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00:02In New Jersey, a secretive facility infiltrated by a Soviet spy raid.
00:08It's believed the damage they did to national security was incalculable.
00:14A palatial compound in Peru that held lavish parties for the country's elite.
00:20But something terrible was happening right underneath their feet.
00:26And an island stronghold besieged by the Nazis.
00:31This battle is such a disaster for the Allies that it gets called Churchill's Folly.
00:48In the lowlands of New Jersey are the remains of a sprawling complex.
00:54Linked to a devastating infiltration.
01:01We're just a few miles from the Jersey Shore in a typical residential area with wide tree-lined streets.
01:09But this one area is set apart.
01:12Lots of wide open spaces.
01:14Buildings that look like they were constructed as part of a unified project.
01:21There appear to be theatres or lecture halls.
01:24So was this maybe a school or university?
01:28But other areas start to paint quite a confusing picture.
01:32One building has a room.
01:34It's all filled with inward-facing cones.
01:38It feels otherworldly, like something out of a sci-fi movie.
01:43You get the feeling that there was something very advanced and highly classified happening here.
01:49For decades, this facility was at the cutting edge of military research.
01:54But that would make it a target.
01:58You could argue that this was the worst case of internal espionage in American history.
02:12Melissa Ziobro became the official historian for this innovative complex in 2004.
02:19For close to 100 years, this site was essential to making sure that the U.S. Army was the best
02:25prepared and best equipped in the world.
02:28It was built to solve a fundamental problem that any military faces.
02:33How do you ensure accurate communication in the midst of battle?
02:38In May 1917, just one month after America joined World War I, a temporary camp was established here.
02:48It was dedicated to training the Army's Signal Corps.
02:53This was a group completely devoted to the correct transmission of information under the harshest conditions.
03:02They used telegraphs, telephones, even carrier pigeons.
03:07In recognition of the crucial role they played in defeating Germany in 1918, the camp was soon transformed into a
03:16permanent installation.
03:18In the gap between World War I and World War II, the world was changing rapidly.
03:25The aircraft carrier mechanized transport meant the wars of the future were going to take place over even larger expanses
03:33of terrain or ocean.
03:35That would strain the existing communications technology.
03:40We are in one of the barracks buildings on Barker Circle, the first permanent construction done here on base.
03:49They were very involved in early wireless technologies, early radio.
03:54They were testing air-to-ground radio.
03:57The high-tech innovations made here led to this place developing a nickname, the Army's House of Magic.
04:05But its official name was Fort Monmouth.
04:10During the 1930s, they made a pivotal breakthrough with a technology that would change warfare, radar.
04:20The radar systems developed here would be deployed on many fronts.
04:25One of the first was Hawaii, the home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
04:30There are actually radars from Fort Monmouth at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.
04:36They detect the incoming Japanese planes.
04:40Panicking at what they saw, they reported the incoming planes to their superiors.
04:45But the radar operators hold, don't worry about it, it's probably birds or maybe it's our own planes,
04:50because the technology was just so new.
04:53People didn't understand it, they didn't trust it.
04:56And, of course, then the Japanese attack happens.
05:01Now, back here at Fort Monmouth, the radar folks are at first horrified.
05:06They think that their technology has failed.
05:09Then they find out, no, it worked, but the warning wasn't heeded.
05:13This will go down in history as one of the great communications disasters in modern warfare.
05:21Thrust into global war, Fort Monmouth's mission was now more critical than ever.
05:27And thousands of civilian engineers were brought into the Signal Corps to create vital new communication technologies.
05:38This would have been a highly classified facility.
05:41The anechoic chamber absorbed sound and electromagnetic rays and allowed personnel to test things like antennas and radars.
05:52As well as further advances in radar, they also developed groundbreaking backpack radios.
05:58These made a vital difference on the battlefield.
06:03The technologies coming out of Fort Monmouth were the envy of the world.
06:10And so there was a constant recognition that we might be infiltrated.
