And in fact, in santa clara, supporters would make molotov cocktails for them and pass them out the windows so they could be used. So this happened, like, december 30, 1958. News filters out that they have managed to seize this train, and men go in, and it is like aladdins cave. They have hundreds of guns, machine guns, mortars, bazookas, and its this extraordinary thing. And word gets back to havana on new years eve, and the dictator , whose main worry at this stage was that there would be a military coup, or that he would be arrested and put on trial, decides to cut and run. So he has a regular new Years Eve Party, and if you have seen godfather part ii, its more or less accurate. He has a new Years Eve Party , has his chicken and rice at the cup of brandy, and then he reads a statement that he is about to leave havana, about to abandon cuba. And there are three dc4s waiting on the airstrip with a list of names of people who are coming with him. And people start running to the ofplanes that are all sort idling away. The pilots have no idea of where they are going. And they go through the list of names. Some of the military rush off, trying to get money, and they all have swiss bank accounts, and they finally all pile into the three planes and head off. Two of them go to florida, not to miami, which was extremely profidel at this stage. They instead go to jacksonville and palm beach. But the other one, the dictator, the americans finally decided a couple of weeks earlier that they could no longer support batista. Not only that, they wouldnt let him into the country. So he flies to the dominican republic, where the dictator welcomes him with open arms. But suddenly word starts to filter out on new years day. State radio does not announce it, they just played ninth over and over again. But word gets out, people take to the streets, supporters of fidel come out with guns and start to take over the streets of havana. There is some shooting but fidel himself is over in the east at a farm, and he hears about it on the radio. He has no idea these guys are going to come in, and at first he thinks it is a military coup, and then he realizes he better do something. So he goes to santiago, where he gives this rousing speech and on the evening of new years day, where he claims victory for the revolution, but he makes sure to do it in the place where the spanish surrendered after the spanishamerican war. Part of the whole root of the revolution was that the cubans had been trying for decades to get rid of the spanish, and the United States intervened at the last minute in 1898 and saved the day, but they decided to occupy cuba for three years with a military occupation. And then they refused, they didnt even allow the cubans to come to the surrender ceremonies , which were in santiagos main square. It was considered one of the great historical insults and the root of enmity. So fidel stops at key points along the way, giving speeches, his skill as an oratory now he decides to do a caravan of victory, so fidel stops at key points along the way, giving speeches, his skill as an oratory now comes out, these endless, twohour speeches now begin, and cubans love him. At each step he gets more support. Finally he comes to havana. He had already sent che and camilo ahead to occupy the main derricks. They each have about 100 guys, guerrillas, and 5000 soldiers floating on their rooms, each of them. Observers said it was enough to make you burst out laughing, understanding there was no resistance at all, completely giving up. The cia couldnt even understand. They thought they should be some sort of negotiated opposition. But as fidel gets closer to havana, its obvious he has 99 support of the population. He arrives in havana and goes to the main military base, right in front of the place where the new Years Eve Party occurred, and he gives this incredible speech , that the revolution has finally triumphed. And as he does, women in the front row release these doves, symbols of peace and good fortune. And they land on the podium, one is on his shoulder, and for the rest of the speech, they are sitting there, giving this sort of a divine aura, benediction. And in santeria, as well, that is considered extremely good luck. And in the following weeks, a magazine had this portrait of him with this halo. So he was considered this sort of like christlike figure, which is difficult to believe, but he was considered this great savior of the island. Camilo is also extremely popular, he is from havana, you know, he is goodlooking dude, very bon vivant, and he is described as more of a rumba dancer than a guerilla, described as looking like jesus christ on a spree. Meanwhile, che and aleida decide to get married. They kept a chaste, 1950s relationship as they traveled around in the mountains, most of the time to dirty, exhausted or , or too tired to have any sort of romantic relationship. But when they get to havana, things start to progress. And it is one of the first revolutionary marriages. Raul and wilma get married. Fidel and celia dont. Fidel takes up random admirers, there are many, and we dont know what celia thought of it, but she stayed the great organizer. They have a suite in the havana hilton and the romantic stuff starts to slide. Meanwhile, the guerrillas keep their distinctive look, their uniforms, the long hair, their beards, they are like prototype hippies, a complete contrast to the very staid, eisenhowerera mad men look at the time. And if you look at magazines of the period, the contrasts between the guerrillas and the guerilla gals are quite striking. Suits and ties, the man in the gray flannel suit, and they are going off to work, pulsing their polishing their shoes, and the women are the ideal housewife, cooking for the kids, very doris day looking. So the contrast is very striking. In a sense, the 1960s as we know them, as we refer to them in shorthand, were beginning in 1959, this idea of the rebellious Youth Movement was sort of already brewing in the United States, at a time when , especially with young people, there was a lot of dissatisfaction growing. And fidel was regarded by many as a james dean sort of character, a marlon brando, a Rebel Without a cause kind of thing. Meanwhile, fidel was having a blast. He is hanging out with ernest hemingway, the most famous expat. Of 1959 iseriod winding down, it is what i call the revolutionof actually, Jeanpaul Sartre said that. I stole that. But it is a time when everyone loved fidel, everyone loved che, the guerrillas were heroes, and in the United States as well. So in april, fidel and the gang were invited to speak in washington to the American Society of editors. So they all fly up and when they they are very popular here. When they go to new york, they are mobbed. 