Cuba: What Would Che Say?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2015
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ahead of a historic meeting between Cuba’s President Castro and US President Obama, The Inquiry asks if the island nation’s warmer relations with America are a betrayal of its revolutionary past. More than half a century ago, Che Guevara became a global icon after he fought alongside Fidel and Raul Castro to overthrow an American-backed government and put into practice their socialist ideals. Now Raul Castro has made a deal with the Americans and the lifting of the long-standing economic embargo of Cuba is becoming a realistic prospect. We delve into Che Guevara’s past, the changes already happening in Cuba under Raul Castro and the Obama administration’s motives, to answer the question - what would Che say?
(Photo: Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the mid 1950s. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | BBC World Service, this is Helena Merriman with The Inquiry. inquiry. |
| 0:47.0 | This week, Cuba's new relationship with the U.S. what would Chase say? On December the 17th last year, an American named Alan Gross left a Cuban prison, |
| 1:00.0 | boarded a US military plane, ate a corned beef sandwich, and took a phone call from President |
| 1:07.0 | Obama. |
| 1:08.0 | Later that day, the President revealed what was going on. |
| 1:11.0 | Today, the United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba. |
| 1:16.3 | Mr. Gross had been part of a prisoner swap, the culmination of 18 months of secret |
| 1:21.8 | negotiations to ease generations of tension between the US and |
| 1:25.9 | Cuba. Two countries divided by ideology, history and less than 150 kilometers of water. |
| 1:33.5 | We will begin to normalize relations between our two countries. |
| 1:37.0 | In Cuba, celebrations. |
| 1:39.0 | But from its president, Raal Castro, caution. |
| 1:46.0 | No, they will pretend that he does see that to me |
| 1:51.0 | to measure the relation with the state of the United States. that which it's fought for more than a century. But as Cuba builds a new relationship |
| 2:05.2 | with the US, can it hang on to its founding socialist principles, principles |
| 2:10.5 | associated with one man in particular, |
... |
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