Documentary tells the story of the Cuban Revolution’s only ‘Yanqui Comandante’

Documentary tells the story of the Cuban Revolution's only 'Yanqui
Comandante'

Film follows William Morgan's life from a Toledo childhood to a Cuban
prison execution
It includes interviews with Morgan's wife and the men who fought with
him in the Escambray Mountains
The one-hour program is scheduled for 9 p.m. Tuesday on WPBT Channel
aveciana-suarez@miamiherald.com

Award-winning filmmaker Adriana Bosch was flying cross-country when she
came across a May 2012 article in The New Yorker on a mythical figure
from her childhood, a man she thought had been forgotten by the world.

"Look at this!' she told her associate producer. "This would make a
great American Experience documentary."

She was right. Her American Comandante, a one-hour documentary on
William Morgan scheduled to air Tuesday at 9 p.m. on WPBT Channel 2, is
a fascinating look at the only americano to achieve that rank within
Fidel Castro's revolution. It is also the story of an upper-class
Midwestern bad boy who headed south to the Caribbean island in hopes of
redemption. He found it, if only for a short while.

Bosch, who is known for her presidential biographies (Ulysses S. Grant,
Jimmy Carter, Reagan and Ike) as well as Fidel Castro and the PBS series
Latino Americans, calls Morgan "a larger than life figure." She
remembers growing up in Cuba — she left when she was 13 — and hearing
stories about the American hero.

"I had an aunt who adored him," she recalls, with a laugh. "He embodied
this promise of American values, of fairness and liberty, and his
presence seemed to mean these would be established in Cuba."

After reading the David Grann article "The Yankee Comandante," Bosch
hoped to bring Morgan to life on film — but she also suspected it might
be a difficult to find photographs and footage. What's more, she wanted
to tell the secondary story that intertwined so perfectly with Morgan's
own rise to fame back in the late 1950s. Morgan was a leader in the
Second Front of the Escambray during the Cuban revolution, a brave
contingent of rebels who fought against Fulgencio Batista separately
from Fidel Castro's group in the Sierra Maestra.

"So many people don't know there was this other group fighting in the
Escambray Mountains," she says. "They've only heard of Fidel in the
Sierra Maestra. So for me, there was this opportunity to tell the story
of the Cuban Revolution from a different perspective."

Bosch "lucked out" when a friend found Morgan's niece in Ohio. The woman
had a treasure trove of material, including old home movies of Morgan's
childhood that nobody had ever seen. (Morgan's father, an engineer, was
an amateur film buff.) "We went from thinking we would have very little
to ending up with a wealth of material," she adds.

HE EMBODIED THIS PROMISE OF AMERICAN VALUES, OF FAIRNESS AND LIBERTY,
AND HIS PRESENCE SEEMED TO MEAN THESE WOULD BE ESTABLISHED IN CUBA.
Adriana Bosch

American Comandante tells Morgan's story chronologically. Bosch includes
footage of his childhood and adolescence in an upper-class Toledo, Ohio,
family, all homespun scenes that could happen in any living room.
Morgan, however, was not one to march lockstep with others'
expectations. At 14 he ran off to join the circus, before his father
tracked him down in Chicago. He was thrown out of two schools and went
AWOL while serving in the Army in occupied Japan. He was then
dishonorably discharged and sentenced to five years of hard labor after
attacking a guard. Returning to Toledo, he went on to work with the mob.

In 1954, Morgan settled in Miami, with his wife, a snake charmer he had
met during his second stint with the circus as a fire-eater. It was here
that he heard about the growing rebellion in Cuba. He soon began
smuggling arms to Miami and then abandoned his family in Miami to join
the rebels in the mountains. Because the Sierra Maestra was on the other
end of the island from Havana, Morgan instead joined the Second Front,
led by 23-year-old Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo.

"That's where he found his calling," Bosch says. "It was his chance for
redemption."

Bosch then tracks Morgan's trajectory as he gains the respect of the
Cubans, as he falls in love with his second wife, a fellow rebel soldier
in the mountains, as the Second Front is marginalized by Fidel Castro
after the triumph of the revolution, as the U.S. government strips him
of his citizenship, and finally, as Castro imprisons and then executes
him in March 1961.

MORGAN'S ROLE AND THAT OF OTHERS WHO FOUGHT [AGAINST BATISTA] WAS SWEPT
UNDER AND FORGOTTEN.
Adriana Bosch

Bosch's film includes interviews with Morgan's widow, Olga Rodriguez
Goodwin, other comandantes of the Second Front of the Excambray, many of
them well known in Miami, and the journalists who first re-discovered
Morgan's role in the Cuban revolution. One of these is Mike Sallah, now
an investigative reporter of The Miami Herald who co-wrote a book about
Morgan, The Yankee Comandante: The Untold Story of Courage, Passion and
One American's Fight to Liberate Cuba (Lyons Press).

MORGAN'S ROLE AND THAT OF OTHERS WHO FOUGHT [AGAINST BATISTA] WAS SWEPT
UNDER AND FORGOTTEN.
Adriana Bosch

"For so long Morgan's story had been marginalized because of the way
Fidel Castro has told his version of the revolution," Bosch explains.
"Morgan's role and that of others who fought [against Batista] was swept
under and forgotten."

Along with previous research by journalists, Bosch's film restores the
Hollywood-thriller tale of an americano many do not know. In fact, the
Cuban-American filmmaker hopes that American Comandante puts to rest the
idea that the Cuban revolution was, first and foremost, an anti-American
crusade.

"The fact that there was an American who fought in the revolution, who
was a comandante and who liberated Cienfuegos, shows that this enmity
between Cuba and U.S. was a construct that came later," she says.
"William Morgan's story puts a chink in this narrative of Cuban's great
anti-American feeling. America was never the real enemy."

American Comandante, a one-hour documentary on the life of William Morgan

WPBT Channel 2

Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 9 p.m.

Source: Documentary tells the story of the Cuban Revolution's only
'Yanqui Comandante' | Miami Herald -
http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/article44995878.html