06:16Yet Fort Monmouth had already been compromised, with a mole embedded within its ranks.
06:23Julius Rosenberg joined the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories in 1940.
06:29He worked as an engineer and inspector for them until 1945.
06:34But early in the war, he had been recruited as a Soviet spy.
06:37The history here is tricky.
06:40The Soviets were nominally America's allies in fighting the Germans.
06:45But everyone knew the Soviets would, again, be America's enemies at some point after the end of the war.
06:53Julius Rosenberg was perfectly positioned to gather as much information as possible.
07:00And he wasn't operating alone.
07:04Rosenberg and his handlers recruited two more people who worked at Fort Monmouth.
07:10Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant.
07:13Rosenberg's spy ring copied more than 9,000 pages of top secret documents, information about a hundred different weapon systems.
07:24In one case, Rosenberg obtained the actual unit of a proximity fuse, an incredibly vital piece of technology.
07:31He literally put it in a box and wrapped it up as a Christmas present for his Soviet handler.
07:38As World War II was morphing into the Cold War, Rosenberg continued to smuggle top secret material back to his
07:47Soviet overlords, now America's primary foe.
07:52In this dawning nuclear age, the stakes were higher than ever.
07:58He recruited his brother-in-law, who worked at the post-war period's most important, most top secret project, Los
08:07Alamos, where they were doing the work to develop the atomic weapon.
08:13The information that Rosenberg passed on to the Soviets, allowed them to greatly accelerate their own program to develop an
08:22atomic bomb.
08:32On August 29th, 1949, the Soviet Union tested their first nuclear weapon.
08:39It was almost a carbon copy of the Fat Man bomb developed at Los Alamos.
08:47U.S. intelligence investigated a potential leak, which eventually led them back to Rosenberg and his co-conspirators, who began
08:56their portrayal at Fort Monmouth.
08:59Helped by a tip-off from the Russian handlers, Barr and Sarant fled to the Soviet Union.
09:05Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were not so lucky.
09:09Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, implicated the pair after his own arrest in June 1950, for leaking confidential information from Los
09:19Alamos.
09:21The Rosenbergs were put on trial in one of the most publicized and closely watched events in American history.
09:32They were both sentenced to death and executed at Sing Sing Prison.
09:37Two months later, in 1953, the Rosenbergs' connection to Fort Monmouth was pounced on by a fanatical anti-communist crusader,
09:49Joseph McCarthy.
09:50The complete, wholehearted support now of the commanding generals in Fort Monmouth, who want to clean communists and potential espionage
09:59agents out of their organization.
10:04In 1950, a security breach was discovered at Los Alamos, where Oppenheimer and his team had developed the atomic bomb.
10:14It led investigators to Soviet spy Julius Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel, who were both executed in 1953.
10:23A flamboyant senator, Joseph McCarthy, was taking advantage of the concerns about communist infiltration to boost his own profile and
10:35career.
10:37So, once McCarthy knows that Rosenberg had worked for the Signal Corps, Fort Monmouth is the home of the Signal
10:45Corps.
10:46He becomes convinced that surely there must still be a communist spiring operating.
10:52He actually visited the base as part of his investigation in the fall of 1953.
10:57He made a big show of how he was here and he was, you know, personally trying to root out
11:01these communists.
11:02Based on McCarthy's allegations, the officials at Fort Monmouth suspended 42 employees.
11:10Of the 42 accused, all but two were reinstated by 1958.
11:17But 15 years later, after a military reorganization, the Signal Corps was relocated in 1973.
11:28What remains behind here at Fort Monmouth is something known as the Electronics Command.
11:33And then we start getting into things like night vision technologies and GPS and early cell phones and on and
11:39on and on up through the global war on terror.
11:42The base was officially closed on September 15th, 2011.
11:46And with that, nearly a century of U.S. Army occupation came to an end.
11:55But Fort Monmouth would have one more brush with fame.
12:01Bruce Springsteen, who is a Monmouth County native, practiced here in the Expo Theater that we're standing in.
