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“... Ernesto Guevara de la Serna found what his life was for in July 1955, in Mexico City. It was there, at the age of 27, that he met Raúl Castro, who introduced him to his older brother, Fidel. The Argentine doctor joined a motley band of Cuban expeditionaries in the near-suicidal landing (or sinking) of the Granma in a mangrove swamp at the eastern end of the island ...”

“... I met Che Guevara in November 1963 at a reception in the gardens of the Soviet Embassy in Havana, one of those diplomatic occasions held every year to celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution. He strode in after midnight, accompanied by a coterie of friends, bodyguards and hangers-on, wearing his trademark black beret, his shirt open to the waist ...”

“... which demanded medicine. He spoke of how Zapata had been reborn and how they admired him and Che Guevara because both had given their lives for the good of the poor. He pointed out that the ranchers had their pistoleros, hired guns to do their bidding, but he did not seem to fear an attack. They didn’t want a fight, he said: there were women and children ...”

“... Bernays was good at his job. His previous (marketing) coup had been to rebrand cigarettes as ‘torches of freedom’ consumed by liberated women. United Fruit was less keen on the freedom promised to landless Guatemalan farmers by the land reform bill of 1952, which would expropriate much of the property it owned. A further indignity: when awarding ...”