All language subtitles for ¡Cuba Sí! (Marker_ 1961)-aNaRCHo

Havana
- December, 1960

Led by cheerleaders, a
procession roamed the city

proclaiming its detachment
from everything American.

It was last year, in Havana.

We were preparing to celebrate, in order:

The 1st of January, which
is the 1st of January.

The 2nd of January,
anniversary of the Revolution

and the Epiphany (Day of Kings),
which is Christmas, the true Christmas,

a day of gifts, when children are given...

puppies, which will grow,

baby rabbits, which will grow,

parakeets, bears and dolls...

and baby machine-guns,
which will also grow.

In the window of a department
store, Magi took orders by telephone.

A large bearded man who can be asked
anything, part of Cuban folklore.

Teresita, what would
you ask from the Kings?

A doll

and a lottery game.

That's all?

That's all.

Do you study hard, Teresita?

Oh, yes.

And what grade are you?

Kindergarten.

And how old are you?

Five years old.

And is your family here?

Yes.

And what's your name?

Jorge.

How old are you?

Seven... eight years old.

And what class?

Sixth.

And what would you ask from the Kings?

A train.

What else?

A rifle...

A machine gun.

A doll dressed as a ballerina.

A bicycle and two dolls.

An aircraft carrier.

A machine gun.

A rifle.

A doll.

An aircraft carrier...

But adults also had their kings,

Magi on the television...

Fidel Castro, Che Guevara
and Juan Almeida

gave the people the three
gifts of the revolution:

Industrialization

Agrarian Reform

and Literacy.

Out of six million Cubans,
a quarter could not read or write.

1961 is the year of education.

Every educated Cuban became
responsible for every illiterate Cuban.

The Catholic Church tried to co-opt
This new notion of responsibility.

"Will this child be a believer
or atheist? It depends on you."

The Revolution responded:

"Will this child be a patriot
or traitor? It depends on you."

This happened in Havana,
this American city,

where American concentrate grafted
onto Cuban skin like a vaccine.

Havana, where the casino
hotels have no thirteenth floor

remembering a not-distant time
when games were the main industry,

with prostitution and a variety
of public underground cinema.

But in this New York setting, there's
now a Cuban style of regulation.

There is a Cuban way
of looking at things:

to be curious, to be
flirtatious, to be patriotic.

It was the day of the year, the week of
kings, the year of education, the festival...

It was also the time of bombs.

A department store had burned down.

The crowd assembled,
commented, interpreted.

Signs appeared to turn the traitors in,

not to pardon them, but to
put them up against the wall.

However, the melting pot of
passion was still baseball.

Fidel Castro himself led
the Barbudas team to victory.

Alongside the revolutionary slogans,

tourism posters reminded that
America was an hour's flight away.

But this crowd was under threat,
and they knew it.

From inside, from outside.

There were bombs,
the counter-revolutionary underground.

Planes of unknown nationality,
having flown less than an hour,

appeared, struck, disappeared.

Who would defend this
crowd in case of attack?

Itself?

The militants on their way to the parade
at dawn on January 2nd were not soldiers.

They were baseball spectators,
celebrating the Epiphany.

Fidel Castro was going to tell them

things you don't usually hear
on days of military parades.

"We do not like parades.

"We do not like war.

"We live in a world where
we must defend ourselves.

"But we'd rather switch from guns
and skip ahead to the gymnasts."

The parade at Civic Square.

The great popular
demonstrations of Havana

have been called
"Red Square on Broadway".

But in the heart of the crowd,
images become more precise.

Everything was Cuban in this
celebration: the noise, beautiful girls,

and a Cuban way of peeling oranges,
a machine that adds coils to the party.

Students, volunteers for the literary
campaign, exist in three forms:

Spanish,

Black,

and Mulatto, beautiful as an eclipse.

The Cuban way of drinking fresh
water, or nationalized Coca-Cola.

The songs of January 2 told
a true story, or close enough.

Two years.

Two years of history,

and beyond, a prehistory
which seemed somewhat legendary.

