explaining, "See how these are normal pieces, no wires. If you see a wire, make sure where it goes." And I'm 14 years old. So by 14, I know how to look for a bomb before I know how to do algebra. So it was a crazy world to grow up in. Crazy. - In 1982,

Monkey Morales is shot dead in Miami. A year later, the film Scarface is released. It tells the story of a Marielle refugee who becomes a Miami gangster. It paints a picture of the boat lift in the popular imagination. But the broader impact of Marielle is very different.

You get this extraordinary, vast absorption into the local community. And now you can see Mariel immigrants at the highest levels of society, not just in Miami, but all across America. The Mariel generation are absorbed into the Cuban-American community at a crucial turning point.

By the 1980s, two decades of frustration about the inability to sort of bring about Castro's fall lead to sort of a change in strategy. More and more Cubans are now identifying as Cuban-American, are starting to say, rather than sort of going up to federal policymakers and sort of asking for sympathy or support or resources, we need to be in a position to actually influence the policymaking process. And so really,

Starting in the 80s, you start to see more Cuban Americans run for office. They've become citizens by this point, so they can do that. They're running for office locally, then at the state level in Florida, and then eventually, I believe it's in the late 80s when the first Cuban American is elected to Congress. The Cuban presence in Miami is stronger than ever. Its influence pulses throughout the USA. Meanwhile, Castro's presence in the outside world isn't abating.

By late 1987, it's been 12 years since the first Cuban soldier set foot in Angola. Castro is obsessed with victory, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that he will not countenance defeat. As the conflict grinds on, his generals identify an opportunity. If Cuba overwhelms contested territory in the south of the country, then it could prove decisive. The maximum leader doesn't hold back. He dispatches 15,000 soldiers.

It's a grueling, protracted operation. But it works. The South Africans give up the ghost. Not only do they pledge to withdraw from Angola, but also from neighboring Namibia. It's a colossal victory for Cuba. And for Fidel Castro.

He transformed a moderate-sized Caribbean nation into a world player, into a key actor on the world scene. Cuba took a position in the world, particularly the Third World, far beyond its size and created havoc for imperial-minded US policymakers who saw the world as a strategic chessboard just to be played on by the superpowers. The last of Castro's troops depart Angola in 1991.

In total, 377,000 Cuban soldiers have served there over 15 years, 5% of the entire population. On July 26 that year, Fidel Castro arrives in central Havana for the annual celebration of his own mythology. On this date in 1953, he had led a harebrained attack on a military barracks, his first attempt at toppling the Cuban government. It was a calamity.

but one that Castro has spun to his advantage. A glorious defeat by pure-hearted revolutionaries against a corrupt order of entrenched privilege. 38 years on, Fidel has a genuine victory to celebrate. The war in Angola is now officially over. The South Africans defeated. And this year, he can introduce the crowds at the Plaza de la Revolucion to a very special guest. To an enormous roar.

Nelson Mandela steps up to the microphone. He salutes the strength of the Cuban people and their leader. Their efforts have helped to hasten the end of apartheid. Viva Cuba Libre! Castro, of course, is as unreadable as ever. On the surface, he's his usual self: defiant, pugnacious, implacable. But as Mandela talks of defeating pernicious ideologies and the collapse of old orders, Fidel is likely reminded of something else.

Because at this very moment, the bedrock of Cuba's existence is cracking. The scaffolding that has held the revolution upright for more than 30 years is being rapidly dismantled. Thousands of miles away, communism is imploding. Fidel Castro has never been so vulnerable. The revolution is on the brink. In the next episode, a new leader in the Soviet Union comes to power with fresh ideas which terrify Fidel.

As the Berlin Wall crumbles, so does the Cuban economy. A dramatic tug of war takes place between Castro and the US, all centered on a five-year-old boy. And as riots break out in the streets of Havana, the most unbelievable, unthinkable phrase begins to be chanted. Down with Fidel. That's next time. Get every episode of Real Dictators a week early and ad-free by subscribing to Noisa Plus.

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