NET Journal; Fidel: Panel Discussion Follow Up

the point mayor the point public television good evening my name is born of were about to show you a remarkable and unusual film and paddled for doubt and in that visit with a controversial cuban was celebrating the tenth anniversary of his revolution the production unit followed castro on one of his and liz g for stronger cuban countryside recording his conversations with villages and his views on the state of his country later in the program we'll have a discussion of the film by its

producers saw landau and three other panelists are affecting different points of view first hour at the film itself i know the

pittsburgh that film was made over a four month period in cuba last summer long our guest tonight is the producer of the film saw landau of the special projects unit the san francisco and at affiliate kqed the other panelists are under a soiree is a participant in the cuban revolution and government official and the first years of the castro regime now in exile a professor at the university of florida's rigid fegan professor of political science at stanford university and co author of the book cubans in exile and paul buffalo former us embassy official in havana

editor of latin america report and author of the forthcoming book the losers that leno may i begin by asking for you how do you know this is for real you know for instance that those conversations between castro and the villages were spontaneous as though it is assumed that well we traveled with fidel energy by was an incentive as he was for almost a week and must have covered about fifty villages at that time and in each village there was a slightly different reaction the villages would run out as soon as they saw the jeans there to tell fidel their complaints to tell what was going right to punch him in the arm sometimes the ocean and jordan the new babies and generally talk he would eat with them sometimes bring with them get into board games see old friends there was nothing stage about the whole thing and no one ever knew where we were going sometimes it lets go down this road and see a village over here

it was destroyed in the film singers to do we're going to get you so the racial issue i got the impression that they were not so much work with prisoners regime why you think that women have that way it have not done it but the revelation this world the impression that i got five percent it seems to me that it's really impossible to stage something like we saw the signs really a spontaneous kind of a fair a kind of laugh at the prisoner's i think it's in part understandable why there's a certain oneness about the situation in which they find themselves before a camera being run by some some north americans themselves in in prison for essentially political reasons and you do sense that would lessen their situation is doesn't necessarily mean that stage it just means that this is an uncomfortable i'm really probably tension laden situation well i think that the unit at the

point of the whole business and that's the nagging doubt it was or there was not staged now from the point of view of the of the production fell mama's complement to land on that was very well done on the other hand what we got really was an interpretation of cuban history is written by fidel castro and i think that the pitfalls another perfectly obvious number one the number two is that everybody knows that castro's an excellent actor and certainly was exxon all through the fall but i think that's what we have to do is to look behind which are able to put on on film at to see what the what the facts are now i also started at the end if i may on this and that was the common at the under the film to the fact that he's trying to build a new man through education of the young and so forth and so on well that's true i suggest that term <unk> castro is not making much of an impression on the young because i'll buy zone statement on gender the fifty seven out of one million four hundred and forty thousand primaries school students

more than six hundred thousand had failed to pass to the next grade and out of a possible total of one million students who would be gone to elementary school he recorded only one hundred and seventy two thousand is going to school and said for the more than four hundred thousand i'm not going to school or about the quality of education or whether the young lawyer well disposed toward the region's well i tell you my opinion is not important in this radicalism for knows whether to cast his opinion is and how his record of attacking the youth of cuba's is long and it's a concrete you go back to july of nineteen sixty seven a september the twentieth of last year then the general effect of this year in a march the thirteenth of this year in which he has really excoriated the youth and said that he was reducing the age literally from twenty one down to sixteen so that the the year youth could be

penalized as adults you owe him for not going away for just about everything in the news for them for their lack of revolutionary fervor alanis out one point five million students to cut sugar cane he said that their their failure to live up to what the revolution expect it was tragic indeed he's accused them of carrying posters of the che guevara of sabotage and so forth and saunas matter of fact never goes a force to say that according to castro's own words and jose la russa minister of education his biggest weakness is precisely among the youth well i think that this is something that we watch very terrible i'm quoting fidel castro not among the portable i think you have to be very careful in making making a distinction between when castro turns and certain kinds of things that are happening with coltrane stratum much as we've experienced the same kind of churning out certain things are happening in youth culture used term in the united states to infer from this either youth