20,000 people meet them at penn station. Fidel is carried on their shoulders to his hotel. He goes to the empire state building, he goes to the zoo, gives a speech to 20,000 people in central park, and all of this press coverage is very laudatory, it is all about him, calling him the reincarnation of one of the founding fathers. Americans were recognizing their own better selves, this sort of sense of a small group who managed to overthrow an evil empire. And juan almeida is also extremely popular among african americans, who, at the cusp of the civil rights movement, saw in cuba, overnight they got rid of segregation laws. It turns out its not as easy as that. There are a lot of other things, but officially segregation is gone. The struggle in the United States is only just beginning. Here we have fidel and che, more and more chummy, and che is wearing the star as he becomes more radical, and the revolution takes a drift further to the left, and the fights begin after this marvelous trip to new york. Things go quickly awry for the United States, partly because the washington visit was not successful at all. In public, it was like an amazing thing, everyone loves them, it was like a huge success, fidel and the gang, but it turned out eisenhower was miffed that it wasnt an official visit. Fidel was just turning up. So he made sure he was out of washington playing golf the whole time fidel was here. Instead, he sends Richard Nixon, his Vice President , and Richard Nixon and fidel hate each other on site. Sight. They have a 90minute meeting, but it doesnt go well at all. Nixon is convinced fidel is extremely naive. Fidel calls nixon a son of a bitch [laughter] mr. Perrottet an opinion that others have shared, but this is going awry, not going as well as fidel hoped. He wanted to communicate directly with the american people. So to the frustration of his bodyguards, he would leap over barriers and start shaking hands with americans, hugging them, saying, i want to meet my people, sort of like a rock star. At one stage, he sort of think he is getting his message through, hes in the hotel room and they described him doing a , little dance, they are starting to understand us, they are starting to understand us. But he couldnt figure out why americans were obsessed with communism and why they didnt understand and fully sympathize with the main goal of independence of cuba. They wanted an independent, unfortunately, economic independence, and america ran everything there. They had the best land, they owned the railroads, the y the electricity companies, they owned the telephones, so it was a crash course, and naively, both america and cuba at the initial stages were thinking this could be avoided. But things go awry as 1959 progressed. Toward the end of 1959, eisenhower authorizes assassination of fidel. They also Start Talking about an invasion plan. By 1960, fidel comes back to new york to speak at the u. N. And is snubbedrt of everywhere, and hated, vilified. And he is in his hotel at the , and the hotel guys accuse him of killing live chickens, plucking them and killing them and cooking them in the hotel room. So they go to harlem, famously, and this was hugely popular with the africanamerican community, these rallies outside, and one malcolm x. Goes to visit. One of the other visitors is khrushchev, who has already offered economic aid and will now offer much more as well. The americans had banned imports of the cuban sugar, so russians hanging around in the wings , offering to buy the whole lot at inflated prices. And from there, it goes from bad to worse. One of the great historical accidents is that cuba is like a pawn in the cold war. That russia is there in the wings. During the revolution, there was a missile base in cuba within a year. It was like science fiction. Meanwhile, here we have the iconic image of che, the original iconic image taken at a rally in 1960, when things were really going south with the United States. There is a huge explosion in the in the harbor, which everyone is convinced is staged by the cia. There was never proof of that, but the cia was doing other stuff. Here he is standing implacably , looking into the distance, and a cuban photographer named albert korda takes a couple of snaps of him, one vertical and a couple of horizontals. And this one, they publish and they sort of forget about it, but he crops it and hangs it up in his studio. After che died in bolivia in 1967, an italian Fashion Designer comes and sees it and borrow it, takes it back to italy and does these screen prints on it, and its is 1967. By 1968, it is one of the worlds great images, and in many ways now that is all people can remember about the revolution. So that is that story. I dont even know what time it is, because i havent got a watch. It is 7 51, is that right . Should it be time for questions . Time for questions. Ok, down in the front there. Im curious about your Research Process in cuba. What was your process in cuba . And did you have government minders, government officials who shepherded you around, or not . Were you free to do the research you wanted . Wasperrottet the question what was my process, and was i followed . Cuba changed a lot. By the obama years, there was a window of opportunity. I would go back and forth down to cuba and stay for a week and had come back. I could go to the archives and make my requests, they could think about it for a month. , which is what i like to do. But there was one place that celia set up, the office of historical affairs, and she got everything to do with the revolution and put it in one repository, and it is still there, and you can go in and make requests. You have to get special