Spies, revolutionaries and diplomats reveal the secrets how a small island in the Caribbean challenged the world. Fidel Castro's guerrilla army swept into Havana in January 1959. The Cuban Revolution attracted the hostility of their giant neighbour, the USA, and the friendship of the Soviet Union.
After the US tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Castro, the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles on this island. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the world came to Armageddon. When Khrushchev backed down and withdrew the missiles, Castro embarked on his independent course of supporting liberation struggles around the world. They sent troops to fight in Algeria in 1963.
Fidel's close comrade Che Guevara led a guerrilla mission to Bolivia in 1966, which was unsuccessful and ended in Che's death at the hands of the CIA.
In 1974, as the US pulled out of Vietnam, Secretary of State Kissinger tried to make contact with Fidel. Two journalists carried secret messages between Washington and Havana, leading to negotiations in a New York Hotel. But the talks foundered on the economic embargo the US had imposed on Cuba. Fidel embarked on his most audacious venture, sending Cuban troops to Angola to fight the army of apartheid South Africa.
Cuba also supported guerrilla struggles in Central America, fighting US backed governments in El Salvador and Nicaragua. A big surge in Cuban forces in Angola brought victory in Southern Africa. But this triumph coincided with the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union. The loss of their powerful ally raised the question of how Castro's Revolution could survive.
La Havane, 1er janvier 1959. Le dictateur Fulgencio Batista s'enfuit en avion à Saint-Domingue. Le lendemain, les maquisards barbus (barbudos) de la révolution cubaine, menés par Fidel Castro, pénètrent dans la capitale. Castro et Che Guevara sont déterminés à délivrer leur île de toute domination étrangère et à faire de Cuba l'avant-garde des luttes de libération nationale et anti-impérialistes d'Afrique et d'Amérique latine.
