Fidel Castro - America's Nemesis

Fidel Castro spent most of his life at war

with the United States of America.

He leaned forward

and put his very long, thin, strong finger in my chest

and said to me, "I know what US policy is.

"I have people at the highest levels of your government.

"Your policy is to wait for me to die,

"and I don't intend to cooperate."

IN SPANISH:

His was a dictatorship that lasted more than 50 years.

He crossed swords with 11 US presidents

and survived hundreds of assassination attempts...

and an invasion.

For millions around the world, he was an inspiring revolutionary.

Castro was an almost mythical figure.

A figure worshipped by the left in general,

although not without misgivings.

To his critics, he was a brutal dictator,

imprisoning and executing tens of thousands of opponents.

As he famously said once,

"Trust no-one", and he didn't.

IN SPANISH:

A giant of the Cold War,

Castro took the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon.

When somebody asked him,

"What do you think history are going to tell about you?"

Fidel said, "When? In 100 years, in 500 years?

"1,000 years? When?"

Castro's death has now reignited the debate

on one of the most divisive and controversial figures

of the 20th century.

It's hard to imagine today that Fidel Castro's relationship

with the United States began in 1959 as something of a love affair.

-CHANTING:

-Fidel Castro! Fidel Castro! Fidel Castro!

-NEWSREEL:

-New York's Pennsylvania Station rarely

has seen anything like it.

Only the magnetism of a Castro could produce it.

Just three months earlier,

Castro had taken control of Cuba in a violent revolution.

On his 11-day trip,

he wowed America with the charisma that had helped propel him to power.

Even a child appears dressed in Castro-like garb.

I came for good relations.

For good understanding.

For good economical relations.

Castro had burst onto the world stage at the height of the Cold War.

When he met America's vice president,

the big question for Richard Nixon was, whose side was Castro on?

At the end of the conversation,

Nixon wrote that Fidel was a great leader

and it was clear that he was going to be a great leader,

but that he didn't know whether Fidel was naive or was a communist.

When I repeated that to Fidel, later on,

after reading memorandum conversation, Fidel said,

"Well, I was both or I was neither."

Fidel was not clear in his own mind exactly what he was at that time.

His views were just evolving.

But the courtship between Castro and America didn't last long.

Within months, relations turned hostile,

and they remained hostile for the next 50 years.

The story of why Cuba and America, just 90 miles apart,

became implacable foes is a story of Castro's revolution

and how it managed to survive for so long.

Fidel Castro was born in 1926

in Cuba's sugar cane heartlands.

His father was a wealthy farmer.

His mother was a servant on the estate.

Castro was sent away to be schooled by Jesuits in Santiago.

He's a smart guy, he works hard.

He's a star basketball and baseball athlete,

and he gets a car from his dad to ride to the University of Havana.

As a law student in 1945,

Fidel Castro joined the struggle for Cuba's future.

Havana University was a cauldron of radical politics of all kinds.

There were often violent protests.

-TRANSLATION:

-Fidel used to wear a pistol in his belt, and so did I.

We all had to be armed if we wanted to exercise the right

to give an opinion at the university square.

In the 1950s, Cuba was the gambling and prostitution capital

of the Caribbean.

It was known as the whorehouse of America.

Many of the casinos were owned by American mobsters.

Politics was dominated by military strongman General Fulgencio Batista.

HE SPEAKS IN SPANISH

-TRANSLATION:

-No-one could put up with those conditions of life.

Prostitution was a big problem, and so were the casinos.

Children couldn't go to school.

We, the students, couldn't accept it.

In 1948, Castro married the daughter of a wealthy family

with political connections.

The couple had a son, Fidelito.

The ambitious young Castro ran for election to congress,

vowing to clean up corruption.

But in 1952, General Batista seized power in a military coup.

His new regime was supported by America.

Students took to the streets in protest, but were brushed aside.

-TRANSLATION:

-And now there's a government

which is not even dressed in civilian clothes.

It's a military government,

where public freedoms are restricted,

and where the only way to change the situation

is through revolutionary action.

Castro soon became central to the armed resistance

against the dictatorship and the Cuban army.