12:09I have met Bruce. He is lovely.
12:12You know, he's just another Jersey Shore guy who happens to be an international rock star.
12:22Today, like many retired U.S. military bases, there are plans for Fort Monmouth to be converted to various kinds
12:30of civilian uses, including business and housing.
12:33And there are plans underway to turn parts of the campus into a movie studio.
12:42In North Wales, near the Irish Sea, is a scarred landscape that helped inspire Tolkien's Mordor and Middle Earth.
12:55We're in the ancient, rugged mountains of Wales.
12:59It's one of the wettest parts of Britain, cloudy and misty.
13:03But the landscape has a special majesty.
13:06But the landscape around here isn't pristine.
13:10It's deeply scarred.
13:11And there are huge piles of rubble and debris everywhere.
13:16You see old structures, some of them in ruins, with all kinds of equipment laying around.
13:23Clearly, there's something in the hills here that was worth an enormous amount of human effort.
13:28This material was carved out of the land, transforming the region and creating a vast, unseen labyrinth.
13:39When you descend into the mountainside, you enter a completely different world.
13:45It seems like there are miles and miles of tunnels.
13:48And then, interspersed along them, these enormous cavernous rooms.
13:54But the material they were mining was prized across the world, from New York to San Francisco, even as far
14:01as Australia.
14:02At one time, half the buildings in New York were covered with this material.
14:11Phil Lee Jones has a deep connection to this site.
14:16He gives tours around the complex, where his forefathers once toiled.
14:23I can go back about five generations of my family working in these places, probably more.
14:31You can imagine all the machinery, all the wheels turning.
14:35It'd be a very noisy place. It'd be a very busy place.
14:38As far back as Roman times, humans have tried to extract a precious resource from this land.
14:46But into the mid-1800s, that extraction began to change it beyond all recognition,
14:54from rolling green hills into the blackened landscape of today.
15:01This whole enormous complex began with one man's determination to find his fortune in these barren hills.
15:11Entrepreneur John Greaves arrived here in the 1840s.
15:17Greaves was convinced there was a seam of what was known as blue-gray gold somewhere here.
15:22He just had to find it.
15:25That blue-gray gold was a precious rock called slate.
15:31He dug for three years and found nothing.
15:35The story goes that he sank his entire fortune into the search and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
15:41Then, in 1849, his prayers were answered.
15:45They found what's known as the Merioneth Old Vane, and they began to follow it deep underground.
15:52Eventually, they would dig out 250 chambers across 16 levels, stretching 1,200 feet from top to bottom.
16:00And it's all connected by 25 miles of tunnels.
16:05This is Lechwid Mine, in an area called Blenna Festiniog, which became known as the slate capital of the world.
16:18The slate from Wales has a reputation of being some of the best in the world.
16:22It's very smooth, has a beautiful color, it weathers well.
16:26And despite being easy to split on one axis, it remains extremely durable.
16:33That makes it a wonderful building material.
16:35Highly resistant to fire and corrosion, it's also waterproof, lending itself perfectly to roofing.
16:44Slate roofs can last 100 years, even a couple of centuries.
16:49Wagons would be coming in with big slabs along the rail tracks here from underground.
16:55They'd come to these sewing tables, and then they were sawn into manageable blocks.
17:02And then they were transported down to these cubicles down over here, where then they would be turned into finished
17:10roofing slates.
17:13Into the 1850s, it was being exported to all corners of the globe, giving rise to the saying,
17:22Wales roofed the world, a fact not lost on the mine's owner.
17:28Greaves was an astute businessman, and he invested in a series of railways and shipping wharves
17:33to ensure that he could export his slate around the rest of the country and the world.
17:40As San Francisco was having a huge building boom due to the gold rush,
17:44a lot of the buildings were roofed with slate from this mine.
17:50Greaves' operations were proving to be a huge success.
17:55But even by the standards of underground mining, slate mines were particularly hazardous.
