America would never invade Cuba. We will take our missiles out.

 

To Fidel Castro and Che, it is an act of absolute betrayal.

 

And it was Che who was the first Cuban official face to face with the Soviet official to kinda basically read the Soviets the riot act.

 

Disillusioned with the Soviets, Che realizes he has to establish other strong left wing partnerships. He finds what he is looking for in China.

 

You have the extreme revolution. That is Maoist. And Che Guevara, he belonged to this extreme.

 

Che is impressed by Mao Zedong's plan to take China from an agrarian society to a modern communist one. Che wants to do the same for Cuba. He has an ideal vision of the new socialist man, one who contributes for the greater good, not personal profit.

 

Now in our Cuba, work is acquiring a new meaning, and it's done with a new joy.

 

The idea was to create a new man who was willing to sacrifice himself on behalf of others to build a socialist paradise through hard work and dedication. He very often even slept in his office. And even famous visitors remarked finding him there, sometimes asleep on the floor. He instituted a volunteer labor program, whereby in his only free day he would go off to cut cane himself.

 

He urges his colleagues to do the same.

 

He became renowned in Havana as a bit of a party pooper.

 

His wife Aleida and their four kids are also subjected to his rigid ideology.

 

He was austere and severe at home. He refused to let his wife Aleida have the benefits of his ministry car. She had to take the bus. If she was given a gift by a foreign dignitary, she had to return them.

 

Che also has other more adventurous campaigns in mind.

 

Che wanted to focus much more on international revolution.

 

So he began to revive his hopes of extending the socialist revolution to other parts of Latin America as a way to create breathing space, open up a new lung for Cuba and the hemisphere.

 

He began to be seen increasingly by the Soviets as a kind of dangerous radical who was pro-Chinese. They were critical of him with Fidel.

 

Che realizes that the situation in Cuba is getting complicated and starts making plans to leave.

 

Che understood that Fidel was entirely now dependent on the Soviet Union economically, and it was up to him to sally forth and revolutionize the socialist world.

 

To succeed he will have to confront the Soviets, risk his relationship with Fidel Castro, and put himself on the frontlines. By 1963, Cuba’s economy has hit an all-time low. Che Guevara's plans to propel the country forward have failed. His solution is to end Cuba's reliance on the Soviets and spread the revolution around the world.

 

Che became increasingly disenchanted with the way things were shaping up to be in Cuba, as a Soviet satellite.

 

August 1964, the Lyndon Johnson Administration’s attention has diverted from Cuba to Vietnam and the increasing turmoil in Africa.