In 1953, he launched an audacious attack against Batista's regime,

leading around 150 men in an assault

on the Moncada Army Barracks in Santiago.

IN SPANISH:

But the Moncada attack was a disaster.

Around 60 rebels were killed.

Castro was captured and put on trial.

The trial was a chance to promote his political vision.

He was his own lawyer, he spoke on his own behalf,

and his trial defence was then edited

and published as a pamphlet

that turned out to be effective as a way to describe

the political plan for a movement that had never had a political plan.

Castro's famous pamphlet was called History Will Absolve Me.

-TRANSLATION:

-History Will Absolve Me we used to say was our Bible.

It became the country's first constitution

for us in the opposition.

History Will Absolve Me was where Fidel talked to the problem

of the poor, the problem of the schools,

the problem of land for the peasants,

which was a very serious problem,

housing, all those things, which were serious problems.

Castro was sentenced to 15 years in one of Cuba's most notorious jails.

Years later, he recalled his incarceration fondly.

IN SPANISH:

In prison, Castro decided to divorce his wife

and wrote a letter to his sister

revealing how hard he would fight for custody of his son.

He says, "Look, I am going to wage a war

"that is going to make the Hundred Year War

"look like a walk at the beach. I will never give up.

"I will do this even if the world shall be destroyed in the process."

So we have here, very clearly, in the letters, he tells you,

"I am a scorched-earth warrior, I will bluff until I win."

-NEWSREEL:

-1955.

In an attempt to cope with the serious unrest in Cuba,

Batista tries appeasement.

A general amnesty frees a beardless Fidel Castro.

His brother Raul leaves with him.

Released after nearly two years,

Castro immediately set about taking on Batista again.

He announces that he will leave the country to organise an invasion.

Castro travelled to Miami to raise money...

..and to Mexico to put together the nucleus of a new guerrilla force.

Among Castro's recruits was a young Argentine doctor.

Che Guevara would become a key figure in the revolution...

and its global face.

In-built into the Cuban revolution, right from the beginning,

was the spirit of internationalism,

that our leaders were Fidel and Che, an Argentinian,

so it was a fight not just for Cuba, but the whole continent.

Castro's revolutionaries called themselves the July 26th Movement,

in memory of the Moncada Barracks assault.

But alongside the armed struggle,

Castro was also a master of propaganda,

quickly latching on to the new marketing methods of 1950s America.

-TRANSLATION:

-He learned how effective

advertising campaigns could be.

You could sell soap through adverts, or any product,

so in a country full of frustration

and social problems, why not a political idea?

The revolution began inauspiciously

in a small cabin cruiser called Granma.

Castro and around 80 men set sail from Mexico in November 1956.

The boat was overloaded,

and a 1,200-mile voyage took longer than expected.

They missed their intended landing spot on Cuba's southeast tip,

ending up in a mangrove swamp. They were ambushed by Batista's troops.

Fewer than 20 of Castro's men escaped to the mountains with him.

In the Sierra Maestra,

Castro once again turned a setback to his advantage.

He began building up his motley army.

Among his most trusted comrades was his younger brother, Raul,

who would be by his side for the next 50 years.

Castro won over the peasants

who came to support his campaign against Batista.

-TRANSLATION:

-He made a great impression

on the people in the countryside.

He got along very well with the poor people in the Sierra Maestra.

They saw the commander as the person who had come

to bring about agrarian reform.

Che Guevara was one of Castro's key strategists.

Facing a much stronger enemy, the rebels fought a guerrilla war.

-NEWSREEL:

-The Castro rebels plant bombs on buses, on railroad trains.

They set fire to cars and trucks, oil tanks and factories.

Castro also waged a cutting-edge war for hearts and minds.

He invited journalists and film-makers to follow him.

This is only the beginning.

The last battle will be fought in the capital, you can be sure.

But Batista also manipulated the media,

telling a journalist Castro had been killed.

The reason Batista did that was he knew that Fidel Castro

needed celebrity and fame to exist and make his revolution happen.

So what does Fidel Castro do? He's panicked.

