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Secret Sex Lives of Tyrants S01E02
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00:08Evil, powerful, uncompromising, ruthless, behind closed doors, a private hell.
00:21Tyrants often deviate in their sexual behavior.
00:26He fantasized about older women.
00:30He puts makeup on.
00:32He had thousands of concubines.
00:34They were this glamorous, gun-toting sex objects.
00:39Fire on designated targets.
00:41The psychological insights of the degenerate and deviant.
00:45He was obsessed with aphrodisiacs.
00:48It's typical of somebody who's sexually repressed.
00:52Power can change somebody.
01:08He was quite happy to precipitate World War III.
01:17The entire world on the edge of their seats as the Cold War hurtled towards nuclear war.
01:26For nearly five decades, Fidel Castro ruled an island nation just 90 miles off the coast
01:34of Miami with an iron grip, taunting the United States with his revolutionary zeal.
01:42But behind closed doors, another tale unfolded.
01:47He was a great, charismatic, successful womanizer.
01:53There are numerous reports that have come out that Castro had 35,000 lovers.
02:12This country homestead on a vast sugarcane property is the birthplace of one of the world's most notorious dictators.
02:21His appetite for power matched only by his desire for sex.
02:28Born out of wedlock in 1930, he was christened Fidel Alejandro Castro.
02:34Castro's father, Angel, was a wealthy Spanish landowner.
02:39From a young age, Castro realised he was different from his siblings.
02:45Whilst they shared the same parentage, he was the product of his father's affair with the family cook.
02:52A bastard child born into a rich family.
02:56Might this have shaped the way Castro regarded marriage and sex?
03:01So he was growing up in a household where his father was sleeping with the servant who was his mother.
03:11And I believe she didn't marry him.
03:14She didn't marry the father until Castro was in his teens, around 13, 14.
03:21Castro, I think, even though you'd never admit it, never escaped the fact that he was a bastard son.
03:28And you could see that this played a part in his swing towards communism because communism is, of course, anti
03:36-bourgeois society.
03:38And bourgeois society wants husband, wife, marriage and proper children, not multiple polyamorous liaisons.
03:47But Castro was also born into a time of national turmoil.
03:521930s Cuba was in chaos.
03:55The recession-hit government was unpopular.
03:57The streets of Havana, unsafe.
04:00A rowdy coalition of the military and students overthrew the government in 1933,
04:06which began years of turmoil to which young Fidel was witness.
04:10His interest in sexual domination map over very nicely onto his interests in controlling his people.
04:20And we can see that sort of each point of his masculinity or his machismo overlaps with these relationships over
04:33women and over the people of Cuba.
04:36We can't understand Fidel Castro without understanding that ultimate drive for power and control.
04:45Educated at Jesuit schools, Castro stood out as an athlete, but also as a talented student with a rebellious streak.
04:52He went to Catholic institutions, a Jesuit institution, and he was very much, I believe, affected by that in his
05:00upbringing.
05:01His sense of guilt, his sense of what is normal in sexual activity and also his attitudes towards gays, which
05:15was negative.
05:15I think that was all affected by his Jesuit upbringing.
05:22By the 1950s, post-World War II Havana had become once more a party town.
05:30Tourists and movie stars flooded in from Miami, bringing American dollars, Hollywood glamour and their inevitable travel companions, the Mafia
05:40and corruption.
05:42Organised crime was rife, operating under the regime of corrupt dictator Fugencio Batista.
05:54The relationship between Cuba and the United States of America had historically been quite a close one, especially geographically, a
06:03matter of miles between the Cuban shoreline and Miami.
06:07So much so that Havana was the playground for the rich and famous of America.
06:11People would go there to the clubs and, of course, have their cigars and so on.
06:16So it really was the place to be.
06:19The Monte Carlo of the Americas.
06:22All this and the gaiety of a tropical night in Havana.
06:27At the same time as stars like Frank Sinatra were living the high life in Havana, Fidel Castro was studying
06:35law in the Cuban capital.
06:37Castro, being the charming guy that he was, he quickly learned how to weaponise his power and control and dominate
06:47anybody that he interacted with, even from an early age.
06:51Castro's relationships with Western women and his reported preference for blondes.
06:59I think that's part of this macho sportsman playboy type image that he liked.