problems in the large sense we're kind of not fidel devouring young just seems to me the video was not even a leap of faith that he's really put a different different kind and i think those of us who spend some time on the island in the last couple years of simply don't sense this at all or you may not censored but i submit that on the spot reports have their building hazards and i refer back to nineteen fifty seven one hour one herbert matthews interviewed castro and quoted castro's stating that his girls were operating in groups of between ten and forty one in fact the total number of girls operating with castro was under twenty the total number now certain amount of statements made on sabotage last september the twenty eighty mentioned fifty different acts of sabotage which is not nickel and i'm stuck i mean when you would knock out the new colossus a refinery the only one that's really operating in cuba this is important it's terribly important and he stated himself that the the problems is having is this that inter around the country

and that was you didn't go to a movie the year state farms and so forth that these are not until monday that some of the labor scenes that and so when state funds or they were that's one of the year when a tractor drivers stayed funny when they give you almost a direct quote on march thirteenth of this year he said that you're traveling around and looking at the management farms he found quite a few people who had a sixth grade education who are running the farms very few that had a number that had a very a secondary education and non virtually none who had university training and this is the type of thing that he's trying to trying to make up and this is why suggest that if indeed the new man that he's trying to build is falling out of the rate that he says they are then i suggest that apparently the youth do not go along with castro's version of a new man what we have slightly different reputations of the speech and un figures running a piano on march thirteen speech year old translate freely from

a buck casto says and we can proclaim today with satisfaction that in the field of ideas a political positions in attitudes the students of our universities occupy without a doubt a position of the vanguard in the scene of a revolutionary process in the center the revolutionary process he goes on to say in this speech or will you the high schools are doing what he was doing i think in the speech is making clear what the fault of the revolution beginning quite honest but i think a lot of the end of the speech he started out by praising the students and so forth but for the end of the speech it was quite a different speech and tyler the others march thirteen speech he's said as a matter of fact that he was going to break up taliban university and they're scattered around the country and was on the same speech that he stated that there simply were no technique technique a logical people in sufficient numbers to run his revolution was unlikely that any state also that they were not paper a pencil and often no textbook well i think this is a very basic point that it hit on but it doesn't mean that it's

failing to make a new kind of human behavior to create a new kind of human being but rather you understood us the key problem in cuba that is the a problem overcoming underdevelopment most of the technicians or good percentage of the technicians went into exile they were of the middle or upper classes in on that is less of an element on the question the son of the woman i like to say this analysts and another part of the film castro's guerrilla saying that the key to industry could be the cattle industry he did not point out that before he came to power that there was a very vigorous cattle industry that was destroyed by his revolution and that in fact it was exporting ten thousand headed breeding cattle year and the cubans are consumed per capita and only seventy nine pounds of beef per year just third in the hemisphere and today they have a rational quarter pounder week three chords and i can get it so i don't think that that those statistics are very meaningful because suppose one in this country in the

united states would analyze the per capita meat consumption a mississippi sharecropper and someone who lives on park avenue new york city and then take the average this wouldn't tell you very much about how much meat the mississippi sharecropper had i think this is the situation to what went so the thermal figures to support that that's an awesome catholic university so i don't you know you get back to them who runs the store walk as joy riding around ms jean paul davies says there's something to the fact that the rest of the republicans charge of the administrations you're in this government was to charges it is administrative layout official confident words he has hit that follow this battle for many patients do or scenes he and i've got one is passing on it or from the regime for example if you usually get that to sign a new fiction book human and he thinks that the disposal or wrong the grumpy and the way that he loves going to

synagogue and i always a more german i think you'd been mainly on the things that happen to a higher it was a quest that gap will handle on the beat well it did for being able to move the bank abuses in the filling for example the penguin tactile nasa and people won't be going message are also a mini think of michael recently that factories not and there's a tendency in the sort of the voice good that he has been on the free ryan and four being sold as that these fees more outback to be spied before the navy will be people or dropping be given a warrant or an new halfway meeting students use a friend has gotten discourse in political situation but he is not affected by these type of

dual epic walk i was a bureaucrat runs out of paper clips to be put in requisition get some woods yet what the street would forget that combines even make a complaint were there so many getting a story with him by a reporter of the new york times i seen that evening news hoffman i'm always windy oh yes i'm looking to your lines the message you said by cackling order and torture what he sings that throughout the east and he's taking it as well and those things that he'll search and then he put these pieces of paper in his pockets and after only the piece and that he advised one of yours as to why of these houses and they say the us scientists use in charge will the king of all these are small pieces of paper i'm using the

