Fidel Castro, 1999
black and white photograph
Courtesy Sonnabend Gallery, New York
© Hiroshi Sugimoto
The interview was discovered a few years ago when Laura Galloway found a tape in her late grandfather’s archives that simply said “Galloway/Castro.” Clark Hewitt Galloway was the intra-American affairs editor for U.S. News and World Report. Galloway covered Latin and South America for the magazine after serving in the same region with the U.S. Army Intelligence corps during WWII. Blank on Blank’s new episode for its PBS series animates the story behind the tape and a collection of outtakes from the interview. Castro talks about: why Che Guevara, Raul Castro and the 26th of July Movement were not Communist; and why Cuba had issues with the American presence in the Guantanamo Naval Base and, specifically, American sailors stirring up trouble while out on the town in Guantanamo.