Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 285: Tony Perrottet and 'The Butcher of Havana'
206 Plays3 years ago
Tony Perrottet is a journalist and historian whose latest piece is "The Butcher of Havana" for The Atavist Magazine.
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Magazine Submission Details
00:00:00
Speaker
Listen, by the time you hear this, if you're listening to it, when it drops,
00:00:07
Speaker
I want to remind you that the submission deadline for issue three of the audio magazine is November 1st. So that is most likely today, depending on when you listen to this. So what does that mean? Themes, heroes, essays must be no more than 2000 words. Bear in mind, it's an audio essay. So we're always paying attention to how the words roll out of your mouth. Don't think of flowery purple prose. You want things that are easy to say.
00:00:35
Speaker
Email your submissions with heroes in the subject line to Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com. I also pay writers too. Dig it. Sabert and I talked about this so many times as we worked on this story. It's just amazing to us that Herman Mark's story has not been told before. And she was like, oh yeah, Uncle Herman. Everyone was afraid of Uncle Herman.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yo, this is a Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going? It's at Brendan O'Mara on Twitter, at cnfpod on Twitter, at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram. I don't do meta, it's all gross. Social media is disgusting and I want to burn it all to the ground and unplug my brain from the matrix, but I can't.
Discussion on Magazine Subscriptions and Podcast Support
00:01:31
Speaker
Head over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to sign up for my up to 11 newsletter first of the month. No spam. Can't beat it. And magazine.adivist.com is where you'll find that blockbuster journalism that my best friends over at the Adivist are doing. We need to pay for stuff, man. I can't think of a better magazine subscription for the value you get than Adivist.
00:01:57
Speaker
And get this, I don't get any kickbacks so you know I mean business CNF-ers.
Introduction to Tony Perrote and Herman Marx
00:02:03
Speaker
And what does this all mean? It is the Atavistian time of the month, that bonus podcast that's going to hit your feet when you're like, come on, man, just stop it. Will you stop it already? But no, I won't. Tony Perrote is this month's Atavist showcase. Tony is an international man of mystery. He's Australian born with a French surname and the author of six books, his latest being Cuba Libre.
00:02:27
Speaker
which segues nicely into this piece for the Atavist about Herman Marx, the butcher, El Carnicero, a Midwest misfit who became the chief executioner for Fidel Castro and Che Guevara during the Cuban Revolution. How do people stumble across these stories, man? I have no idea. There is so much out there. If you don't have any story ideas,
00:02:52
Speaker
You're not looking hard enough. Fact is, there's just, go under that rock. There's a rock over there. There's something in there, man. Under that rock. Maybe in the rock too, if you're one of those geology nerds. No hate for geologists. It's actually pretty fascinating stuff. But before we get to that.
00:03:11
Speaker
I hope those of you who subscribe and read The Atavist have been enjoying these interviews. And up to this point, I've been more or less tiptoeing around the stories so as not to spoil them. So almost getting at the periphery of them. But going forward and certainly starting with this one, I'm conducting the interviews on the assumption that you've read the piece and want a deeper dive into the bones. So spoiler alerts. And if you subscribe to this wherever you get your podcasts,
00:03:40
Speaker
and you just put it in your pocket. Tuck it right back there away from maybe away from your pocket protector or next door in your pocket protector so it doesn't leak CNF and goodness on that new shirt of yours or that blouse. Do blouses even have breast pockets? I don't know. So yes, going forward, I won't be shy about revealing telling details in the interview.
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah, you'd never listen to DVD commentary before you watch the feature film, right? Unless you're some weirdo. But consider these Atavistian podcasts, the DVD commentary. Ew, who watches DVDs anymore? Shut up, not the point. So you can glean that extra little bit of juice from the incredible piece you just read, okay? So that's what we're going to do. We're going to really make that a concerted effort.
00:04:29
Speaker
If you like what we're doing here at CNF Pod HQ and you want to put your money where your ears are, weird, head over to patreon.com slash CNF Pod. Those dollar bills help subsidize the hosting, the transcripts, and I pay writers who are selected for the audio magazine. There's a few tiers there. Do a little window shopping. See what strikes your fancy.
00:04:51
Speaker
There's a scene in Robin Hood, Men in Tights, where Cary Elwes, is that his name, from Princess Bride fame, whatever, he throws shade at Kevin Costner where he says, unlike other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent. In that vein, unlike other literary journals, I pay writers. I call that fapparito money because right now, you can maybe take your kid out to a nice afternoon at Chipotle. Just hold the guac.
00:05:15
Speaker
I'm not McSweeney's. All right.
Structuring the Story of Herman Marx
00:05:18
Speaker
So as we start this bonus episode, bonus podcast, we're going to start it with a little jam sesh with Jonah Ogles, the lead editor of this piece. So let's do it. Let's hit it. Let's get into it. This is wild.