18:02He was working in this area, and unfortunately, the blast went off early.
18:13Lechwed mine was part of a slate mining boom in North Wales, which became famous in the mid-1800s for
18:21roofing the world.
18:23It's hard to imagine just how dangerous and difficult this work was.
18:27First of all, no electric lights.
18:30So they're descending deep, deep, deep into the mountainside with a candle at best.
18:36They can see basically what's in front of their faces.
18:41The miners could be crushed to death by cave-ins, burned by gas explosions, or blown up by gunpowder.
18:49This is what happened to my grandfather.
18:52He was working in this area, and unfortunately, the blast went off early, and he lost the use of his
18:58hand.
18:59His hand was mangled. It was like that.
19:01Couldn't straighten his fingers out.
19:03He had a big scar on the inside of his wrist and blue freckles all over his hand.
19:08It's where the slate had gone in, underneath his skin.
19:10So I can't appreciate the dangers.
19:14But there was another unseen threat, perhaps the biggest risk of all.
19:20Mining and processing the slate was very dusty, and the workers had no protection against it.
19:27They spent their lives breathing in harmful silica dust.
19:31The government was so concerned, they did an inquiry into the death rate in these mines,
19:36and they found that it was even worse than that of coal miners.
19:40The risks would eventually prompt the miners to call for action.
19:45In 1874, a mine workers' union was formed.
19:50This is one of the first places where there was a real effort to unionize the workforce,
19:55to fight for some of their rights, to fight for greater safety, better pay.
19:59But as this movement was gathering pace among its workers,
20:04Lechwed's owners were struck by tragedy.
20:07John Greaves died in 1880 and passed the operation over to his son, also called John Greaves.
20:14He was soon faced with a wave of strikes that swept across the region.
20:21And a recession, which dragged on into the 1890s, compounded by a changing global market.
20:29There was increasing competition from cheaper slate brought in from abroad,
20:34including mines in Pennsylvania, which were originally set up by Welsh miners.
20:39The industry's decline continued, driven by the Great Depression and two world wars.
20:47The last underground mining here finally ended in the 1980s.
20:53That's the downfall of Welsh slates.
20:56It's the best in the world, but it's the most expensive in the world as well.
21:05The slate landscape of north-west Wales is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
21:12But Lechwed and other local mines have also been repurposed to boost employment.
21:20In 1972, the Lechwed's slate caverns opened to the public as a tourist attraction.
21:27As well as historical tours, a company called Zip World has turned the complex into an adventure playground,
21:35which includes the fastest zip line in the world.
21:45In Greece is the rugged island of Leros, a strategic outpost that's been the envy of leaders and dictators through
21:54the ages.
21:59On one of the largest peaks is a strange three-sided formation made of concrete.
22:05From the ground, this just looks like some concrete construction.
22:11But when you get above ground and you look down at this place,
22:15that is one strange three-sided structure down there.
22:22Though unique-looking, it becomes clear that it doesn't stand alone.
22:27It's part of a wider network.
22:32Low concrete buildings, tunnels, bunkers, towers with high vantage points,
22:38these must be some type of military structures, but they've fallen into disrepair.
22:44Is this natural decay or signs of a more violent event?
22:50Up close, the walls, riddled with bullet holes and pockmarks, provide the answer.
22:57The people on this island suffered a lot.
23:00They were the victims of other people's war.
23:04We were scared.
23:06They were bombing continuously.
23:09It was psychologically unbearable.
23:17On the Greek island of Leros, shattered structures are all that remain of a bitter conflict
23:25that ripped this quiet community apart.
23:31This modern sculpture was the acoustic mirror.
23:36It was a concave structure that trapped and amplified the sound of the incoming aircraft.
23:42Local resident Nikos Fokas has been entranced by these formations for decades.
23:49So, the operator would walk within this trench when he had a noise, let's say now here,
23:56he knew that it was coming from that direction.
24:01Around it, there was a lot of anti-aircraft guns,
24:05and also the command center for all the air defense control.