07:10Castro's priapic reputation started early.
07:13At university, he juggled multiple sexual relationships simultaneously.
07:19It's here that Castro first earned the nickname El Caballo, the horse.
07:25And even in somewhat maybe a bit of a twisted way, believing that he deserved that power and utilising that
07:34dominance through the numerous women that he engaged in many sexual relationships with.
07:39Tyrants often deviate in their sexual behaviour because they can.
07:46Because they deviate in all their other behaviours.
07:50They deviate in the use of power.
07:54But there was one woman who caught Castro's eye.
07:59Merta Diaz Balat, the daughter of a prominent Cuban politician.
08:03He was taken by her beauty and her influence.
08:06They married in 1948, her father paying for their honeymoon to the United States.
08:14Castro's love-hate affair with America was about to begin.
08:18Oh, you'll hear much more about him later.
08:26Yankee Stadium, New York.
08:29Passes ground ball, booted by Killers.
08:30Despite their lifelong enmity, Fidel Castro and the United States shared a love of baseball.
08:37He was a powerful pitcher who hated to lose.
08:40Even after he became Cuba's national leader in 1959, Castro never missed a chance to play ball.
08:48The unpredictable Castro dons a baseball uniform to pitch a full...
08:51And the American media always lapped it up.
08:54And the game is on.
08:55Castro pitching is credited with striking out the three batters he faces.
08:59Could be.
09:00This one game where the up really has to be careful.
09:04Viva Fidel!
09:06Castro, when he was growing up, when he was at college, absolutely loved sports.
09:12All sports.
09:13He excelled at them, in particular baseball.
09:16In fact, there is a rumour that he was asked to play for the New York Yankees.
09:22However, there's no documentary evidence to support this.
09:26But he still enjoyed everything to do with sport.
09:29In 1949, with Castro an outspoken lawyer representing the poor, murder gave birth to their son, Fidelito.
09:40Castro's first official child.
09:46The political turmoil in the country shows no sign of abating.
09:51In 1952, a military coup brings the corrupt Batista to power for a second time.
10:01It was all too clear that if you doubted his intentions, your fate would be the firing squad.
10:08As Castro became more deeply involved in radical politics, he grew distant from his wife, Myrta, and, like his father,
10:17openly had affairs with other women.
10:19He was attractive, he was a magnet, he was charismatic, and he would have been popular with women, even if
10:30he had not been national leader.
10:32It's not like someone just wakes up one day and says, oh, I'm going to become a dictator and I'm
10:39going to become a voracious sexual deviant.
10:42That's not how these things work.
10:44We can see a long history of emerging psychological and sociological impacts that we can trace through someone's narrative.
10:56Fidel Castro's narrative was about to take a dramatic turn.
11:00In 1953, he led a rebel attempt to steal weapons from a barracks.
11:06But Batista's forces were ready for them.
11:09On July 26, 1953, the fortress was attacked by 165 revolutionaries.
11:15Most of them were killed.
11:22Fidel Castro led the detachment.
11:24Castro, the ringleader, and his brother Raul were captured and put on trial.
11:31Defiantly, he chose to defend himself.
11:35At that time, under Batista's regime, a death penalty would surely await.
11:41But Castro got lucky.
11:43His wife, Merta, persuaded her father, a cabinet minister in Batista's government, to intervene.
11:51Instead of a firing squad, Castro was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
11:56He would serve only two.
12:01Castro's wife had saved his life.
12:04He repaid her by running into the arms of another man's wife.
12:12Her name was Natalia Revuelta, a charming Havana socialite whom he called Natty.
12:19She was said to be the most beautiful woman in the capital.
12:22They had to be attractive.
12:24They had to be seductive.
12:26I think that he wanted intelligent women really as a way of saying,
12:32you're intelligent, but I'm more intelligent than you.
12:36But Natty was just a brief diversion.
12:39In 1955, Castro fled to Mexico with his brother Raul.
12:45It was here that Castro met a man who would become his most trusted ally.
12:50Argentinian revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara.
12:57Che Guevara was a Marxist doctor turned revolutionary.
13:02And he shared Castro's vision for anti-imperialism, for a revolution.
13:09And they called themselves the 26th of July Movement.