He's in the Sierra, he says, "Oh, my God, they're writing I'm dead",

and that's when he summons Herbert Matthews of the New York Times,

then the most influential reporter in the country,

then he does this charade where he turns his 50 troops into...

He keeps rotating them so they look like hundreds

and hundreds and hundreds.

Stagecraft, propaganda.

No-one has ever been in his league in that regard.

Castro's revolutionary message was left wing,

but not, at that stage, communist.

It is not communism or Marxism in our idea.

Our political philosophy is representative democracy

and social justice in a well-planned economy.

Castro's vision struck a chord with many Cubans.

That was a very exciting message for a young generation.

So all of us, and certainly the rest of the Cuban people,

followed that hope.

-NEWSREEL:

-Batista's henchmen have fled.

Towards the end of 1958, Batista lost control of Havana.

This was the scene of turmoil in the capital Havana

as the climax of revolution was reached.

Anyone suspected of sympathy for the Batista regime

came in for a rough time.

On New Year's Day, 1959, Batista fled,

taking millions of dollars with him,

but leaving behind the trappings of dictatorship.

A week later, Castro made a triumphal arrival in the city.

-TRANSLATION:

-It was as if somebody had said a cyclone was coming.

But it was a cyclone we had longed for,

because it would sweep the rottenness away.

Castro's first speech as Cuba's new leader was carefully staged.

Before he spoke, they released a flock of white doves,

but one of the doves floated up in the air and then came back

and landed on Castro's shoulder,

and remained there throughout the speech.

People in the audience were gasping,

because the white dove is the messenger of the gods in Santeria,

which is the most powerful religion in Cuba.

The messenger the gods sent to indicate the anointed one.

One of the new Cuban leader's first priorities

was mounting a charm offensive on American television.

Just 30 days ago, Fidel Castro entered Havana to be greeted

by cheering mobs as one the greatest heroes in Cuba's history.

Good evening, Fidel Castro.

At the age of 32, you now have in your hands

a great deal of power and a great deal of responsibility.

Aren't you a little frightened by this?

Well, really, not frightened, because I have self-confidence.

In pyjamas in his apartment in Havana's Hilton hotel,

it was perhaps the most intimate interview ever given

by a world leader.

There was even discussion of Castro's famous beard.

My beard means many things to my country.

When we have fulfilled our promise of good government,

I will cut my beard.

Politics was not entirely off limits.

The young Castro was asked about his tough treatment

of Batista's henchman.

Well, Fidel Castro, what about the trials of Batista's followers?

Well, I think, myself, all our people, that they are just...

because we are not living now in normal conditions.

Behind the soft image Castro was keen to project,

he was tightening his grip on power.

There were show trials and public executions

of those suspected of being part of Batista's regime,

despite America's condemnation.

GUNSHOTS

Castro started breaking up large farms and plantations

and handing the land over to Cuba's peasants,

just as he said he would before the revolution.

But Castro didn't deliver on another promise he had made.

We expected him to call an election,

and he said that he was going to call elections in six months.

But then we heard him on TV in four or five months,

the famous words, phrase,

that he repeated, "Elecciones para que?"

"Elections? For what?"

So we started realising that all the things that this guy had promised

when he was in the mountains, he was not going to really realise.

Robin Day of the BBC asked Castro why he was breaking his promise.

You obviously have a great deal of support

among the people of Cuba, Dr Castro.

Why, in that case, do you not hold elections on a democratic basis?

We asked the people.

The people said we don't want political now

because we are working.

Political was good only for robbers and for criminals.

Fidel Castro genuinely believed that, in an important sense,

he was always a democrat.

He believed that he had the support of the majority of the Cuban people.

But as the nature of Castro's revolution became clearer,

many Cubans turned against him, particularly the middle classes.

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled the country

as Castro began seizing private businesses.

Most ended up in Miami.

What was your position, your job, in Cuba?

-I was a manager in a sugar company.

-And why did you leave?

Well, because they took absolutely everything...

of our company.

Those exiles felt that things were worse

than they had ever been under Batista.

Miami became a haven for deeply, deeply embittered people

who...had a lovely synergy with those in power in Washington.