phone or walk the bait these business as it clearly in this information for me as a group in the nation worldwide is bin laden which two ways and means to do it was fine well the thing that strikes me and i don't have really an inside kind of vision of the way to work is administered in the way it is governed is that there is a very real tension between the bureaucratic administrative necessities of running society is changing very rapidly which is rather have a director tries and the personal political style of the doubt there simply isn't intentional contradiction <unk> eat beans the more his duty to sustain the revolutionary move and are a lot of what i would think that just as almost all of us for one reason or another in some fashion have some difficulty of imagining the show without him or at least we see the show with a very very different without him that he really is in one sense of the animal political

force behind behind the home and two when you withdraw that animal political force you hire new agreement asking what what is less left and what are the costs and benefits of running this kind of operation and that in that fashion certain the place in history of latin america can find a political movement or an administrative organization that have been put together in this discussion you find him and the question that your family that was easier or more difficult to get things done there is another an undeveloped do you have the impression of the confidence of the bureaucracy well usually when you wanted to get things done he does have to do themselves on except if it was so something like a crime commission the film like political prison arm as we did in that we're we went through channels and we got it done rather quickly there were i think some ministries that work efficiently and some of them work efficiently and i think it and on the administrative and turns of that the

haphazard names of love magic cabinet if you like it wasn't really that have thousands this was because our we don't dictate notes sometimes for hours to austin of paris was riding in the jeep with us to a major late date was on the jeep and toby young garcia was the secretary of the communist party in order and that every night there was a long discussion about what happened uncovered during the day and about what ought to be covered the next day and after breakfast of the similar planning meeting they would discuss a lot of the things they found out in the in the villages and how the support in terms of the whole national picture so it really isn't a haphazard jobs as the rumors often have it that will allow professor segment to something about this animal political force operating cuba and i would certainly endorse that but i would like to read hear what that animal political forces by family or associated press and there this is dated generally

twelve armed with machetes flashlights and suspicion neighborhood vigilantes are patrolling cuba night in response to an outbreak of arson and sabotage it is virtually impossible to approach even the smallest government bailing or hang around a street corner too long without being challenged and it goes on to say that last cable administered again special might motorcycle patrols in nevada and writing an aside cars were seedy our members see dr the committees for the defense of the revolution which really are various facts of neighborhood informers now this i think is as something that would've been very difficult for you to do in cuba to try to get the oldest this type of picture of family trying to film these people and heard and to try to get an impression of the of the tremendous karen o's castro himself who are passed what he called move the law of revolutionary terror that anybody who doesn't agree with me are the one on one of them prison rather than have their ration cards taken away from them and this is that this is really the animal political movement that seems to me to be operating in cuba they keep

on that i know of no such law it certainly not public along grocery cart notebook and all the specifications that is that if you don't agree with the pitcher rest were taken away your present that doesn't exist and live there with my crew in my family we we worked and travel freely around the island throughout the city of havana wanted many friends some of whom i had from my previous visits to cuba as far back as nineteen sixty we spoke honestly they spoke quite openly about certain complaints that they had that there was no there's this idea to assessing and this does exist in the meetings i sat in and i just wandered in off the street and seventh set in and see our meetings along i think these prisoners got in jail were shown only in the film by a process of osmosis it's the same ocd arthur get a missile has of course there is our summer as avatars going on and when people are caught their arrest and put to prison just as they would be in any society well is not the mark of an unpopular regime rather than a popular one you have to have this massive organization to

spy on your neighbors and so forth i don't see a puppet regime in that it's the most oppressive dictatorship the ministry let you can spare right now see dr is not functioning this by groups if you visit any of the cd are meetings to find out that their main functions to make sure people get vaccinated to hand that ration books each month and to you like eric make sure that health and sanitation procedures as well as your view it is very difficult for the course capital for me is not only a politico is a political model for anti heroes and eighties scene being aborted because things for example i don't have the impression that these committees for the defense of the royals you lack of any effect the lead us reliance was true

so does that add two more groups really bought the vigilance committees brought dinosaurs out of the markers for example many of the old small point the ceo of the now i roll cliff movie musical meet with and i also got to get you as i say that these are the most effective and online essentially in order to more we liked the people i also playing a capital not pleased that the game or shu or the nbc's will be people respecting the gate then he began always because he begins ballistic and also a patch holiday staple of evolution and a piece a boon for movies means to leave a new life movies only is that i'm going to look nice and i gather from from your book you think that he is more interested in