Strangers appeared, generally bearded:

El Che, Raul, Camilo,

and a young lawyer who became
leader of the guerrillas,

somewhat uncomfortable on camera,

named Fidel Castro.

Twelve men at first,
survivors of a risky landing.

Then other men, other women joined them.

An underground is organized
in the Sierra Maestra.

They must communicate,
survive, arm themselves...

Villagers help the guerrillas.

The population knows their
newspapers and leaflets.

Between clashes, contact is made with
the peasants, the poorest of the island,

who contribute to the struggle,

first to bring down a dictatorship,

then to build a new society.

And if everyone's in
agreement on the first goal,

the second is fraught with
problems for the future.

In winter 1958, on a television
they presented to themselves,

Sierran fighters saw the
disintegration of enemy defences.

The dictator Batista, to make his exit,

prepared a government of
transition, which would rule forever.

The last throes of the regime,

as corrupt Cuban history
mingles with sports news.

Major upheavals are close.

But for the rest of the
world, especially Americans,

it is easier to resurrect myths:

that Fidel Castro is Robin Hood.

Perhaps he is Robin Hood,

but to take from the rich and
give to the poor, in our century,

it's not necessary to
attack the stagecoach.

And when Robin Hood was
reading Marx in the mountains,

while preparing the laws and
reforms of the future republic,

part of the world began to
painfully realize, belatedly,

that he was also a Robin Hood.

Thus do legends die.

The Robin Hood myth is shattered.

In its place: a revolution.

Work for all, land for farming,

housing for those who live there,

and houses for those who don't.

What could be more obvious?

The Revolution is only making
obvious things come true,

not those which the best
minds strove to overcome.

One example: it took the Revolution,

on an island with 3,500 km of coastline,

to create the first popular beaches here.

The Revolution is also finding
new resources, new industries.

For example, that of the bullfrog,

which Gatti did not invent (this is
the only thing he has not invented),

which will be the crocodile of the poor.

But the Revolution is
primarily for education.

From the alphabet to poetry,

there is a huge effort
to make the culture belong

to those who build it.

Abroad, of course, cultural
aspects of the revolution

are not well understood or presented.

Yet in the USA, even among
shouts of terror and scandal,

men raise their voices to
invite their countrymen

into a serious examination
of conscience.

But information has its own demands:

Front page for executions, a
snippet or nothing for reforms.

Everyone has seen the televised
death of one of Batista's captains,

but the prison system overhaul,
with its parole vacations,

and these strange competitions
between prisoners and guards,

restoring sporting equality
in the world of punishment,

nobody speaks of this.

"Castro has betrayed the
revolution," said the State Dept.

And we know how the State Dept.

jealously
protects the purity of the revolution.

We hesitate to believe
this is the main concern

of the USA's avatars
of democracy in Cuba.

There must be something else.

The church also takes a position.

For her, Castro is a
dictator. That says it all.

But even on this point, the
situation may not be so simple.

Apart from what I can see personally,

I think the Cuban Revolution
brings to the country a new nation,

a new homeland, new social structures.

Agrarian reform, urban reform,

and socialization of
national and foreign companies

are the pillars of the revolution,

and these structures will
change the face of the nation,

bringing prosperity
and industrialization,

especially giving economic independence,

without which there is
no political independence.

Ultimately it is trying to
solve Cuban social problems:

housing, unemployment,
health and education problems.

And this is done not at
the expense of human dignity,

but by doing some violence to the happy
life of debauchery that existed here.

This is wise and beneficial.

The immense benefits of the
revolution are much closer

to a true Christian social structure
than anything we had before!

Before: that is to say
under Batista

and his entourage of gangsters,
local or imported.

This time the young lawyer Castro
was released from prison

after a resounding plea linked to the
Revolution's future goals and spirit.

But who is Castro?

Between the rebel without a cause
and the leader of the partisans,

between the son of large landowners
and the pupil of the Jesuits,

founder of the first socialist republic in America,
how has he managed this metamorphosis?

Everyone has his own ideas on Castro,
everyone has their own label.