Relations between Cuba and America were deteriorating fast.

Castro began seizing businesses owned by powerful Americans.

In retaliation,

the US refused to buy Cuba's sugar or supply the country with oil.

It was a huge blow to Castro.

Che Guevara was now head of Cuba's national bank,

and, in 1960, he struck a crucial deal with America's Cold War rival,

the Soviet Union.

They would buy one million tonnes of sugar a year, a lifeline for Cuba.

Economics as well as politics was propelling Castro

towards the Soviets.

Soon, Cuba had not just new Russian tractors...

..but tanks and other weapons too.

In March 1960, there was an explosion on an ammunition ship

in Havana Docks.

At least 75 people died. Castro blamed the Americans.

-NEWSREEL:

-Fidel Castro suggests it was sabotage,

occurring with the knowledge and approval of the US government.

Cuba was on a war footing.

America's CIA began targeting Castro.

There were plots to kill him using poisoned pens and pills.

Even exploding cigars. Castro revelled in the CIA's bungling.

And I do not worry at all. It's news.

-TRANSLATION:

-They never understood that the best way

to fight Fidel Castro is not to confront him,

because where can he go from there?

He wouldn't have known what to do, because he needs the confrontation.

That's what the United States were useful for.

Fidel loves the US, they did everything he wanted.

-IN ENGLISH:

-He's the hero. He's David against Goliath.

Deep in the Florida Everglades, the CIA was working with hundreds

of Cuban exiles on a bold plan to invade Cuba.

We felt that we had to do something.

We had to do something to reclaim the nation.

President Kennedy refused to commit American forces,

but was happy for the exiles to go ahead.

It would turn out to be a huge blunder that Castro would exploit.

American bombers painted to look like Cuban planes

and piloted by exiles

set out from Nicaragua to destroy Castro's air force.

But he feared an attack was coming, and had hidden most of his planes.

The Cubans began preparing for a ground invasion.

Two days later, 1,400 exiles landed on Cuba's south coast

at the Bay of Pigs.

Very little would go to plan.

I landed in the first wave.

The first thing that I heard was, "Viva Fidel Castro."

Resistance was fiercer than expected.

The Cuban air force sank two supply ships.

Castro rushed to the Bay of Pigs to take command.

Perhaps, that night, the most intense fight

that has taken place in Cuba in the 20th century.

Over two days, 70,000 Cuban troops using Soviet tanks

overpowered the would-be liberators. 114 exiles were killed.

Around 1,100 were captured.

The invasion had achieved the opposite

of what its participants had intended.

The success of the invasion for Fidel Castro gave him

a tremendous sense of invincibility

and also proved to the Soviet Union that he was somebody that

they could trust to maintain the fight

against the US.

As it turned out, they were right.

In Cuba, the revolution was gathering support.

Castro had a populist touch and was busy attacking the vestiges

of privilege from the Batista days.

This used to be the luxurious Biltmore Beach Club,

with, they told me, an entrance fee of 2,000

and an annual subscription of 200.

Nowadays, anyone can come in for a few cents a time.

With Castro cementing his power over Cuba,

the Americans focused on a covert war of sabotage and subversion.

Now he showed how pragmatic he could be.

He had come to power vowing he was not a communist,

but, in December 1961,

Castro formally threw in his lot with the Soviets.

IN SPANISH:

APPLAUSE

When he announces on national television that he had become

a Marxist-Leninist and, quote, "I will be one till the day I die",

he also said that he had not finished even the first book

of Karl Marx's Capital.

This is not book learning. This is saying, "You know, it looks good.

"Good enough, at least.

"If I'm going to be a Soviet ally,

"I'd better say that I'm a communist."

The Russians now had an ally just 90 miles from the coast of Florida.

Castro became a communist hero.

IN RUSSIAN:

Cuba had become the first communist beachhead

in the Western hemisphere.

In response, America tightened its economic noose around Castro,

putting in place a trade embargo that lasted more than 50 years.

But as the Cold War deepened, Cuba and its newly communist

leader would soon bring the world to the edge of destruction.