13:13This relationship between Che Guevara and Fidel Castro was one of the most important
13:19in modern revolutionary history.
13:22But there was someone else who played a key role in Fidel Castro's ambitions.
13:28Celia Sanchez was Castro's political strategist and, rumour has it, lover.
13:35A year after they met, she saved Castro's life after his failed attempt to return to Cuba.
13:43While most of Castro's men were killed, Celia mobilised the locals to hide Castro.
13:49And the remaining rebels lived to fight another day.
13:53Castro's plan of action? To fight by any means until the Batista regime is toppled.
13:59Castro regrouped, living rough.
14:02With Che Guevara, he stoked the embers of revolution with a propaganda campaign run from his jungle office.
14:15Town by town, the rebels took Cuba until the final blow came on New Year's Eve 1958.
14:28Realising defeat was inevitable, Batista fled the country.
14:37Fidel Castro became the leader of a new Cuba.
14:44Then the temper of the prong changed, and an ugly mob ranged the streets.
14:48Its prime targets the symbols of the overthrow regime.
14:51The gambling casinos, the parking meters, the homes and businesses of Batista's story.
15:01Eight days later, riding atop one of Batista's own tanks, a triumphant Fidel Castro entered Havana.
15:10Cuba was liberated, and Castro was a national hero.
15:16To the Cuban people, and to the admiring world, there could be no better way to start the New Year.
15:28Victory, Castro style, included a white dove that settled on his shoulder as he addressed his people.
15:36Was this a sign from above, or a stunt?
15:40Here's this charismatic, heroic, Cuban Castro, with doves landing on him as a signal that he is the chosen one.
15:54Gidel Castro with the doves of peace sitting on his shoulders as he surveys the crowd that is tonight celebrating
16:02Cuba Libre.
16:04Now, what better image than this great man who's now taken over from the bad dictator and has doves landing
16:13on him?
16:14And this was taken as a sign by many people of some kind of supernatural event.
16:19What they didn't know was that Castro and his girlfriend at the time had practiced this and trained the doves
16:28to land on him.
16:30So it was a staged event.
16:34But the new dictator wasn't interested in peace.
16:37He was interested in retribution and revenge.
16:41Soon after seizing power in 1959, Fidel Castro went to work, staging a mass public trial of former regime officials.
16:51In Havana Sports Palace, the Castro regime's controversial showcase trials got underway before a turbulent throng of 18,000.
16:59Castro did not attend the kangaroo court.
17:02He was preoccupied with other matters.
17:06Since men have been in power over thousands of years acting as dictators, their political power has translated into sexual
17:22power.
17:22Even as his captured enemies pleaded for their lives, Castro's sexual conquests mounted.
17:30Batista aide Major Sosa Blanco, charged with 200 murders, faces a military tribunal.
17:36Three judges still wearing the revolutionaries' jungle battle dress.
17:41During the trial of Major Blanco, a colonel in Batista's army, a 12-year-old boy was brought forward as
17:48a witness.
17:49The crowd, whipped into a frenzy, erupted with chants of,
17:53Kill him! Kill him!
17:56Emotions climb in the nine-hour trial as the testimony piles up.
18:00This woman charges Blanco murdered her husband.
18:04The decision is death.
18:06The world reacted with outrage.
18:10The executions, some 250 to date, have been widely criticised by many as too hasty and summery.
18:17Fidel Castro treated his enemies brutally.
18:20They were imprisoned, tortured, they were put on public show trials.
18:26They were even executed in public.
18:28And his private police force, the G2, became feared throughout the country.
18:34Says Castro, the Cuban revolutionary government has no reason to offer explanations to America or to anyone.
18:43This is the biggest gathering and demonstration in Cuba's history.
18:47Almost a million people are here.
18:49There is Fidel Castro, the leader and the cause of this demonstration.
18:53The purpose of today's gathering is to show the whole world that all Cubans are united in the rebel victory
19:00and that all of them support the execution.
19:03Foreign leaders condemned the executions, but that simply played into his hands.
19:08Right or wrong, Castro now had their attention.
19:11A formidable player on the world stage.
19:17Fidel Castro, now in power, set up headquarters in the plush Havana Hilton.
19:24The revolutionary leader now had a brand new propaganda plaything.