24:11Leros is part of Greece today, but these structures date back to an era
24:15when the island was under foreign control.
24:17This aircraft warning system was part of an extensive network of fortifications
24:24built in the 1920s and 30s
24:26on the orders of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
24:33Their purpose was to protect the island's greatest strategic asset,
24:38a port that would allow Mussolini to challenge the British Navy's domination of the region's seas.
24:47This island is providing a massive naval base, a deep-water port,
24:53that enables the Italians to keep sea power active against rival powers in the eastern Mediterranean.
25:05It was one of the largest naval bases they had outside of the mainland Italy.
25:12They had seaplanes, they had warships, they had the submarine base.
25:17It gave them total control of the area.
25:21Mussolini's rapidly expanding navy could now vie for supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean.
25:28Able to refuel and resupply in safety under the protection of the island's fortifications.
25:36It wasn't until World War II that these defenses would be put to use.
25:42By 1943, the region was largely occupied by the Axis powers of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.
25:50But when the Allied invasion of mainland Italy began in September,
25:55Mussolini's regime crumbled and his armies surrendered.
26:00The race was now on for control of Leros.
26:06The Germans rushed to seize all the areas held by the Italians, who are now seen as traitors.
26:12This made British Prime Minister Winston Churchill incredibly nervous.
26:17He, like Mussolini, saw these islands as strategically crucial.
26:23And he says, we have got to take these islands.
26:28But his American allies would have none of it.
26:32The American decision makers, Dwight Eisenhower in particular,
26:36want nothing whatsoever to do with trying to grab Italian-held Greek islands off the coast of Turkey
26:45From an American point of view, if we're going to attack anything in the Mediterranean, it's Italy.
26:53But Churchill was hellbent on seeing his plans through, even if it meant the British going alone.
27:01Churchill rushed 3,000 British troops to the island to reinforce the 8,000-man Italian garrison,
27:08now stranded on Leros.
27:10They won the race against the Nazis, but a reckoning was coming.
27:21On September 26, the German air attack began.
27:26The Luftwaffe began a relentless campaign that lasted over 50 days.
27:32Nicholas de Loglou was just nine years old when the bombardments began.
27:39Every time we heard those bombs, we would cry.
27:44We'd spend the whole day in the shelters.
27:47In our shelter, there were 60 people.
27:50We were scared.
27:51We were children, and we were crying.
27:55But the Germans didn't just target military positions.
27:59They attacked the island's towns and villages.
28:05We would return to our homes, only to find nothing left.
28:09Our homes were also destroyed by the Germans.
28:13It was psychologically unbearable.
28:18After seven weeks of relentless attack, in the early hours of November 12,
28:23a German invasion force approached Leros.
28:28Nearly 3,000 elite troops launched an assault across the island,
28:34hoping to claim the vital port for Nazi Germany.
28:39Some units landed right beneath this arsenal of weapons.
28:46These were the mounting bolts for the guns.
28:51The guns placed here were anti-ship guns.
28:54Everyone knows that a naval ship can never win in a gunfight against a shore battery.
29:03But the cannon on top of this steep peak had a fatal flaw.
29:08The gun is built to fire at something far.
29:13If you bring something up close, you can't depress the barrel far enough to shoot at it.
29:21This gun is fearsome at range.
29:25It is useless up close.
29:28German landing craft managed to sneak in under the blind spot of the guns.
29:33They started climbing up the hill.
29:36The Allied artillery troops stationed in this battery were about to be confronted with hand-to-hand combat
29:43against elite Nazi infantry.
29:47And little did they know, paratroopers were preparing to drop right behind them.
29:59November 12th, 1943.
30:02Britain and their new ally, Italy, are defending the island of Leros
30:07as elite Nazi shock troops land under the blind spot of a coastal battery.
30:14So, the German troopers that landed there were specially trained to climb the rocks.
30:20The fighting was close quarters, hand-to-hand fight, with handguns.