We were this close to nuclear holocaust,

and Fidel Castro was the main reason that we were that close.

In June 1961, the United States had placed nuclear missiles

in Turkey, capable of striking the Soviet Union.

A year later, the Russian leader Khrushchev persuaded Castro

to allow its nuclear missiles to be secretly sited in Cuba.

That would put Washington in range of a Soviet strike.

-TRANSLATION:

-I worked in a factory that made missiles

which were sent to Cuba on the orders of Khrushchev.

It was a test to the Americans

who had put rockets with nuclear warheads in Turkey,

a nice little present.

That could lead to a nuclear war.

But if we put our missiles under their noses,

maybe they would question whether it was worth it or not.

The Soviets set about building missile sites in Cuba.

But they could not be concealed from American spy planes.

They were discovered in October 1962, bringing the two superpowers

to the brink of nuclear war.

Within the past week,

unmistakable evidence has established

the fact that a series of offensive missile sites

is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.

The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide

a nuclear strike capability against the Western hemisphere.

US President John F Kennedy imposed a naval blockade

against Soviet ships.

Protests erupted around the world.

The crisis peaked when an American spy plane was shot down over Cuba.

The Cold War was turning white hot.

-TRANSLATION:

-We had no doubts

that this could have turned into a third world catastrophe.

This was a real possibility.

A single careless step could spark an explosion.

Years later, Castro recalled how high the stakes had been.

IN SPANISH:

After 13 days in which the world stared into the abyss,

the two superpowers came to a deal.

Khrushchev agreed to withdraw his missiles from Cuba.

America withdrew theirs from Turkey. To his horror, Castro was sidelined.

-TRANSLATION:

-To a certain extent, at a basic level,

you could say it was a betrayal.

Castro took great offence at the lack of trust

shown by the Soviet Union.

Decades later, Castro revealed his own role in taking the world

to the brink of Armageddon.

When he told us, at the time it was really unbelievable.

He had sent a message to Khrushchev, which he told us about,

in which he said,

"The things about these missiles is that you have to use them first."

You know, a pre-emptive strike.

That, ironically,

proved to be one of the reasons why Khrushchev decided to withdraw them.

He realised that he was losing control

at a moment of grave crisis in the world,

and that maybe Fidel did not have all of his marbles.

He was right.

Thank God that Khrushchev was wise enough to do that,

because otherwise we would have had a nuclear holocaust.

Away from the world stage, Castro was reforming Cuban society.

Before the revolution,

Cuba had been one of the wealthier countries in Latin America...

but many of its six million citizens were poor,

and around a quarter couldn't read.

Castro encouraged thousands of young volunteers

to travel to the countryside to teach literacy,

and he began building a health service.

The successes were enormous. First, the entire population was educated.

Secondly, schools, universities,

built to educate their children and grandchildren.

Third, the creation of a medical system and a health service

that is the envy of most of the world.

Castro himself came to embody the revolution.

He frequently appeared at mass rallies,

making televised speeches of epic proportions,

as his daughter Alina remembers.

-TRANSLATION:

-Imagine a child of eight just longing

for six o'clock in the evening

to be able to watch half an hour of cartoons.

This man was talking, he had started at two o'clock,

and the children were virtually praying for him to shut up.

Behind the cult of personality,

the Cuban leader jealously guarded his private life.

-TRANSLATION:

-Fidel Castro is a man who has been surrounded

by people since the year he was in the Sierra Maestra.

He needs solitude.

He's a man who is very private in his personal life,

very, very private.

Castro's family was off limits.

He's believed to have had ten children with several women.

Including Fidelito, who he kept from his mother.

His daughter, who later fled Cuba, recalls life with her father.

-TRANSLATION:

-To begin with, I was a very normal girl.

When I had any questions, I would go along and ask my parents,

my mother, my father.

The answers were always very cryptic and strange.

They never really explained anything to me.

And so I would let him talk in a monologue

about whatever subject he cared to at that particular moment.

I didn't have a regular place in his world.

Castro's regime persecuted political and social outsiders,

including gays and lesbians.

He constructed a powerful police state.