00:05:44
Speaker
This was quite a trip. What did you make of this as you were starting to dive into it?
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, Sabert and I talked about this so many times as we worked on this story. It's just amazing to us that Herman Mark's story has not been told before, you know, because it's so unbelievable just from start to finish, basically. And, you know, so I was sort of in constant awe that this one individual had such an incredible
00:06:22
Speaker
life, not necessarily in a good way. He's a pretty shady character and maybe even just a bad human being, but his story and the things that he went through and that happened to him are just a little bit unbelievable.
00:06:42
Speaker
So this story is broken up into five parts, five chapters with an epilogue. So take me through some of the structure and how you guys went about organizing this piece. Yeah, well, this was one of those stories where you could basically let it tell itself. You just sort of get out of the way and let the facts and the events as they transpired carry the story.
00:07:10
Speaker
We did want to open with some table setting and giving people a glimpse into what the Cuban Revolution was at that time where
00:07:28
Speaker
Castro wasn't really tight with the Soviets yet. Though they were around, it wasn't exactly clear what sort of government he might be forming other than it was a little bit more populist than Batista's regime.
00:07:47
Speaker
So we talked about many ways of opening the story. We talked about starting with an execution. We talked about starting maybe just at the beginning of Herman Marx's life. But we liked this particular scene where there are a lot of writers around because, well, for a few reasons. First of all, it's sort of just fun for writers and editors to imagine
00:08:12
Speaker
all these great writers, George Plimpton and Tennessee Williams, hanging out together. But also it tells readers that basically this was a scene. A lot of different people were attracted to Castro and the revolution and Cuba in that moment. And that becomes important later in the story when Marx
00:08:38
Speaker
suffers repercussions because of his involvement and it was a nice way to tell readers
00:08:46
Speaker
This guy may not have seen it coming. Certainly, Marx deserves, I think, a lot of the bad stuff that comes to him, particularly on the criminal front. But his involvement in the Cuban Revolution was not necessarily like a cut and dried thing, the way someone who's not familiar with it, like me at the start of the piece, might immediately assume.
00:09:11
Speaker
And what did Tony specifically bring to this piece and imbue upon the piece with his experience as a historian and journalist? Yeah, well, he just knows it so well, which is really helpful. He has a book, Cuba Libre, about the Cuban Revolution. So this was clearly, even from the moment he pitched it, it was clear that this was a story that
00:09:36
Speaker
you know, may not necessarily have been a book in and of itself, but clearly needed more than just a mention in a book or even a chapter in a book and needed a good number of words in order to fully explore this one person's life and the things that he did and that happened to him.
00:09:57
Speaker
And I always love when I get to talk to you in Sayward about the puzzle of cracking the code of a piece and sometimes what it takes to break it open and put it back together and solve the inherent puzzle that is writing a long narrative. So did this piece introduce to you that particular struggle at any point over the course of your editing it and Tony writing it?
Editing and Balancing Political Context
00:10:22
Speaker
Well, it was really the beginning that we wrestled with the most. The rest of it was really a matter of figuring out sort of the right ratios, which is not uncommon, and I may have even talked about that in the past with you. Tony, because he knows this so well, this entire Cuba, a country,
00:10:48
Speaker
this moment in history, the revolution. He knows so much about all of that. The initial drafts had much more in-depth conversations about politics or economics and the international relations.
00:11:04
Speaker
I think what Tony and I spent the most time doing in our back and forth was just sort of getting those things to the right length so that they informed the reader and gave the reader the necessary context to understand what was happening.
00:11:23
Speaker
Mostly, Tony and I were both just focused on letting the plot drive the thing because it's so head-scratchingly unbelievable that we never wanted to stray too far from the plot because it's so propulsive. I think it's one of the faster pieces just in terms of how it reads.
00:11:46
Speaker
that I've edited recently, and we really wanted that feeling for readers, that they were just being driven forward by the events.
00:11:57
Speaker
and you talk about ratios and trying to get the right degree of balance between the action scene exposition and so forth. A lot of people have their way of making sure that they are on balance and I wonder if you have any tips or tricks or just what you use to assure that you are striking the right balance when you're editing and synthesizing a piece.
00:12:21
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I'm a big plot guy. I like plot and I like a story to be animated by that plot. One of the things I will sometimes do when I have a long section that I think should be shorter is I will just basically write is like a known exercise for myself.
00:12:46
Speaker
write the section cold, you know, without looking at it. I will just read it and think, okay, now what do I need readers to know? And then I will write, you know, whatever it is, a paragraph two, three, and then reread it, the old paragraphs and see if I had missed anything important. So for me,
00:13:09
Speaker
That's sort of my guiding principle, which I'm sure like some writers are now listening to this and going like, oh crap, don't work with Jonah. But it's a nice way to just distill it to its
00:13:25
Speaker
what I think of as its purest form, just the necessary parts. And I always tell readers, including Tony, like, look, if I miss something important, by all means, let's add it back in. And he did that in a handful of cases, and he's right as writers usually are when they do that. But for me, it's really about just getting it to almost as brief as it can possibly be so that it's not in the way.