30:25It was actually like being on a street fight.
30:28It was that close.
30:29Once they secured positions on the rocky slopes, it was impossible to dislodge the German soldiers.
30:36Soon, the Allied troops were hemmed in on all sides.
30:40There were also some paratroopers that fell on the other side of the hill.
30:45And there were heavy losses on both sides.
30:48It took the Germans two days to conquer this gunpoint.
30:54With total control of the skies, the Nazis dropped waves of paratroopers onto the narrow neck
31:01at the center of the island, splitting the Allied forces in two.
31:06After four days of bitter fighting, the Germans had the Allied HQ surrounded.
31:11At that point, the British commander surrendered.
31:13He was keen to avoid a massacre.
31:16Out of the 3,000 British troops on the island, almost 600 were killed,
31:21and the rest were either injured or taken as prisoners of war.
31:26The Italians lost nearly 300 men, and in total, 8,500 Allied troops were taken captive.
31:36This is said to be one of Germany's last victories in World War II.
31:41It's such a disaster for the British that it gets called Churchill's Folly.
31:48Despite its obvious flaws from the very start, Winston Churchill remained defiant.
31:55Privately, he blamed the Americans.
31:58With their help, it might have been avoided.
32:01Germany occupied Leros until the end of the war.
32:04After their defeat, it returned to British control.
32:08The island finally became part of Greece in 1948.
32:14Since then, the gun battery ruins have sat abandoned,
32:19slowly crumbling down the mountainside.
32:26In recent years, the Greek cultural ministry declared Leros' World War II remains as an historic monument.
32:34Leros stands as a living museum of one of the most epic and tragic battles of World War II.
32:47Leros stands as a living museum of one of the most epic and tragic battles of World War II.
32:4780 miles south of Peru's capital city, Lima,
32:50is a palatial compound designed by an owner living a double life.
33:00We can see farmlands stretching out into the distance,
33:04but surrounded by modern structures is a building that looks really out of place.
33:10This building has a real mishmash of features with its ornate arches and tiling.
33:17There are also Gothic spires, castle-like walls, and these towers.
33:24The gardens indicate wealth and opulence, which is mirrored inside.
33:31Decorative wallpaper, wood carvings, and stained glass windows.
33:35Whoever built this had some serious cash to play with.
33:40This was more than just a house.
33:43It was the gateway to Peru's elite.
33:48On a lower level, we find a trap door that leads to a dark dungeon-like space.
33:55It's a completely lightless network of narrow tunnels.
33:59They could have been for access or storage,
34:04but you can't help wondering if they had a more sinister purpose.
34:09Behind these bright and colorful walls lie terrible secrets
34:13that most Peruvians remain unaware of.
34:22In the early 1800s, a vast estate growing sugarcane and cotton
34:29was acquired by an iconic figure in Peru's history,
34:34Ipolito Unanue.
34:36He was an academic and politician that supported Peru's fight for independence.
34:41After liberation from Spain was achieved in 1824,
34:47Unanue served as president of the Congress and the Minister of Finance
34:51in the new Republic of Peru.
34:54He died in 1833, and the estate passed to his son,
34:59José Unanue de la Cuba.
35:01José Unanue was determined to build himself
35:05the most luxurious home on the Peruvian coast,
35:09as well as have it serve as a tribute to his father.
35:12Construction began on this project in 1843.
35:17Local historian David Pino has spent years investigating this place
35:23and has unearthed some surprises along the way.
35:29In the mid-19th century,
35:31the house looked vastly different from its current state.
35:35Nevertheless, traces of its former grandeur can still be seen.
35:39The walls were adorned with tapestries,
35:42lamps illuminated the space,
35:43and the furniture was imported from Europe.
35:48Legend has it that Unanue bought a Bavarian castle,
35:55stripped it of its doors, windows, and furniture,
35:58and transported them all the way here to decorate his own palace.
36:02He was heavily influenced by North African Moorish architecture,
36:08and you can definitely see those influences.