Fidel was prepared to send people

to prison by the tens of thousands

and hold them in prison for years and years,

simply because of the expression of political views

or to try to associate to oppose him.

This was a ruthless ruler

in the way that he dealt with the domestic political opposition.

CHEERING

One former revolutionary spent 22 years

as a political prisoner after he turned against Castro's regime.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

-TRANSLATION:

-Prison in Cuba was a violent shock for us,

especially after we had fought Batista's dictatorship

which had been very arbitrary and very cruel to political prisoners.

We saw that the very same revolution we had fought for

was using the same or worse methods against political prisoners.

In one of three documentaries Oliver Stone made about him,

Castro rejected criticism of his use of power.

IN SPANISH:

Dictator means strong man, yes, dictator, yes,

in the 1960-'62 period some of them had met harsh

fates, no question about it, but at the same time you have to allow

that there were people who were not necessarily working

in the Cuban peoples' interest. It was a very tricky time.

So, a dictator, you can call him that. It's not a big deal.

The US has supported dictators,

dozens and dozens of dictators, in most of the countries of the world.

The 1960s saw the Cold War expanding into conflicts

around the world.

The US became embroiled in a disastrous war

against the communist backed forces of North Vietnam.

The conflict influenced Fidel Castro and Che Guevara

into internationalising the battle against American global power.

The way to fight the United States is to tie it down.

As Guevara articulately put it,

"Let us create two, three more Vietnams."

Wherever they may be, it doesn't matter.

It might be in the Congo, Bolivia,

it might be everywhere in Latin America or Africa.

Cuba becomes involved in much of the world to try to multiply the impact

of the strategy that the Vietnamese had developed -

fight imperialism wherever it may be.

Che Guevara went to the Congo where he tried to foment revolution,

then he turned his attention to Latin America.

In 1966, he went to Bolivia with a group of guerrillas.

He was hunted down by government troops, helped by the CIA,

and in October 1967, Guevara was captured, and shot the next day.

That image of the dead Che was seen in many parts of South America

and people said so, including people on the left,

"My God, it's like Christ."

Castro saw an opportunity in Che Guevara's death.

HE ORATES IN SPANISH

After Che died, suddenly his face is just everywhere.

It's just on every wall, every placard -

who has not seen the dashing,

handsome face of Che Guevara on their coffee cup,

on their T-shirt? That was all launched by Fidel Castro,

that was taking a Korda picture

and saying he's going to be our global ambassador

for the noble revolution

and the wicked US who must have been behind the Bolivians

and his execution - which to some extent was quite true.

As America's deepening involvement in Vietnam ignited protests

in Britain and beyond,

people on the left increasingly saw Castro as a figurehead.

Castro was like a David and Goliath situation to America.

Here was this tiny country, seeking to implement

a version of socialism, a version of communism,

whatever you want to call it,

up against the might of American capitalism,

which was doing everything it could to crush that - and he survived.

Whatever his defects, and whatever the bad humans rights record

of the island of Cuba, for which Castro was responsible as well,

nevertheless, that status was something that inspired

the rest of the left.

America appeared be losing on two fronts, in Vietnam and Cuba.

To some American diplomats,

the Cold War was blinding the superpower

to the true nature of its enemies.

Our two biggest mistakes in history were in Vietnam,

where we precisely confused communism and nationalism

and in Cuba, where we did the same thing.

The only way you could have dealt successfully

in Vietnam and Cuba is to understand

that nationalism is more important than communism,

from where they're coming.

Our ability to succeed would have depended on our ability

to understand the war that they saw, not the war that we saw.

Pull!

In 1976, a new US president, Jimmy Carter,

hoped for a new start with Cuba.

He sent Robert Pastor as his envoy to meet Castro.

As ever, the Cuban leader was defiant,

bringing up a US government report on CIA plots

to kill foreign leaders, including himself.

He started the meeting by reminding us of the Church Committee Report

on all of the political assassinations,

and he ended a description of those assassinations in the report

by then saying, "That's only about half of all of the attempts

"to kill me by the United States,

"let me tell you about the other half."

And he did.

But over time, the two countries did agreed

to reopen limited diplomatic relations short of full ties.