But since everyone is able to respond
on their own, perhaps, himself ...

FIDEL: I think it's a tough question ..

I think I was a kid,
like all children ...

It's very difficult to
consider which factors

make you into a revolutionary.

A little professional politics, first ...
But it's also a question of character...

a little rebellious character, a
natural tendency towards justice,

an innate opposition to what
you feel is unjust or immoral ...

It's all part of the vocation.

But in fact,
neither revolution nor revolutionaries

are dependent on themselves...

The Revolution...
is dependent on the climate,

a climate of injustice, the conditions

that enable one to really speak.

There cannot be a
revolution at the wrong time.

How many Marats, how many
Dantons, how many Robespierres

have been born in France
since France has existed -

and yet only Marat, Danton, Robespierre

became revolutionaries!

It was necessary that the
feudal monarchy and its decadence

brought her to
the edge of disappearance.

It was necessary that
French society bore these conditions

to form a new society,
a new world ...

Thus the factors that
made me a revolutionary,

that made revolutionaries
out of my companions,

that made the people
revolutionary, these factors

are born inside the
society in which we live.

The society in which they lived...

the revolutionaries lived in the bush,

there they opened the
first peasant schools.

It was necessary to leave these
false American cities

to discover the real Cuba,

that under-developed country of
which statistics say:

a million illiterate,

500,000 unemployed,

30 % of land in the hands of 1 %.

The conditions of life,

housing, sanitation,
unsatisfactory beyond description.

The other pole of this
society is this:

the palaces, the endless
gardens where billionaires

live in splendour like
that of the Borgias.

If only knowledge of human
nature could explain to us

why they were so crazy, so
selfish, cynical, indifferent or blind.

But there is one thing that
is always hard to understand:

that they were Christians.

Here, between the
crosses, nymphs and satyrs,

crossed with a little black magic,
is where they came to settle:

the kings of tobacco,
the emperors of sugar cane.

Here nothing disturbed their
dreams. Nothing happened.

Elsewhere, things were
happening. Burials, for example.

Of those victims of the dictatorship.

20,000 in six years.

Massacred, tortured,
sometimes castrated by the police.

It was Batista who was to declare
after the events of April 1961:

"I wish for Cuba a regime
founded on the principles

of Christianity and justice that were
given to the people in 1940 ... "

Organized resistance resumed under
the tradition of popular anger

that Cuba had known since 1933,
then under another dictatorship.

So betrayed by corrupt
governments, the will of Resistance

has, after failure after failure,
forged the reasons for victory.

The underground press
informed, educated,

and denounced the crimes,
naming the criminals.

In turn, the Resistance struck.

It barred the names on
the list. And there above,

in the Sierra Maestra, they
were forging the Revolution.

But in the enchanted gardens,
nothing was happening.

There was luxury,
calm, sometimes pleasure.

Then came the summer of 58...

A tragic race, in which
Fangio did not participate,

kidnapped by the bearded ones

who sought to speak
with the government.

Six months later, they were
seeking no more.

On January 1st 1959, Batista fled.

He left for Camp Columbia,
inside the Forbidden City,

the nursery he had built for his
children, and we found,

two years later, these ruins.

The dictator sought and obtained
asylum in the United States,

where he retired with a fortune
estimated at 300 million dollars.

The only thing left standing

in this garden was a statue...
that of a baby-Napoleon.

All around, the militia stood guard.

For the first time in five
centuries, Cuba belonged to Cubans.

End of First Part

Second Part

Liberty!

Fidel: It's not that we are
disinterested in power after the war.

We stress that we were not moved
in this struggle by personal ambitions.

What mattered was that a
certain program be applied.

We confess that at one point
we believed this was possible.

This means that at some point
we were a little ...utopian.

I confess that for the first time
since the triumph of the revolution,

of the war after the war, we were
almost completely without government.

We had absolutely nothing left
of the Council of Ministers,

and we expected, as it was the
most logical thing in the world,

that those who held
the main responsibility

for the basic measures
that people needed

would take action, and that seemed,
to us ... the ABC's of any revolution.