power than communism in fact became a communist or not retrospectively that he had been a communist now a foreign policy reasons and for late for any of this is my impression and i won't be thinking the same way it was no more last year phil mr landau what'd he say specifically on the questions that he had when he was in his university daisy was a utopian socialist but he didn't really become a communist until well after the revolution well let me clarify what he was not an open source if you as a member of what is more work that's unworldly or gangs and i'd rather prefer and wounding an action groups and these run that dr wilson member was well and where you were whipping through rachel los robles for you neal and being the late show made by bees or many station kuow politics we're lucky when they associate the film billy they left and at the base of a par

with the fall when your space is laid off outright and pepper was a member from nineteen forty five i don't know the way of the world these groups not only thing you knew that the acid an open sourced ellis before he say so is more with it singing when you that weight off course you think he became a comet or switch it became a common man in foreign policy reasons and swears that now i believe that he actually developed into being a communist i think the revolution carried him into being a communist and that relations with the united states was the key factor like in his consciousness but not the foreign policy reasons well rather because it was your agent is originally misstated and his consequential facilities need for protection gretchen and roy helpfully from the eastern countries or when to go his foreign policy reasons well

now another words for policy reasons sounds like go well for you know for better diplomacy of the economists i think he actually believed in exactly what he said when he announced that he was a marxist leninist up to that time if you follow his speeches he gradually becomes more and more radical more more revolutionary through it and leans more more toward socialism and i think it is he literally did not simply not i am now a marxist leninist to eat and i am and i've had this really been one for a long time i didn't say i didn't say i think the chemo yesterday said that he was a marxist leninist a new student there isn't much room a month the last day of my life and i think that a lot of reporters and i'm a marxist leninist and i showed the photo weiner i raised at that point you talked in one faction about this formation of the thing that's so interesting to me in which i think has not really been come to grips with it in one sentence there's an accord that in the movie

but it's hard to develop in the movie is the strain is his thoughts which some people reject this is simple verbiage but i certainly dont of which is a kind of utopianism a very very strong element of utopianism of a belief out to radicals believe that cells can be formed in a certain kind of social process that human nature can be jane absolutely my objective that well now letting them make what i'm saying though i'm i'm not talking about the truth or falsity of this as a possibility i'm talking about this brain and his thinking and his thinking which i believe to be a genuine strain sort of a second level above his political energies and has his political concerns what they trying to trying to do and target castro's mind is is the eye is impossible i mean first of all castro's a castro light and not necessarily a common as an aggressor else came later and the fact that from from time to time he

has an argument to the russians is really immaterial to that point he has arguments with everybody that doesn't agree with them so what i'm really saying is that congress can live in peace with themselves much less with the rest of the world you know so it's really immaterial but the back of this utopian idea of the professor thing amanda mentions my god i mean how can you possibly after looking at that film and saying the people in prison meet the horrible poverty which in ten years lots of song that they had probably before are is worse than iris on a nineteen fifty seven or fifty eight or even nineteen sixty nine and ron wyden what you mean too much time and of that there was it was there if we were in jail and of course it was but what i am saying is that even assuming that things were bad before the big question is what what is this guy done in ten years and what we find is a country in ruins point one now the second point i would like to make is this that quite often this comes out

about the the the people who flee cuba and there's always an ugly allegations question what will antagonize really made virtually no no farmers are in fact gone backwards well by most estimates leave the gross national product of cuba and a period of ten years has gone up by two hundred million dollars thomas is a disaster atlanta well so i think it has improved greatly in many respects i think that if you talk about poverty in any other latin american country does not exist and give on that scale the slums in hindsight total what we're as atrocious as slums anywhere in latin america there was little sass tools and people it the slums been bulldozed there is no extreme poverty in cuba there's nobody that is hungry in cuba although the diet is far from adequate by our standards there's no one hundred they're know beggars on the street medical care is given to or people on the island we went to the most remote villages and the word poly clinics or

doctrine and to education for the first time is offered to all people in the island and in fact they're all parents were exhorted to send their children to school and i think just if you look at these games aside from the gains in road construction in the deduction for the poor won't have to conclude that on the very basic need level material level revolution has made enormous progress the research you know the reason it's so interesting and continues to be so attractive and older many latin americans and i think to many americans also is that it is the only massive attempt in the history of the hemisphere at what for lack of a better word we can call redistributed justice and there is no other movement including of course the mets second revolution which is set as its first order past week distributive justice to spread the values which are essentially urban middle class values to really to the role of the press that is what is your view we're one convention in the country's radio bloggers and other