36:11Its construction was a passion project
36:14and continued to evolve for decades.
36:18The many visitors who enjoyed these spaces
36:20knew it as Hacienda Unanue.
36:24The mansion hosted an array of people from the Peruvian elite
36:30and regularly hosted lavish banquets.
36:35But just feet away from these extravagant parties
36:39lay the dark secret behind Unanue's wealth.
36:49In the Cañete Valley, near Lima,
36:53José Unanue constructed an elaborate palace.
36:57Throughout the mid-1800s,
37:00he welcomed Peruvian aristocracy,
37:03hosting parties and banquets.
37:08But a trap door leads to a different world
37:12that underpinned his wealth.
37:15It's known that these spaces were used
37:17to confine dozens of enslaved individuals
37:20who were subjected to torture, mutilations,
37:24and great suffering in the narrow corridors.
37:27Torturas, amutilaciones.
37:29The estate was run on a system of slavery.
37:34Unanue didn't just own enslaved people.
37:37His mansion also served as a marketplace.
37:42The auctioneers were located on this terrace,
37:44where they could see enslaved people
37:47being brought in and offered like livestock.
37:49The price of a slave at that time was 250 pesos,
37:53half the cost of a packed donkey.
37:56The slave trade in Peru
37:58had technically been abolished in 1821,
38:01but illicit imports of enslaved Africans
38:04into Peru continued, albeit in secret.
38:07It's believed the tunnels were used
38:10both to hold and punish the 400 enslaved people
38:14that Unanue is thought to have owned.
38:17This continued on the estate until 1854,
38:21when slavery was abolished
38:22by President Ramon Castilla,
38:25who became known as the liberator.
38:29Landowners found a way to replace the labor shortage
38:32by bringing in Chinese workers.
38:36In the 20 years after emancipation,
38:39some 100,000 Chinese immigrants came to Peru.
38:43They were promised a better life
38:46or coerced into leaving China by recruiters
38:49and brought here to work as indentured servants.
38:54This system of forced labor was brutal,
38:57and it led to about half of these Chinese workers
39:00dying before the age of 40
39:02for things like exhaustion, ill treatment,
39:06but even suicide.
39:08But soon, these workers would be presented
39:12with an opportunity to seize freedom
39:15and enact a measure of revenge.
39:18In 1879, war broke out with Chile.
39:23The following year,
39:24an invasion force landed 40 miles south of Unanue.
39:29The Chilean army rampaged through the area,
39:33moving north towards the capital,
39:35passing through Cañete Valley.
39:38Many of these Chinese laborers joined the Chileans
39:42in ransacking these Peruvian estates,
39:45but their collaboration led to terrible reprisals
39:49from the local Peruvian peasants.
39:51In 1881, tensions boiled over and a riot broke out.
39:56In the ensuing violence and chaos,
40:001,000 Chinese workers were massacred,
40:03including on the Unanue estate.
40:07Peace only returned to the region in 1884
40:11when the Chilean army withdrew.
40:14The following year,
40:16Jose Unanue died childless
40:18and the estate passed through his nephew's family
40:21for generations.
40:23But the 1960s would see seismic changes
40:28that would transform Peru.
40:30In 1968, Army General Juan Velasco Alvarado
40:35led a coup to seize control of the government
40:38and forcibly implemented agrarian reform across Peru.
40:43The estates were transformed into farming cooperatives,
40:47partly owned by the peasants who worked them.
40:51Jose Unanue's descendants were forced to leave
40:55and the surrounding estate divided up among the poor.
40:59The palace itself was left abandoned
41:02and its fittings and furniture looted.
41:09In 1972, Unanue Palace was declared
41:13a National Historic Monument.
41:16Despite it being open to the public,
41:19this abandoned building has suffered
41:22from lack of investment
41:23and has fallen into ruin.
41:25The old man was replaced by the African-American
41:29his family's Будifengel.
41:29So that's a big part of the public.
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