As the weeks passed, however,

not a single one of these measures
was taken.

Even if we had wanted us to stay away,

even if we had not
intended to govern,

even if we had wanted to stay
away, we could not ...

The country was
theirs to govern overnight,

this island of the West Indies,
where Columbus landed

on October 27, 1492,
persuaded it was India.

They wanted to assure
him that he had discovered America

but the cry was "India yes,
Yankee No!" and no one budged.

At the arrival of the Spaniards, Cuba
was inhabited by Siboney Indians.

By the time they departed,
there were none left.

This despite the efforts of Father
de Las Casas

and several other religious
protectors of the Indians.

It was noticed that the work of a negro
was worth that of four Indians,

which favoured the importation
of African slaves.

But Cuba was a Spanish possession.

It would not be until the beginning
of this century,

as the Universal Dictionary of
M. Bouillet warned us, that

"this possession is bound to follow
the fate of other Spanish colonies

and be absorbed by the United
States, which has long coveted it."

This lust,
the sun of our liberal century,

would become an influence
and also a monopoly.

When the United States suspended exports,

we quickly came to see
that life in Cuba was dependent,

technically and commercially.

The consequence: once the
playground and property in 1958,

Cuba became the bastion
of anti-Americanism in 1960.

Sugar cane is the best and worst thing.

On the one hand, it is expansive.

When it is cut, it grows
up to twenty times.

To ensure the harvest earlier this
year, we saw the whole government,

including the President of the
Dorticos Republic and the Minister of

Foreign Affairs Raul Roa, giving
an example of civil mobilization.

It included a healthy rivalry
with urban citizens,

but there was ultimately
a shortcoming of technique.

But sugar cane is
also a trap for Cuba.

In this fabulously rich land,
where almost anything can grow,

foreign influence has
distorted and proliferated

the culture of cane.

Instead of responding
to the diversity of its needs

through the diversity of its products,

Cuba was suffering from
the cancer of sugar.

Moreover, the quota system has absorbed

all production into a single market,

that of the United States.

This amounted to
putting the Cuban economy

in the absolute dependence
of a foreign economy.

When it became obvious that Cuba
wanted to avoid this dependence,

the U.S. retaliated with the economic
blockade and suppression of the quota.

So Castro undertook to sell
its sugar to Eastern Europe.

Then he was accused of having
sold himself to the Russians.

It was one of two basic charges.

The other was the absence
of elections.

One could indeed be
surprised that Castro

did not sanction this form
of popular expression.

We asked the question.

Fidel: "It would seem
difficult to understand

in some countries,

unless you understand that our country
has been plagued for 60 years

by a species of farce called elections.

That is to say a semi-democracy,

a false democracy well known
in Latin American countries

for a century and a half
without ever solving anything,

without doing anything but bring
to power a variety of mediocre,

and ambitious thieves and
servants of vested interests.

The time will come
when the Revolution

is a dynamic process, a process

which destroys the old and builds
the new, it will be institutionalized.

We are not eternal and the life
of the Revolution is not eternal.

That is to say that the time will
come when the new order

created by Revolution acquires
an institutional quality,

where this vital and real democracy
will also begin to create new forms.

First, a society that is born,

and then, this society will
take an institutional form.

And then the French should
be the first to understand us:

the French have an election almost...

annually, municipal, national ...
for a president, for a member...

that is to say that perhaps
no other country in the world

has experienced during these six
decades, more elections than France.

And still the French are not happy.

They can fully understand that
political factions, electioneering,

has not resolved any
fundamental problems in France.

Sometimes it happens that the ruling
classes get tired of elections

and then go to fascism.

To fascism!

But in Cuba, this is a Revolution
that moves towards socialism,

and this revolution will gives birth

to a regime and a new social form of life,

a good which in turn is
institutionalized and so forth.

We won't admit defeat!

In the meantime, we have an
election here every month.

But this is an election
in the public square.

We have a kind of Athenian democracy.