19:29American television.
19:30We are against all kinds of dictators.
19:35That is our idea.
19:37Nevertheless, class dictator, military dictator.
19:40That is why we are not agreeing with communism.
19:44Communism was a dirty word in the United States.
19:47And Castro was happy to lie to their faces if it meant victory in the court of public opinion.
19:52Dr. Castro, Senator Smathers of Florida says that you have many communists in your government. Is that so?
20:03I know.
20:04Because Senator Smathers said it ought to be true.
20:08I don't think that I can, in the first place, that is, I have read some lists that I don't
20:20doubt that they say,
20:23if it continues discovering such communists in our government, including Adam and Eve, are going to be communists too.
20:32The charm offensive worked.
20:35On a visit to New York, only four months after his victory, the 32-year-old revolutionary received a rock
20:42star welcome.
20:44In the end, he had to get an armed guard.
20:46It took over 20 minutes to go 100 metres to the hotel doors because everybody wanted a piece of Castro.
20:54They wanted to meet him and talk to him and greet him.
20:57Castro was cool, even if his dress sense was not everyone's idea of a statesman.
21:04What do you think of Castro?
21:07I think that if he follows through with the plans that he says he will follow through, I think he
21:12will be an excellent example of modern democracy.
21:16However, I have one objection. I did see him on the street the other night in front of the Times
21:21building.
21:22I think that he should come dressed like a gentleman like the other government representatives do.
21:27You think he should wear a tie and perhaps a jacket, huh?
21:31Yes, I do. I really do.
21:32Castro loved the attention, and now he had the ear of the world.
21:38Castro, just like all tyrants, was an extreme narcissist. He was an egomaniac. He was self-indulgent, hedonistic. He would
21:49have indulged in the news stories themselves.
21:53Good evening, my fellow citizens.
21:56The United States soon had its own charismatic young leader, John F. Kennedy.
22:01He didn't trust Castro and his closeening ties with the Soviet Union.
22:05Cuba was starting to look every bit a communist state.
22:09It wasn't really until he took control of Cuba that the socialist leanings started to show, and really that was
22:17as a reaction to the way that the United States reacted to him coming into power.
22:24So it's almost like one fed the other. Their distrust of him made him build his socialist leanings, which made
22:31them ever more distrustful.
22:32The Cold War was in full swing, and tensions between the US and the Soviet Union were at an all
22:40-time high.
22:41So Castro realised that to really get the reins of power, which would have been quite insecure if he'd followed
22:50the path that was predicted, turned to the communists.
22:54The politics of Cuba changed, and Cuba became communist.
22:58And of course, during the Cold War, that was a dirty word, especially for the Americans.
23:03And so tensions started to grow between Cuba and the United States.
23:08And at times, all eyes were on Cuba.
23:12The United States suddenly had an unpredictable dictator with close ties to the Soviet Union just 90 miles from their
23:21shores.
23:22Cuba was now a ticking time bomb.
23:25President Kennedy decided Castro had to go.
23:29In 1961, the CIA, working with Cuban exiles, began training an invasion force.
23:38The mission? To overthrow Castro and restore a government sympathetic to the United States.
23:45The landing location? The Bay of Pigs.
23:51On Monday, April 17th, in the early hours of the morning...
23:55The invasion was a disaster.
23:58Castro's forces were ready for them.
24:00He captured or killed nearly all who landed, including American personnel.
24:06The national revolutionary militia took the last positions the invaders held.
24:12The revolution was victorious.
24:14But the victory was bought with precious lives.
24:18Castro's readiness was rather unexpected by the American forces.
24:23And it was just completely unexpected that America would be defeated,
24:28and that Castro would rise triumphant.
24:31And it really consolidated his position on the world stage that he and Cuba were ready for anything.
24:38To the Cuban people, Castro's victory made him an even greater hero.
24:43He had humiliated the mighty United States.
24:49The enemy suffered complete defeat.
24:51The mercenary remnants give up their arms.
24:54But I have decided in the last 24 hours to discuss briefly at this time the recent events in Cuba.
25:02America was completely humiliated at the Bay of Pigs.
25:06It made Castro CIA enemy number one.
25:10Castro seemed to be enjoying his notoriety, hiding in plain sight.
