Fidel Castro’s ‘American Comandante': PBS film recounts a forgotten revolutionary tale

The story of how a former circus clown from Toledo became a trusted commander in the Cuban revolution is one of the stranger interludes in the annals of Cuban-American friendship and betrayal.

For a few years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, William Morgan was a swashbuckling celebrity — the Yankee comandante who helped topple Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in January 1959. Morgan was part of the second front of the revolution, based in the island’s central mountains. The second front was separate from Fidel Castro’s forces to the east, until Castro dispatched Ernesto “Che” Guevara to form an alliance in 1958. Morgan was devoted to Castro at first. In the months following the revolution he played a vital role in foiling a plot by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, American mobsters and Batista loyalists to retake the island.

The derring-do of the handsome Yankee revolutionary, not to mention his marriage to a pretty comrade-in-arms (his third wife) captured headlines and television coverage in the United States and made Morgan famous in Cuba. The fairy tale ended abruptly in March 1961, with Morgan standing against the stone wall of a dry moat at a colonial castle in Havana, where enemies of the revolution were dispatched by firing squads.

The story was largely forgotten. Both governments had reasons to be embarrassed by the example of Morgan. The official records were sealed, and those newspaper clips and TV reels featuring Morgan didn’t fit into Cold War narratives that were freezing into place.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/11/16/fidel-castros-american-comandante-pbs-film-recounts-a-forgotten-revolutionary-tale/

Highly recommended viewing. Morgan became disillusioned when he saw Fidel betray the very democratic ideals he once promoted, instead instituting repressive measures to establish dominant control over Cuban social, political, and economic processes. So Fidel had Morgan arrested and shot, and threw his wife into prison for 10 years.