permission. You have to get an academic visa, which became very difficult, unfortunately, in the trump era, because the americans and the cubans sacked all their staff, so it is hard to get a visa of any kind, if not a tourist visa. But i did manage to get an academic visa, and i would explain what i was doing, and they were actually very helpful. But the real reason i was able to break into it was that a friend of mine named nancy stout had written the first biography of celia. There had not been a biography of celia written in cuba. There has been a growing set of things, but not a biography. She spent a lot of time meeting people and hung out there and had a translator who actually worked at the office, so she became sort of friends with them. And when i went down, she introduced me to the translator, who had also worked there, and that translator introduced me to the guys, and i had this entree. And in cuba, everything is very personal, handshakes and whatever, so i would hang around there. At some point, it didnt hurt that i was australian, i would have a more objective view, in theory. But i sort of hung around, and if you just hang around, they figure it is easy to give you stuff when you come in every day. I was there, and they would bring me things, that which only they would show me the letters. And one of the funny things was that they had the catalogue and , and they would say, what do you want to see . And i would say, what do you got . And they said, you have to ask for something specifically. And i would ask for the diaries, certain letters, and when it came to those letters, other things would come up. And at the end the guys that worked there, i would take them out for lunch, and around the corner, there was this restaurant, a swiss restaurant , which is absolutely indistinguishable from any cuban restaurant, but it is this swiss restaurant had heineken beer, and i would buy them heineken beer, which they had never tasted before. I sort of became friends with them, emailed backandforth, i would tell them when i was coming, and then they started to bring things out. Juan almeidas diary was a major thing. Did anyone else write these diaries . Did anyone else, you know, do that . And eventually they brought out rauls, which is kind of an extraordinary thing. It is very cheeky, he has a great sense of humor, he was a n appealing, goofy character, much more fun than fidel. Fidel couldnt dance, you know, he was obsessed with politics. In mexico city, they tried to take him out and line updates with people who were in the movement, and fidel would bore them to tears. And raul would kick him under the table, to try to get him to stop talking politics, and he wouldnt do it. So there was that sort of thing. But also hanging around down there, they are still around, all the old fighters, the ones that had been very, very young during the revolution, so some of the guerrilla leaders are still hanging around. There was one, david ochoa who , was shuffling back and forth in the archives, i would see him there, he is, like, 90, he is in uniform with a bundle of stuff under his arms. So i went up and introduced myself and told him what i was doing, and he said, im writing a book about the womens platoon. He showed it to me, and we chatted about it, and he told a few stories, and that was a breakthrough as well. Puebla is a woman guerrilla who stayed in the military, there is an annual ceremony at the anniversary of celias death at a ceremony, so i went there and realized everyone was there, and i was sort of get around, said hi, nothing pressing, maybe i could chat, whatever, so they knew i was kind of around and i was interested in stuff and was actually taking it seriously. And i was doing research in cuba instead of a lot of americans who actually do it in princeton or miami or whatever. I was actually going down there and going to the locations and meeting all the people, and i would go out and meet these sort of minor figures who were guerrillas, they were in their 90s, they dont remember much, their stories were kind of hard to follow, but then you see the photographs on the wall, there is fidel, there is che, their memories would be jogged, and they would tell these stories. But in the 1970s and 1980s, they started to write memoirs, so a lot of the stories that were telling werent even related to the memoirs, and you could go back and find these things. They were published in cuba, obviously. You might find one copy at nyu, you might find, a sort of connection with nyu, so you could actually go back and find this stuff that no one has really looked at. At this time, it is not that ideologically saturated. It is kind of a story that everyone kind of agrees on. Things changed completely in 1959, and the biggest bait is is whether fidel is communist all along and was actually lying and keeping it to himself. There is no evidence of this at all. In fact, the communist party and the movement, the 26th of july movement, hated each other. The communists wouldnt join the insurrection, they did not support the strikes, so they were kind of useless until the right at the end after fidel got this whole thing going, the Cuban Communist Party sort of comes along. Anyway to answer your question, you sort of hang around, and things come to you at a certain stage. Any other questions . Down there . What do you see for the future of cuba . Mr. Perrottet it is not looking good. It is not looking great in the short term. As you know, trump has just tightened the embargo, which has been going since eisenhower blocked sugar in 1959, 1960. And then jfk imposed the trade embargo. But there were laws passed in the 1990s that could really have strangled cuba, but no president has enforced this particular law, which allows people to sue companies that deal with cuba, using any piece of land appropriated during the revolution. And that is almost everything. And you can sue german companies, french companies, whatever. It is really dubious about whether this has a basis in international law, but it is scaring everybody off, entirely. I was in cuba, like, a week before it came into force, the second of may, everyone was freaking out, because already shortages were going around, shipments were stoppi