women's read at least farmers and some field office and they won't the parade is related to be the video of porn is that we have been too well before nineteen fifty nine for example and i saw these will read it was thinking that the people in the beach or evading which i like the people that buy sewing to wire around on the year monday's and bees and lots of the union but always good soul is i sing that the baby for people into what have you both on the depression grieving or the pony that these was aiming our ep and the minority feel the people have been sacked the fight in order these me nodding people that song fool so his group and so many can't hear it were i call saul bloom

or let up in june the fact it is vetting the fray leaving to lead this dates open to what the latest volume and see how societies going to change your song and be a us citizen and police softening base there already the thing or station i saw the reaction was built so regulate go somewhere that he's a vote will go you were received the sun or worse and eventually the senate from the us that big un that he's there their bodies are of course but i can i don't care well i just had obviously you write that in america goes to cuba saying things that as an american or weaken plans we tried very hard to be objective we'll we don't claim to be detached

well i liked it to bring up wednesday mature you said that now people have medical attention free of charge and so forth the forecast river came to power by state law mean by doma law everybody had access to free medical treatment i mean this is something that's gone on in cuba for a long long time this is not an innovation the revolution that level within my head out what was more unrest know i've seen no indication whatsoever general us put it this way in general a second of nineteen sixty five or sixty six i guess it was castro got up and gave a speech saying that before the revolution we only had twenty thousand hospital beds but today we now have forty thousand hospital that we have doubled in this period of time you go back and you check the statistical abstracts latin america which is based on the spot research and certainly not like the world health organization which gets its figures from the you know the patron government you will find that cuba had forty thousand beds in nineteen fifty eight you say

as the whole thing that you got to be careful about with castro by simply changing the promise you come out with a different conclusion i mean he says that everybody was poor before and so forth and therefore today things are little bit better and so on you know what a few weeks chapters original premises just figured that because there are there is simply no objectivity involved with strife and war or minority are now better outlook these energy that one element if you take the very very poor and the extremely poor in cuba and i think that's what he's referring to the minority therefore then obviously these people are living a little bit better but i think really what's happening given all we have to do is look at the ration card is what castro has done is not distribute the wealth to the poor but rather the poverty throughout the country and which money means nothing now i would like to make two more points on our show the first one is this that the young people coming out of cuba the exiles now i am this is always treated sort of there's a relevancy and

so forth that do well after all the middle class and the middle class will even so for a while now i submit this that in nineteen fifty eight it was population was six million three hundred and fifty thousand people now at the present time there are five hundred thousand people who have fled give them ten thousand of these people came out on rats small boats ratzinger made a better tool in order to get out of that country only recently we saw eighty seven people breakthrough guantanamo base to freedom and almost exactly one year ago forty negro use commandeered a train and that portion of the guantanamo base to get out now the point is this that the idea which is in this film that these are economic refugees you really believe that people lie a seven people will take a chance and go through a hail of bullets to eat hamburgers and miami guantanamo naval station for that ten thousand people come out on these little small portions over the what's behind us what's behind it is what i said

before there's this real mass terror that your face and it appears to leave the cafe him because he wrote a book on resident manager the thing that struck us that her nurse thirty am on the refugees was how a revolution as profound as the season whether one agrees or disagrees with the value premises we at least all seem to agree that it but it's incredibly profound than the sense of what's shaking up the society and social and culture squeeze is tremendous numbers of persons and this week has been felt in a vast variety of ways to thing that struck us the refugee story was how many different kinds of exclamations you had to have very few were straight economic refugees very few escape any logical bash political refugees will agree with the statement in the film that most of the eggshells and then on the upper middle class yes this is true it is still short decrease its decreasing a true but don't forget that the standard sort of sociological treatise season two books gave

approximately twenty percent of the society for the middle class the middle and upper class this means of course that we're talking now about a million and a half people in one of the things that struck us is of the first waves of refugees and infamous a crisis october nineteen sixty two that they comprised only around ten percent of what the census listed as the rest of the middle class so you're faced with a problem not only of course of explain that ten percent youre faced with a problem of explaining ninety percent now not all of those ninety percent there because they've signed up so to speak but the striking thing is is that the revolution is complex enough so that is one that's a move to various sort of cosmopolitan circle i wonder what struck by the number of middle class persons who have made their peace made their adjustment in some fashion to the revolutionary movement in this is quiet