Carter relaxed the ban on Americans travelling to Cuba,

and Castro released some political prisoners.

He was always a tough negotiator.

He was a powerful attorney, advocate,

he could throw out five arguments

and you'd get the feeling as if he was tying you in a knot,

and then he'd pull it tight.

Brilliant, just brilliant, at times.

President Carter's effort to engage with Castro ultimately

ran into the sand. In the end, for Castro,

cooperation with America was more dangerous than conflict.

Castro had much greater possibilities,

in his eyes, to not normalise relations

when the potential existed,

because the risk of normalising relations

with the United States is significant.

Will they be able to control the country so tightly

with the influx of American ideas and money?

I think it would be very difficult.

Therefore, Castro has other priorities.

EXPLOSIONS

Castro continued to impose himself on the international stage,

this time thousands of miles away in south-west Africa.

When apartheid South Africa tried to destabilise

the left-wing government of Angola, Castro sent in Cuban troops.

IN SPANISH:

Around 10,000 Cuban soldiers are believed to have been killed

in 14 years of fighting.

In 1988, Castro took charge of the war from Havana

for the decisive Battle of Cuito Cuanavale.

IN SPANISH:

Cuba's intervention helped defeat South Africa in Angola.

It also hastened the end of the apartheid regime

that had survived for 40 years.

On his release,

Nelson Mandela acknowledge the debt the new South Africa owed to Cuba.

It's a very great moment for us to be visited by Fidel.

WOMAN TRANSLATES INTO SPANISH

Because what he has done for us...

is difficult to put into words.

Cuba's involvement in Angola was absolutely decisive

because they defeated the apartheid war machine,

which had never been...

South African forces had never been defeated before.

It became a major issue in the subsequent transformation

from the tyranny of apartheid to the free democracy

that we see in South Africa today.

But there was little sign of democracy in Cuba.

Even a popular hero of the Angolan War was not safe from persecution.

'It was the show trial that shook Havana...'

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

In 1989, General Arnaldo Ochoa was controversially convicted

of drug smuggling and corruption and was later executed.

When General Ochoa, the hero of Angola,

was condemned by Raul Castro at Fidel's behest,

and put to death, we all figured he did it

because he was a potential successor,

because Fidel never, ever puts up with potential successors.

Ochoa's death shattered the life of one of his friends,

the Cuban writer, Norberto Fuentes.

He had been part of Castro's inner circle for a decade.

He recalls a fateful meeting with the Cuban leader

after Ochoa's execution.

He gave me his hand, "How are you?" "I'm well, Comandante, how are you?"

"I'm well." He looked at me. He take my measure.

He's taking my measure for my coffin. That's what I think.

And I know that it was the end.

Fuentes tried to flee Cuba, but he was caught and jailed.

Castro let him leave the country after he went on hunger strike.

Now living in America,

his reflections on his life under the revolution

reveal the extraordinary devotion Castro inspired.

Fidel said something one day...

I'm going to say it in Spanish,

because I want to say it exact as he said...

Despite everything, Fuentes still won't denounce Castro.

Nada...

-TRANSLATION:

-Nothing personal, no suffering,

no jail or dead friend has diminished my sense of history.

I'm not an enemy of the revolution.

How can you be an enemy of an earthquake?

Now Cuba faced another seismic shock.

For 30 years Castro's regime

had been sustained by Soviet economic help,

but under the new Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev,

that began to change.

Communism was collapsing across Eastern Europe.

When the Soviet Union disappeared, so did Castro's lifeline.

HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

-TRANSLATION:

-The majority of industrial facilities in Cuba

were financed by the Soviet Union, were manned by Soviet specialists,

built with materials supplied from the Soviet Union -

and suddenly all that stopped.

Cuba, from an economic point of view, seemed to fall into the abyss.

No support, no resources of its own.

Cuba's economy collapsed.

Without Russian economic support,

ordinary Cubans were thrust into poverty.

Castro blamed the ongoing US embargo

for the country's desperate situation.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

APPLAUSE

Castro was forced to compromise with capitalism,

allowing some private business

and opening the country to tourism -

but Cuba was on its way to becoming

the third poorest country in Latin America.

