The grantor, a journey through the historical underbelly of europe and most recently chase fedele and the improbable revolution that changed world history. As a college student, tony regularly disappeared to hitchhike through the outback and travel through rural india where he briefly enjoyed a career as an extra. Now based in the east village he makes it a point to continue to explore in iceland, tierra del fuego, beijing, and tasmania to name a few. Tonys travel stories have been published in magazines like the New York Times and Smithsonian Magazine and have been translated into a dozen languages and widely anthologized, having been selected seven times for the best American Travel writing series. Is also a regular television guest on the History Channel he spoke in a but everything from the crusades to the birth of disco. His book is available for signing after the program. Please join me in welcoming tony. [ applause ]. Hey everybody, thank you for coming out on a beautiful spring night for dc is looking pretty good today. To celebrate the secrets of the cuban revolution. You may be wondering from my funny accent what is an australian during living in new york and writing about cuba, many have wondered and the reason is that i used to live in argentina, and blend a series and i reported all around south america and if you live in latin america and deal with latin america to everyone there is in some way thinking about cuba and what happened in cuba and whats gonna happen in cuba. So in that sense i felt like i had to go. I finally did in 1996 just after the soviet union had collapsed to it was kind of an economic disaster. I got down there from new york she couldnt fly direct and all i knew was that i had to take 1000 in cash and give it to a guy name lionel at the airport and i would recognize him by his hat and i got to the airport and i went into the diffused terminal with wires hanging down and lionel did appear and i gave them the money and he gave me the handwritten thing and pointed to a russian prop plane so six people squeezed into the plane that zoomed over the caribbean and landed in cuba and it was a fascinating experience. The next time i went was under the obama years and i got invited on a private jet to fly from miami to havana with six passengers and a slightly different experience. Champagne getting picked up in beautiful american cars being taken to a lecture hotel with a rooftop pool with wifi. It was like science fiction. But, yes, after that before i went on the trip i asked a friend, i just wanted to find out about the revolution and they told me more or less what happened. It doesnt exist then you should write it and i thought okay that seems wildly difficult and extremely unlikely but on the trip the trip i felt about a little bit and heard there were some sites around the island around cuba including the hideouts in the mountains and these other extraordinary places. So i propose to the smithsonian that a go back and follow the trail in the history of the revolution which is how the story appears on the print out and it was a story of going to the places and finding all the things going on. Look okay i shouldve had that up to give you an idea of classic havana but after i did that i realize theres much more to be learned and that was the tip of the iceberg so i suggested doing a book about it and i started to get into it and the thing that inspired me was this idea that i discovered of how popular the revolutionary war was amongst americans, which seemed extraordinary, given what it happened since. So, how difficult it was to find out about the revolution here and going to cuba can be difficult as well so i tried it it to investigate the injury surrounding you see it on youtube and hes like, he is absolutely fasttrack comparing him to George Washington and hes a fine young group of revolutionary youngsters and again, this Twilight Zone feel and he says what you think of americans and fedele says, a very positive feeling and he says we want you to like cuba and we like you and its sort of a lovefest but this is the sort of point where i started the book and sort of go back to find out how it all unfolded because the, its incredibly unlikely that this bunch of youngsters in their early 20s and some are teenagers, crash land on the coast of cuba and decimated down to like 12 people and how they ended up defeating an army of 40,000 professional soldiers. In the space of just over two years. It seemed like an extraordinary story but a thing i like about the story as well as its broken up into specific chapters and i shouldve put this in the printouts, its nice to have printouts but there are five parts to the story and we know more or less where we are as we drift along in the first part is a prelude and heres young fedele playing basketball, he was an athletic character and he was logo, the crazy one and he would do things like he bed his friends that he would not drive his bicycle into a wall at full tilt and he went downhill, smashed into a wall and knocked himself out for three days and that was just to prove a point. This is to give insight to his character and he loved sports. You know, hes in basketball and baseball they are his favorites and other american sports. And, you can actually go and visit his family house on the eastern side of cuba. And his family is still there, he from quite a which family but he grew up with the sense of injustice because he go to school and all the other kids didnt have shoes and he was paying the workers badly, theyd get into arguments he organized a strike at one stage which didnt endear him to his dad but if you go to displays you can actually look into the family bedroom and his younger brother raul and him shared a bedroom and you can see the baseball outfits there. Unfortunately the story was offered a contract and its the last one but untrue, he had a great pitching arm but not enough to get a scholarship to miami or indianapolis and so anyway, fedele this extraordinary character one of the most extraordinary characters of the 20th century, the thing this one, hes seen without a beard, he once didnt have a beard, he was once a long lawyer with being very conservative and became more and more radicalized as he went there. Less the studies in the politics and there were