i feel it's simple explanations including terrorist nations simply won't watch because you go to the university and what you find then you find people more or less like yourself with whom you can identify in terms of upbringing that's the one find out as a very analogous to this question now i understand from immigration people that they're between a millionaire happened two million cubans waiting to get out of cuba but there are five hundred thousand already fled now to put that in and relative terms to the population of the united states i would mean between fifty and sixty million americans fled this country now would you consider that to be i found out on that could be explained away is normal or this is the greatest mass migration in the history of the western hemispheric that you work at the boy genius but they get to make some of the most revealing that the public which is not subject to a quote you won't let improve usability and you only take a

throng of course we do have them and we do take improving no internet well the sheriff said justified as though you say they can't go anyplace else the reason they come to the united states in this point i think it was addressed in the film is precisely because of the latin american countries have never just as in europe welcomed refugees from another country the only place where they have to go it's the east yesterday of other latin american countries would come in demonized age of non core debate is that there will be long lines of them well i can say that that's not true on the bases of professional experience and that is that every year i think we find between nine and ten countries of latin america the do not even taller order college it's one thing to preserve this figure of a million a half on a waiting list to something very new may recall the immigration department and asked them did they have any figures news that they did not they don't know how many people on the waiting list who did you drive me did you try the cuban coroner's office miami they're the ones that are learned as that if there were any official government figures on how many people on the waiting list does it only the campaigns know that so i don't hang out of

bureaucratese i'm afraid because you see the point is this why should they want to hide it was not a matter of hiding and it's a matter of this that they will get all of these plenty is in all of the forms filled out the people and want to come and so forth and yet quite often they find that there are these people are restricted from coming to the united states they get ready to go on a plane and they just don't get on the plane you know and it's become a very sticky a problem down the sometime the plan is that we have do not coincide with what they have but the published figures are and i sing them published our million and a half at least by the immigration party as many americans were to have any information now i only for racial identity when the analysis made by their fading obituary excite that these at george that the minority to be me the fascinating it before you laugh at a loss in july nineteen fifty the warden i conceived think i own more now of course and the things into what change

they at fox i ate i own that the regime that the fleeting leasing it was of offbeat they do with the bedouin that would make sure that this defunding is not able to solve any roland cuba and usually in a pleasant early this collection will be unable to maintain its itself of the apparatus of work i ate don't see a collapse or buying theme that daddy's that possibility all from one day at an inflection just that fighting to what any moment then he's all about the invisible stability and that his head the roiling is a lot to ask eric what they got he hasn't even the view was enough to get them with the same ease that they get the right you might think was able to leave the human dual between ratio that date where he and the independent that date

where the yeti the finding the silver lining the oath to what i amity they mourn the fickle flow between the human being people facing the globe they are on their of the growing issue of the russians saw the growing pressure the growing pressure of view the russians so eh maybe you've is seen that day ayer all right and they will see soon that that goal by the truth about independence and for example or bees alas a speech made by apple on down downward force on the opening was a shock for bees you and your people because of that happened here well one thing that elisa missile

gap though is that the tallest think that in one of the russians saw all day the physical change that brought a very difficult issue he actively maneuvering constantly in many difficult mainly facing the evening when you'll see that one day the meeting is in favor of getting that low and the odd way and doma the unusual and forty four people who saw it i'll solve it in just the opposite that sense it god there are these kinds of shows i think there's there's no question that if you take a look at the last ten years of public policy and stated public policy you do find twists turns etcetera it's not from historians point of view it's not an easy package to put back together however i see the consequences of this has a kind of striking

of faith to really striking of of one of the bargain with the leadership such that we follow you in other words in these in these difficult and tremulous and sort of torturous times when the world turns looks very much the direction and the striking thing as i was they're just before the speech on the czechoslovak invasion and talked to many cubans afterwards and the striking thing was the acceptance i think with which this particular hole or twist in cuban foreign policy was taken because there is tremendous kind of leadership faith i think one sells again fidel's immense political skill really consummate political skill and leadership skill i'm sure to imagine that this results in a kind of credibility gap results it seemed to me in a kind of almost

i will strengthen the kind of profit relationship between the gallon and many of the young people obviously there's something about the way there's no question about that i think the us i i prefer to believe castro and what he said and what he's done in other words obviously if you had a very popular man you wouldn't have to have those triangular system of of control the repression would you and its very existence suggest something either to other points here in one as i like a quarter raul castro on july twenty second of nineteen sixty seven he told the graduating class of the maximal warm a superior school of military training he said it has cost us their precious lives of our youth's and the equivalent of between five hundred and eight hundred million dollars to wipe out one hundred and seventy nine corolla bans now this was as late as july the twenty second nineteen sixty seven out