25:16While in private, his sexual conquests continued at a frenetic rate.
25:22Fidel had a voracious sexual appetite.
25:26There are even reports that he would sleep with at least two women a day.
25:32One at lunch, one at dinner, sometimes even breakfast.
25:36Some of these women would come willingly.
25:39He was very charming, charismatic.
25:43Women would sort of fawn after him because of his charm.
25:48But if they weren't, no bother to him.
25:52Because he would just have his men scour the community for women and bring them back to him.
25:59Well, I think he epitomized the macho male in that he liked having lots of mistresses.
26:05He didn't treat them very well.
26:08And the kind of women he went for are, well, what would you call them?
26:13They were good trophies.
26:14They were beautiful.
26:15They were often women you couldn't normally get in Cuban society.
26:19Like they could be American or they could be wealthy and glamorous.
26:24So all of this was to boost the image of the super macho male.
26:30Having humiliated the United States in the Bay of Pigs, Castro then pursued as many American women as he could.
26:40And it sort of was a way of tweaking the tale of giant America, saying that, look, I can have
26:50your women.
26:52And it was something that I think he liked to do.
26:56As if to thumb his nose at the United States and almost as if in competition with his young rival
27:02in the White House, Castro mixed with some of Hollywood's biggest stars.
27:06None bigger at the time than screen seductress Ava Gardner.
27:22Because of that complicated relationship with Cuba and the United States, many of the women that he sought after to
27:30dominate were Hollywood starlets, American women that he was able to realize as a symbol for his power.
27:40Castro, like all dictators, image and symbolism was terribly important.
27:46And you have to keep showing this to the world.
27:49Ava Gardner had a long standing love affair with Cuba.
27:53She and Frank Sinatra had honeymooned there.
27:56And Gardner was a regular house guest at Ernest Hemingway's residence in Havana.
28:02A political junkie, Gardner was drawn to the charismatic leader on her visit to Cuba in 1959.
28:13One complication.
28:15Castro was already living with another lover, half his age, German-born Marita Lorenz.
28:22Well, of course, you've got to look at the women that Castro had.
28:27There were always overlaps.
28:28Cuban society gossips as much as any others, possibly even more.
28:33So everybody had the ideas of who was doing what with whom.
28:37They are always measuring themselves, not only against the dictator, but against the competitors.
28:43And where do I stand and who's going to knock me off?
28:45And what have I got to do to maintain my position?
28:49The story goes that Marita confronted her rival, Ava Gardner, in the lobby of the Havana Hilton.
28:56It's not clear who slapped who, but Castro's guards had to separate them.
29:02Marita fled the country.
29:04In 1960, the CIA tracked Marita down in Miami and recruited her to attempt an assassination of her former lover.
29:14The plan was for Marita to regain Castro's trust and then to slip a vial of poison into his drink.
29:23Marita did return to Castro's bedroom, but Castro saw through the plot.
29:29The story goes that he handed her a gun and said, if you are going to kill me, do it
29:35now.
29:36She couldn't go through with it.
29:37It's almost as if he couldn't handle the amount of power that he had ultimately.
29:43And this pushed him over the edge into a spiraling existence as an egomaniac, a narcissist, a power hungry person.
29:56The Cuban dictator's appetite for Western women was matched only by his hunger for power.
30:02But instead of building an alliance with the United States, Castro chose to make friends with his enemy's greatest enemy.
30:10He encouraged the Soviets to bring the nuclear bombs to Cuba.
30:16The Cold War was more than a conflict of ideologies.
30:19In the early 1960s, it was a fast, escalating arms race, with intercontinental nuclear technology now at the fingertips of
30:28US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
30:34As the world held its breath, it was Fidel Castro with his finger on the trigger of World War III.
30:43In October 1962, Khrushchev and Castro made their move.
30:49A civilian freight ship was heading towards Cuba, secretly carrying nuclear missiles.
30:56Soviet technicians and military construction were detected on the island by US spy planes.
31:02America was suddenly in striking distance of a nuclear attack.
31:07Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in
31:17preparation on that imprisoned island.
31:20With US naval forces blockading Cuba, Castro remained defiant.
31:26He wanted to be the big guy. That was his goal. And that meant controlling the people and controlling his
31:33women.