other things brewing including a coup by the former president. Now fedele is running for politics and he had he had the coup not occurred you probably wouldve won and then maybe, eight years later mightve run for the presidency himself but instead, he comes in and takes over and everyone is suddenly cut out of the process and he invites tens of american mobsters to run casinos and basically runs the state milking the state and the blatant way and extremely violent as well. The secret police were going around and beating up and murdering opponents. It was a completely thuggish environment. So fedele came to the conclusion as many came to the conclusion that this american backed dictator could not be defeated by peaceful means, that they had to do something extreme. So, they decided to start an insurrection in this is way before the revolution begins its the first volley so in the east the major cities Jose Santiago a very dreamy and it also has barracks there and he and his friends put together and taught themselves how to shoot guns, not very well and they made themselves uniforms to make themselves look like soldiers with a bunch of chevrolets and buicks and trundled off to attack this place that had maybe like 500 soldiers, they thought if they surprise them, because they came to the conclusion that they would be so hung over that they wouldnt fight this is not the case that they completely blew it fedele accidentally knew he ran over a couple patrolmen and, a fight started and many were killed, many were captured and tortured to death. So, its kind of a disaster and its one of the disasters that it was like the battle of little big home for celebrated in a weird way so, you can still go in see the bullet holes they preserved as part of the shrine. But, fedele was actually captured in a bunch of them were sent to the Devils Island and they modeled one out of chicago. Its an example of the and opticon were guard can be in the middle and see everyone in the whole place. Now, it was a very sinister place in those days, very violent but for whatever reason the Political Prisoners were all put into their own room together. This is a strange decision, they all got together and gave each other classes and revolutionary theory and plotted what to do and sent messages to people outside and fidel even managed to integrate in a great publishing story, he wrote a book while in their pamphlet really on his defense speech in which he wrote on little pieces of paper and smuggled out piece by piece to supporters in havana. And she was riding and lemon juice so the guy never asked why but the pressure mounted to release fidel and his friends and they are still youngsters and basically unknown at this stage. They flee to mexico city where they organize and decide to invade cuba they are complete amateurs and this bunch of ph. D. Grads from princeton word government in the appellation mountains and told to get it together for the revolution and the government and they had to treat themselves to teach them how to shoot and how to navigate and survive in the mountains and they put rocks in their back packs and went hiking up and down the streets and sometimes in the mountains and they found a veteran to teach them how to shoot guns and at one stage they are all arrested but at this stage theyve been joined by a young chap named ernesto and he was a doctor and he signed on to the extradition so they started to get going as fast as they could and this is the second part of the story where they actually see this and they started to buy a boat and he was can organize in santiago knowing they would arrive sometime at the end of november and planned it all out so he was gonna send a telegram that said the book you ordered is at a rent this is a code and they would head over to the coast, the plan would take five days so they all piled into the boat it barely worked, he had been waterlogged and there were like 120 people that managed to squeeze on 82 and they were in there like sardines and they set off at night in the storm and it was a storm warning in months and is and is a got out of the harbor is started to rock a lot and they started to get seasick they forgot to pack the tablets, the seasickness tablets of the all started with the exception of raul, and the professional sailors, they all started to get seasick and it was a spectacular disaster and they started sending things over and the top was on in the toilet and it was flooding [ laughter ] this set the tone for the revolution of the early days of the revolution but fidel decided on this to hike into the seer maestro and the most isolated part and indeed at the caribbean. So, they are heading their name turns out they are two days late and they gave up and then they come along and they go along with the coast and suddenly the boat stops and they had a sandbank and so heres an early photograph of them getting in there and they go across and they realized to their horror that they havent landed on one of the beautiful beaches for which cuba is renowned, they landed in a swamp and in the east they go they have this beautiful walk way and they had to climb over the vines and they drop their stuff and panicked and took off their shoes and it was a complete fiasco and they were already dehydrated and desperate and they said have no fear, weve come to save the cuban people. But they burst out laughing and the farming was helpful and he catches the chicken and was gonna cook it for them as well as a piglet and then suddenly they sported by the coast guard to the sierra maestro. Unfortunately on the third day, they were surrounded and they are ambushed in the army has found them and the bullet started appearing out of nowhere and theres a massive amount captured and everyone scatters and he gets shot in the neck, nicked and everyone thinks hes dying, its a poetic soul for someone leans against the tree and remembers his jack london story about a guy whos gonna die in the wilderness. Someone grabs them and people were scattered everywhere fidel is by himself and hes sitting in a shooting field and as it gets desk they were in the shooting field for five days waiting for the army to go away. They were drinking do in the morning to keep themselves alive and fidel was rocking back and forth and victory will be ours and the