last year rudolph show up a cop who was the top soviet security agent in cuba this came out the trial of audible escalade a poll raul castro that and they're in cuba conditions are present for a new hungary and he we were on the very a very kept very clearly that dissension was great and he was not all certain that there are going to be able to hold it together and i think that is that you look back over the history of latin american dictators and they disappear with frightening speed rail with her less evidence of internal dissension and you find a new job i can point out some analysts across the media right on down that they need even though another guy anyone blush for example raw deal trujillo and all these people to simply disappear practically overnight probably a latin american country not that i watch whether he's elected or not is open to question but i'm saying that we discuss the genius of years will likely fall into battista has outlawed mistrust have

been in power wants an since the late thirties part why i mean us treasury has a problem and fidel castro does not if fidel castro had a parliament with them they can coalesce know analysts say it will and that what i'm saying is this that the that a lot of these dictatorships in latin america disappeared overnight including fulgencio batiste with a lot less evidence of internal dissent than you find in cuba today and this is something i think that we have to to remember before we start saying that on the basis of the rather nebulous evidence of disguises pop years he has no mansion question about smoldering discontent when he's alone among visitors to cuba morning call to be a farmer president asked us in his country you said you thought it would i thought i caught a soft kind of sadness a whiff of some disappointment which norwood mention because mentioning it would she'll never let image make you think about it and if it got thought about too deeply or to shoot it might boil up and were bitterness more lethal one hundred american blockades or a thousand bay of pigs you

see in terms of their well i think there you know the talk of cuba as a paradise would be ridiculous it certainly isn't and i think it is so the country that has the highest degree of political conscience that i haven't visited as politics' author is the main subject of conversation is that maliki is a regime like any communist regime denies the right to be a political no i don't think so i think people are fascinated by things are changing so rapidly and and people have become highly aware of the world around them not just the island of cuba the us because of their isolation i think they become interest that there's a lot of complaining about rationing there's a but with a complaint goes an explanation and on for months so that our entire crew when we travel to every single province in the island and we cover almost the end of the north coast the south coast of times and so on and that was nothing on the island that i would consider a

smoldering discontent one massive unrest the vast majority of the people that we encountered were enthusiastic supporters of the regime has been oddly however they have no criticism they did and when fidel came they let me have it they told him exactly will sandy year the european to fill to fulfill promises about assembling in the economy doesn't there's been individual rights and disenchantment no i don't think so because that there are great improvements what is castro has delivered on a lot of those promises and if he does hold out this vision and he holds about oh with what appears to be great sincerity and most of the people pick up on this anti i think physically imagine that he turned people on it gives them something higher than food to think about and know and they didn't think about the talk to a sixteen year old cuban kid no deal underscores what he thinks communism it to him and i think this is very rare and usually a kind

of primitive christianity combined with and so in this is a man i met chinese competition that way i really meant in soviet times fifty years into the global ocean top like a wonderful spa so it's impossible to stay in this is revolutionary move over more than a generation i think in the next five years if the revolution doesn't deliver on substantial a number of its promises that this discontent will appear and will rightfully appear but if the human evolution does deliver on promises i think that that vision and the excitement that sustains it will continue also storage isn't a jazz of the revolution will deliver on its promises and i find it weller is being financed in the situation change may be on the depressing the national assembly so i don't see any possibility and fanny in booming you in conditions that is conditions cannot

live as normal trade relations with the rest of the hemisphere well i am not broking of our normal grieving nation wants all seen the capital and then we're the base the mind on the night conceived the ball was as saul saying that day was long new flooding you walk is all about the meat the gate was poorly be value there like you laugh out of forty latin america on the light they see people he was a workable you get any worse things will soon see scenes and i didn't see people dionne look at work to leave anything so she needs so it off change again in nineteen sixty two and went under the game two of the soviet union or supporters of the soviet union was on what they'll say that on your beast they beat i see

us and the final whistle back to having a nation then the future will be long thought they were about the new alert and isis they began to have been fakes and so all of them sailing vs is very difficult were playing the wealthiest of the people on the evening of the odyssey of viewing the director of the canadian you believe that he's not able to be shown any bag also says in a nationally or nationally and easy for me the bass in some ways lebanon capital has will continue the confidence of the view of the view of iava free id that there may be seeing bombs that he's mostly these fees you'll find for example about the university for a chauffeur's doing well the soul singer tonight in whitby dominate you if you're not this