31:34As in the past, these rallies are designed to whip up hate of what Castro calls Yankee imperialistic warmongers.
31:41Through suggestions that a UN team inspect missile sites, Castro said that they had better come ready for combat.
31:47He went on to call President Kennedy a pirate for setting up the quarantine.
31:52On October 14, a ballistic missile was detected at a Cuban launch site.
31:58The world reached a nuclear flashpoint.
32:03It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in
32:11the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon
32:20the Soviet Union.
32:21Castro put his entire population on notice. America could invade at any moment.
32:30But at the 11th hour, behind Castro's back, Kennedy and Khrushchev struck a deal.
32:37The Soviets would remove their nuclear missiles from Cuba in exchange for the US promise not to invade the island
32:44and the removal of US missiles in Turkey.
32:47The Soviet Union had sold Castro out.
32:52When the Soviets started saying, look, we're pulling back after the whole business, he was the one who wanted them
32:59to stay.
33:00Under Navy surveillance, the missiles that had threatened the US went back where they came from.
33:09Castro was left in the cold by his Soviet paymasters and now vulnerable.
33:14The effective truce between Khrushchev and Kennedy was made without Castro's knowledge or say so.
33:23And Castro was furious. How had he been effectively left out of this international decision?
33:31Feeling betrayed, he lashed out, calling the Soviets weak and demanding a nuclear strike against the US.
33:39A move that alarmed both Washington and Moscow.
33:44He was quite happy to precipitate World War Three because that fitted with his self-image of megalomania.
33:53He didn't know any restraint in that sense.
33:55He was happy to be the person who started World War Three and almost who pressed that button.
34:01But that control was taken away from him by the superpowers.
34:06Castro was more than an upstart despot.
34:08He had led the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of a world war and given the
34:14chance, would do it again.
34:21Through the 1960s and 70s, the CIA is believed to have orchestrated more than 600 plots to kill Fidel Castro.
34:29The CIA's attempted assassinations of Castro are interesting not only because of the numerous attempts made on his life,
34:39but the rather interesting and varied ways in which they tried to take his life.
34:46Yeah, somebody said, hey, what about if, you know, he smokes cigars, what if we can smuggle some cigars that
34:51was exploding in his face?
34:52Hey, let's look at it.
34:54Yes, there was a lot of plots that came on the table.
34:57A poison-laced, flesh-eating wetsuit.
35:00He was a big diver. He loved scuba diving. You know, they figured that they knew the area where he
35:05would go, that they could, you know, find some way of poisoning the air in his tank or cause an
35:09embolism or God knows what.
35:11The attempts were as farcical as they were ingenious.
35:16These are all things that get tabled in the agency. You know, when people sit around and they're brainstorming, there's
35:22a lot of stupid stuff that comes out. There's a lot of brilliant stuff that comes out.
35:26Also report CIA involvement in eight assassination plots against Castro.
35:31With his life in danger every day, Castro's political life became more frantic and so did his sex life.
35:40As Castro's tenure extended, you would expect his paranoia increased and it did increase. You can see it from the
35:49repression of Cuba in general.
35:51And the same thing would apply to his women. He would have his affairs, but I think he would be
35:58more distant and quicker to dispose of them.
36:01And certainly have less trust in them. And any suspicion that they are dealing with the other side in that
36:08would really lead to a lot of hostility.
36:12Somehow Castro survived. Among the very few people he trusted was his second wife, someone he kept from public view
36:22for four decades, a school teacher named Dalia Soto del Valle.
36:27Few people knew Dalia even existed. But throughout their relationship, Castro's affairs continued in numbers that defy belief.
36:39It's been said that Castro slept with 35,000 women and it's mathematically possible.
36:49And if we go back to Genghis Khan and genetic testing that has shown that Genghis Khan really did sleep
36:59with enormous tens of thousands of women.
37:02Yes, it's possible Castro did the same, but I doubt it. I doubt it very much.
37:08Is that really possible? How would you even have the time for that?
37:13Where do they get these numbers? Who knows? It's not as if somebody was having a tally mark or a
37:17tick box each time one of these women came through.
37:20But it speaks to the exorbitant of his life, just the ultimate self-indulgence that was Castro.