other to look at each other saying fidel is lost it and as it turns out, they get it together and they walk, basically it takes them like 10 days, a few hours a day and mostly at night and they managed to get to the Meeting Point in the mountains, very isolated and others managed to survive as well and fidels brother, raul managed to make it out and end up there as well and they nick named him shea because hes from argentina and sort of light and australian mate and they were recovering from their wounds. Many were butchered by the army and machine gun to so its a miraculous thing and those who survived by default became the great leaders of the revolution. Money was meant to be running the army was unfortunately caught and only found out years later where he was beaten to get with the shovel beaten to death with a shovel. Later, they were right about called the 12 about 12 people who survived but more like 20 but they like the religious connotation of 12. There in the mountains trying to stay low and trying to survive and as they do survive the its after the efforts of a doctors daughter whos from the low lands and the major organizer of the revolution. And she found accounts she found them food and she would organize mule trains to take himself. Over the coming months it would come out that if it wasnt for her but they couldnt organize their way out of a paper bag it was just an expression and it wasnt disorganized and use ammunition guns that were going off left and right but she was able to organize reinforcements. But he set out the words that fidel and all his friends are dead and then left producing a body and this goes on for months or so, eventually, word went back to havana that fidel wanted an interview to get going. And from havana she didnt want to get up there, to the mountains but she contacted another guy by the name of Herbert Matthews use the great latin american to this day who knew cuba very well and flew down to havana and the agent said he wouldnt and so he said im going myself and i couldnt quite believe him and he and his wife were driven by agents to the east pretending to be plantation owners americans on holiday at different times and he hikes into the mountains and fidel meets him. Its an extraordinary thing, one of the great turning points there without this the revolution wouldve expired fidel meets him to he still only has like 20 people will cut 20 guys in the really ragged but, he tells his brother right rule the rest raul to get the men to walk back and forth and change outfit so it looks like he has a lot more people than he does they had to walk sideways so they wouldnt see the backs of their shorts had been torn out. So he gets a ragtag army and fidel takes matthew that he has these all over the mountains, 200 soldiers which matthews buys and so we had this extraordinary thing hes on the front page of the New York Times with a glowing report. Its a very romantic revolution and this rebellion is against a senator dyck later and this is the sort of image that continues throughout the revolution and in many ways its right these guys didnt have anything political in them, this was a goal they could get behind but the political things we associate like communism came much later. But raul as well, but fidel but basically what he wanted was power they later tried to make fidel a communist and he laughed and said i would be a communist if i was stalling and refused to discuss it further. In his early days, the same day that matthews meets him he comes up, celia in the middle and hikes and is well to me fidel for the first time and at this extraordinary moment he showing off his favorite right and she loves shooting, fishing, she loves the Great Outdoors and shes a huge political d. O. T. , totally devoted to the revolution and its a romantic connection that begins for one of the great moments as of revolution. Theres a lot written about the relationship which is quite extraordinary but this union between cilia and fidel is what becomes a motive of the revolution. He has ideas and spouts them out and put them into action and translates them into something thats practical that could happen. Theres an extraordinary thing that is on the front page of the New York Times is the face of the cuban resistance, its an extraordinary thing that inspires people. The cbs news decides to go up as well and here we have a guy who decides to interview fidel and hes a tv natural and knows how to state things as well so he says he will do it on top of the mountain to the highest mountain in cuba with spectacular views behind him the unfolding coastline and hes sitting there with a bust of the independence hero and they sing rousing songs and its broadcast to 50 Million Viewers across the United States. Suddenly fidel is this huge presence there, despite the fact that theres only a handful of people in followers. Now today you can go up to the sierra meister and its an extremely poor place and the other reason they were able to survive is at the farmers the local farmers decided to help them out. They had long felt isolated and removed from the rest of the country, theyd been left out they were exiled within their own land so they had food because they gave support and carried messages and they told fidel in the army was coming in and when not. So in the early nomadic phase we have this amazing secondary army helping them out with supplies and they are all wandering around in the mountains for months and changing camp every night, its an exhausting time for the revolution. One of the things i found in the havana archives weve all been writing our own diaries with leaders and this is the cuban platoon leader and he wrote a diary as well that was ever published. He was sort of a romantic he had a girlfriend in mexico he didnt particularly like hardship or being rained on or trudging around but he was devoted to the revolution. He missed his friend and he writes this down in the diary and there are marvelous accounts where he falls in love with every woman he meets in the mountains. Farmers daughters, guerrilla volunteers and lovely poems and ends up in a romantic liaison and rally so long that the platoon is left and he has to go get him but it ends when the girl opens up a locker around his neck and sees the image of a photograph of his