works out that on these dueling that those well being sent back out of the last places you'd write was a university it used the newest the sun about an awful newest book can you find that either to political money is changing you have to underwrite legal will show that the us is beginning to have many doubts about back to when and poking out the viewers' ire poking out of the moon on the field the viewers that cnbc back to new orleans either get the last four home that will fight called the sounds on people that say look at the movie and the wars the nothing happening you were not beat that will support the only buying the enemy and kept alive for a whole go fight on these elephants and people and a locally meetings on wildlife that they show on the tv getting into the kitchen

to differentiate between smoldering discontent which is sort of a smoky image to me and kind of falling away of revolutionary enthusiasm which doesn't necessarily mean of course small ring this these aren't the same kinds of what i think it happened in some sectors and it was a constant battle i think the word that was just far as he was a very good word to renew or to renovate not just business as usual but revolutionary business which is some bales house again and time and circumstances tend to erode comes from this kind of revolution of this kind of revolutionary excitement this kind of revolutionary it is very difficult to maintain but one shouldn't shouldn't infer from this kind of erosion a kind of smoldering discontent but discontent there is i think is not caused by the emotional revolutionary enthusiasm but about other things that people blowing up facilities but not because the revolutionary

enthusiasm of the road mcdonough one phrase in the script of your film caught my eye you speak of the loyalty that the majority feel for him what about young people but the population yes i have i've seen this in a pleasure to highlight prove it one way or another but when they are what you think you know the majority of people on the island supported well this is based not only on our own impressions and our own interviews in our own investigation over the four month period of this year two months last year and i'm back in previous times but also on the reporting of people like john fenton wheeler was the ap man and conversations with the reuters man yeah in the nbc and the cbs program despite all the criticism they also concluded that from their investigations and as james reston did in the new york of the new york times did in nineteen sixty seven when we interviewed him so that if you take the impressions on the findings of scholars and reporters journalists

from all over the world i find that the vast majority of google the same thing from their investigation that you know the wall of course not and i simply call on the facts of the matter and it is the day that a popular regime doesn't have neighborhood committees of informers they do not have vigilante he's out running around all the time you do not hear they call for his castro put it go for cars revolutionary vigilance against the enemies of the state and the summit on the other thing which has been going on now for about your critical in the past two or three months you have the membership of the security no light on day i think that he said that was one point five million something like this now over two million low prices but then the the thing is that you have these other groups spying on the cd are as legitimate than a third of the vigilantes which is just aren't lending money as what he calls a unilateral quadros which are operating in other words once by group was by another group which in turn is fine and several spiraling our atmosphere of

suspicion and i think this is really what doctors was as getting out now but the existence of an apparatus of suppression does not in the show you know when i asked him how we would prove that majorities for the regime is that this was the impression in various journalist named can you cite others who would hofer says that only entirely sure i set aside from whether they're the same way and i can also for site did your gm car but i think that this is a very nebulous language of the majority or another whatever it may be no doubt i think that you have to look at it you have to ride at that in a negative sense and that is what is the extent of the police apparatus that you have any given country now if you have an enormous police apparatus like he has and if you have the evidence of sabotage which he himself was we counted and when you have the disaffection of the students which doctor suarez is referred to fidel castro's referred to and so on then i think the genetic to some conclusions because obviously

a popular government or a puppet or dictatorship does not need these things looking at the thing that strikes me is is the manner in which various kinds of loyalty supports and energies have been drawn in to various aspects of the revolutionary effort if you will and the figure of two point two million in the cd are the figure of another one point five million in the federation to win women etc you have to other evidence does that have to be explained away is that the mass organizational structure of the revolution which is not terrorists because i lived and i worked on with these people and it's it's not an atmosphere of terror this organization this apparatus and the sort of organizations simply enroll in some fashion or another the majority have to win adults and with your talking majorities minorities you're in a very very difficult position to explain away the levels of participants

participation in the cuban revolution which are not levels on which are understood or exercised by gunpoint gentleman thank you i don't think we've agreed on a lot anything that you know we'd only liability of the revolution on the state of the cuban economy on the popularity of the castro regime kenyon is in kiev oliver had an interesting discussion a variety of viewpoints supplementing our film on fidel castro that evening he is then and they

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