37:31Look at this man. What a man he is. And of course, how these acolytes would put it out to
37:38everybody. This is part of his image. He's a Superman.
37:43Whatever her reasons, Dalia stuck by Castro. They married 20 years into their relationship. And she bore him five sons.
37:55By 1980, Castro's Cuba was crumbling. U.S. sanctions crippled Cuba's economy. Food and basic supplies were scarce. Frustration grew.
38:11Every day in Miami, Cuban Americans staged their anti-Castro rallies, hoping this crisis might lead to his downfall.
38:18So there was a growing air of dissent in Cuba. Castro wanted to get rid of these people, basically saying,
38:28if you don't like it here, go to the United States, go to Miami.
38:33But Castro doubled down. In April 1980, with thousands of Cuban citizens seeking asylum at the Peruvian embassy in Havana,
38:44Castro made a stunning announcement.
38:46Anyone who wanted to leave Cuba could do so from the port of Mariel. But as always with Fidel, there
38:54was a catch.
38:54He was very calculated in the people that he sent and effectively emptied his prisons and sent the ne'er
39:05-do-wells from Cuba to the United States.
39:08It was an enormous embarrassment for the states and had a real long-lasting effect on the political landscape there.
39:17He cleared his jails of the most violent criminals that they had.
39:22You know, until then, I had never seen a person with a tattoo on their face or on their lips
39:26or something like that. That didn't exist.
39:29And all of a sudden, you have thousands of these guys coming in with some legitimate refugees, because there were
39:35a lot of legitimate people that came.
39:39Over the next five months, more than 125,000 Cubans set sail on makeshift craft for the United States.
39:48It's estimated up to a third of the Cubans who put to sea drown.
39:52Now there are 50 Coast Guard and Navy vessels patrolling the waters, and 30 planes are dropping food and water
39:59to the refugees below them.
40:00It was known as the Mario boat lift, and all of a sudden, America had a very big problem.
40:07The level of criminality in South Florida quadrupled within a few months.
40:14And within three or four years, the majority of those hoods were either dead or in jail.
40:20So there's a movie called Scarface, which is kind of the Hollywood version of what was going on.
40:27But it wasn't too far-fetched either.
40:30It was an international stunt with far-reaching consequences.
40:36Castro, without an international ally, was now an empty shell of a dictator.
40:42The tyrant was fading, but the sexual predator was still at large.
40:48He had sort of a bit of a revolving door to his bedroom.
40:53Castro was not interested in investing in relationships with women for the most part.
40:58And once he was done with them, they would go on their way.
41:03So in terms of valuing women, Castro had a value for them, but it was short-lived to, in many
41:10cases, a singular sexual experience.
41:12He ultimately couldn't handle the amount of power that he had, and he fed into it and became this monster
41:23to the people around him.
41:25Surely that nobody could recognize if they had met the young university student in the years prior.
41:31In the end, ill health finally did what no bullet or political coup had managed.
41:38After nearly five decades in power, Fidel Castro handed over the reins to his brother Raul in 2008.
41:47He died eight years later at the age of 90.
41:52Castro's story reminds us that our power can change somebody.
41:59It can turn somebody into an egomaniac, a person that lacks empathy, and can feed into a very scary narrative.
42:10And we see that with Castro.
42:13He was a revolutionary who became a staunch Marxist, public enemy number one to the CIA.
42:20But in the end, basically a bit of a failure.
42:27Whether he slept with 35,000 women, bedded Hollywood starlets, or, as he liked to portray, enjoyed the simple life
42:35with his school teacher wife,
42:37the line between notoriety and mythology are never more blurred than when it comes to Fidel Castro.
42:45He lived the life of an elite in Cuba.
42:49But in terms of what he did for Cuba, I believe it was a failure.
42:54He couldn't control behaviour the way he thought he could.
42:58And so in the end, Cuba is nowhere near the society he wanted it to be.
43:05He must have known, as his last days approached, that on the surface he had stood up to America and
43:12kept it going.
43:13But at another level, he knew it wasn't going to last.
43:19No thousand-year Reich here.
43:22Actually, how can we?
43:41I have never seen it.
43:42The War of Egypt
43:42The War of Egypt
43:42We can't believe that the war...
43:42We know we've never seen the war before we shot.
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