Spring 1960. Symbolic
Burial of Monopolies.

But the Revolution,
it was not only crowds.

In the Valley of the Two Sisters,
near Vinales

on a wall was a striated
illustration by Jules Verne...

Who was this mountaineer
harnessed, helmeted and jumping?

He was painting.

One day a painter had
decided that the mountainside

would make a nice surface
for a fresco for the people.

He was told "This is a mountain."

It's not too busy for
such an experiment.

Since then, climbers
have painted his mountain.

We were not expecting Baudelaire

in the middle of the Cuban Revolution.

But because everything
is possible in Cuba,

we have seen a farmer in Pinar del Rio,

harnessed and helmeted
as for an assault,

rising before our eyes
like a young giant.

It was a vacation day.

Unlike the painted mountains
or the tourist centre on stilts,

the Revolution was obviously less...
hectic than the cooperatives

or the offices of the
Institute of Cinema.

This was a moment for reflection,

an auspicious day to
discover something crazy:

that happiness is
happiness, life is life ...

The smell of the pines of Gaira,

the voices of girls

among wooden stairs

and cabins that sleep standing
on four legs like waders,

it was the stuff of memories,
times that we are afraid to forget:

here on the eve of war,
the last day of vacation.

The return was at hand.
And war was not far.

Alerts. Attacks.
Fields of burning cane.

All this indication of
another, more serious threat.

For the second anniversary
of the Revolution,

Fidel Castro proclaimed the
mobilization of the militias.

On the coast, among
the old Spanish cannons,

began a long evening of sleeplessness.

It is a full mobilization
in a tense and vigilant atmosphere,

a moment which has given us
a key to understand Cuba.

We were at a crossroads.

The passage of a children's
orchestra we wanted to film.

The morning was rather heavy.

The previous night, a violent aerial
incident had disturbed everyone.

People around us did not
look particularly Dionysian.

At the first change of pace,
we didn't notice anything

except a few
spectators practicing voodoo.

At the second change of pace,

something lightened around us. Suddenly...

This was Havana in 1961:

machine guns on roofs
and conga on the street.

In the rest of the world,
life went on as normal.

What has this moment said about the
state of the world at this time?

Of people, countries,
fabulous animals,

of Algeria,

of France,

of America,

of space,

of time,

about Congo,

or Laos,

or Africa,

and what forms this has taken in
the second half of this century,

those of violence and prayer.

Once we also wrote of the Apocalypse,

the costliest book in the world.

Now we began to talk
about the world and, also, Cuba.

When the radio, on
April 17, announced that

an attack had been launched
against Cuba,

our minds returned to those
first memories of Havana,

repeating ad nauseam that last walk.

So, the slogans were
no longer empty words:

they were oracles
hand drawn on the walls.

In East Havana, the
shambles of Pastorita,

which give shelter to 4000 families ...

The housing fund
is powered by a lottery.

Before, the proceeds from the lottery
went into the pockets of Batista.

From one lottery to another,

not only from fraud to honesty,
also from one world to another.

Two worlds where money does not
play the same role, that's all.

And this is something for the
Americans who landed that day

to go about buying land in Cuba...
this transition is irreversible.

But we, from 8000 miles away,

we have both memory and confidence

to confront that false news...

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION SEEMS TO PREVAIL

A GREAT CITY RALLIES
THE ENEMIES OF CASTRO

A BATTLE INSIDE HAVANA

FIDEL AT BAY

HAVANA BOMBED

Radio Voice:

" ... announced a beachhead
had been established

in the province of Las Villas, Cuba..."

Las Villas province, Zapata Swamp,

Playa Giron, Tresor lagoon...
It's here that the landing occurred.

On 20 April 1961,
the world learned

that the attack against Cuba
had failed.

The world learned at the same
time that the Cuban people

adhered to their revolution,
they were ready to defend it.

We would have been pleased to announce
this news to the world,

if they had asked.

But it seems the world only believes
the witnesses that were slaughtered.

And when necessary, to keep believing
it is ready to slaughter more.