As the crisis worsened in 1994,

thousands of desperate Cubans tried to flee,

the latest in a long line to risk it all in the Florida Straits.

Under Castro, around a sixth of Cuba's population went into exile.

-TRANSLATION:

-We really don't know how many deaths there have been

of people who were trying to escape from Cuba.

Imagine how desperate you'd have to be

to get hold of an inner tube from some lorry,

throw a sack over it

and try to cross 90 miles of shark-infested water.

But it's easier to do that than to rebel there.

It's more likely that you'll survive that

than taking part in an armed uprising.

But Castro's international isolation began to ease in the late 1990s

as a string of left-wing governments came to power in Latin America.

The newly-elected leaders of Brazil and Venezuela

were among those who paid their dues to Castro.

Lula flew to Havana, met Fidel many times,

likewise Chavez - and for the first time since the Cuban Revolution,

the whole of South America recognised Cuba,

so the Cubans were suddenly joyous.

Venezuela's leader Hugo Chavez became Castro's closest ally.

He gave the struggling Cuban economy a new lease of life

by supplying cheap oil in return for help from Cuban medics.

Castro found admirers among a new generation

of Latin American leaders.

All these regimes had come to power through democratic elections -

none of them had come to power via an armed struggle,

and Fidel understood that the continent was changing,

so they were less isolated from 2000 onwards

than they had been for the preceding 40 years.

Castro never lost his eye for a powerful image

to promote his regime.

He invited Oliver Stone to film

a visit to a Cuban medical school for his documentary.

His message was clear - after 40 years in power,

Castro was still father to the nation and to the continent.

I don't know what picture people draw of Fidel Castro,

but those people who met him

would generally attribute warmth to him

and curiosity about the human condition.

He's a man who's truly interested in people,

because he knows he lives in a bubble,

so, in a way, he's trying to reach out of that bubble.

Castro's health had always been treated as a state secret.

The first sign he was not immortal

came while making a speech in 2004.

Those pictures were very damning to the image of Fidel -

the eternal vigilant,

ever healthy soldier, Comandante,

looking after our country.

In 2006, Castro had intestinal surgery.

Power was gradually handed over to his younger brother Raul.

Clearly Fidel did not want to do it, but he was forced to.

He couldn't appear in public and he was really compelled to do it.

But he didn't really want to do it.

As Fidel Castro's influence waned, Raul sped up the economic reforms.

In 2013, the visit of Barack Obama saw the easing of US sanctions

and the restoration of diplomatic ties between the two countries.

It remains to be seen whether Obama's successor, Donald Trump,

will maintain this new relationship.

Castro was rarely seen in recent years as his health declined.

His death has now reawakened the controversy

over the legacy of a popular revolution

and more than 50 years of authoritarian rule.

The world has rarely seen leaders like that.

Think of individuals who shape their country as completely

as Fidel Castro shaped Cuba,

and there aren't many people like that in the history of the world.

Castro was the last of the original Cold War warriors.

Unlike many, he survived the collapse of the Soviet Union

and remained an icon for left-wing movements around the world.

What I would say is he's one of the giants of the 20th century.

A major figure in South America and the rest of the world, too,

and, within the continent itself,

Fidel will be seen as a gigantic continental figure

of the type that only South America can produce.

He won, he definitely won, and he knows he won.

They didn't kill him, they didn't intimidate him,

he never bowed down. He fought on his...

He stood up and died on his feet, he didn't live on his knees.

Castro once claimed history would absolve him,

but, for some, it is his human rights record

that will also define his legacy.

History will record that this is a ruler

who did many good things to transform his country,

but anyone who imprisoned so many,

who caused the exile of a sixth of his population,

who executed so many and who committed unspeakable crimes

in the name of democracy and socialism,

no, I would not absolve him,

and I don't think history would.

People remember what he did for health care and education in Cuba.

And they'll also remember the completely self-destructive economy.

They'll remember years of conflict with the United States.

History absolved his desire to rid Cuba of the Batista dictatorship,

but it did not absolve his own dictatorship.