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The Cuban Colonel, the Russian General
and the (near) Destruction of the World
– A road movie into history
The Cuban Missile Crisis played out in the month of October 1962. Never before or after has mankind been so close to destroying Planet Earth. A nuclear war was averted at the last minute and the two Cold War superpowers came to an agreement that saved Cuba from total annihilation. But the agreement was made over the heads of the Cubans themselves and their leaders. Everything connected with the crisis has been considered shameful and few Cubans have even dared voice an opinion about the event.
Not so colonel Osvaldo Fernandez, one of the few Cubans who actually knew what was going on at the time. As a young liaison officer, his job was to follow the Soviet troops to the various sites where their deadly nuclear missiles would be installed. In his mind ”to save Cuba from a US invation”.
45 years after the crisis, colonel Fernandez meets with Russian general Victor Yesin, who pays a last visit to Cuba, to see the place where he served as a young lieutenant in charge of putting the warheads on the missiles, making them ready to launch. Yesin is the highest ranking Russian officer left from the crisis days, which he remembers with equal portions of pride and calm reflection over the disaster that could have happened.
The two of them make an exclusive journey to places never visited by a TV camera before, places where the cold war debris is still lying around, like dinosaur bones from history. Colonel Fernandez slowly becomes aware of how much the crisis has shaped his life, the life of all Cubans and the fate of the Cuban revolution. General Yesin sees hope for the island that escaped the invasion, but has still to find a way of giving its own citizens the freedom they could have had.