The Legal Battle of Herman Marx
00:13:53
Speaker
And the story takes a really interesting turn from this brutal saga of following Marx, but then as it goes into the courts about US civil rights and citizenship. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that, because that really takes a really great turn.
00:14:12
Speaker
Yeah. I think this is a story we probably would have assigned even without the legal drama that Marx eventually found himself in, but it takes it from a really good story to a great story. What basically happens is while Marx is in Cuba serving as the executioner and a soldier in the Cuban Revolutionary Army,
00:14:43
Speaker
He is informed that the State Department has revoked his citizenship. They have denationalized him. This comes as a total surprise to him that this is even a thing that can be done because as he says in a press conference, he was born an American and it's not something that he plans on giving up if he has any say in it.
00:15:11
Speaker
What happens is though this guy is like a really dark character and has been putting hundreds of men to death in Cuba, the ACLU ultimately takes up his case because they want to ensure, sort of marks humanity aside.
00:15:34
Speaker
They want to ensure that the United States government is not able to punish citizens that they deem problematic or undesirable.
00:15:43
Speaker
with revoking citizenship. And they're sort of tackling it on two fronts, both for Americans who would be denationalized and for immigrants who became naturalized citizens, but then the government decides they don't like them. Like Emma Goldman, for example, was someone that they
00:16:04
Speaker
they used that tool against. So it becomes this hugely important thing, and Marx is really just sort of the vehicle for the ACLU mounting this legal challenge. Well, it's an incredible story, and I am going to bring in Tony momentarily to talk a lot more about it. So Jonah, thanks so much for hopping on and giving a little inside baseball, and we're going to turn it over to Tony in just a moment. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Brandon.
00:16:40
Speaker
I love getting an editor's take on these pieces because they have a slightly more detached view on the thing, a constructive distance, if that makes any sense. The writers are often in the mud of these pieces for months, if not years, and Jonah and Sayward have a clinically passionate approach to everything they do, which is kind of oxymoronic, but it's a great ballast to the writer's more obsessive dive on a subject.
00:17:04
Speaker
So before we get to Toni Perotet, let me say that if you want to get in shape, you hire a personal trainer. Not because you don't know how to exercise or eat right, you know all the fundamentals, but because they'll keep you on pace, accountable, watch your form, etc. And if your essays or book proposal or manuscript need an extra or a similar amount of attention, I'd love to help.
00:17:29
Speaker
My main areas of expertise are sports books and memoir. So if you or someone you know needs to be, needs someone who can see what you can't see anymore, shoot me an email, Brendan at BrendanOmero.com and we'll start a dialogue. Okay.
00:17:46
Speaker
Alright, it's Tony time. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram at Tony Perote and that Perote is spelled P-E-R-R-O-T-T-E-T. And I start off by asking him how on earth he came across Herman Mars, the man at the center of this incredible story.
00:18:16
Speaker
Well, I did this book on the revolution, the Cuban revolution, Cuba Libre. And that was like, came out a couple of years ago. And while I researched it, I was fascinated by how one of the themes of the book really is how popular the revolution was in the United States.
00:18:32
Speaker
and how romantic it seemed. And everyone thought Che and Fidel were these young, sexy, hot bearded dudes. And they were hanging around with the, you know, the guerrilla girls were all sexy with gun toting and, you know, the whole thing was just, everyone loved it. And so there are a number of Americans who decided to go down and join up and help the fighters of guerrillas. And the State Department thought there was like 25 or so who sort of joined at various times.
00:19:00
Speaker
One became somewhat famous, William Morgan, because he became involved in defeating a coup against Fidel later in 1961. This other guy, it was just a footnote that I saw in John Lee Anderson's biography of Che Guevara and Che revolutionary life. There's this footnote about this dude, Herman Marx,
00:19:23
Speaker
who said he was a Korean War veteran, had signed up.
Researching Marx's Life and Character
00:19:26
Speaker
And then I went back to Che's war diaries and he talks a bit about this character who was very good with weapons and just arrived and had no real history, just came out of nowhere. But then at a certain point, he got wounded and he was sent back to the United States. It was bad publicity to have Americans dying on the
00:19:50
Speaker
revolutionary side and but and Che privately noting that that they're all a little bit he didn't quite fit in this guy Herman Marks was a bit of an oddball didn't quite fit in and people found that he volunteered a little too quickly to do the the executions when there were sort of revolutionary trials there and just this sort of stray little reference but I said I always thought it was kind of fascinating and had wanted to write something about it
00:20:15
Speaker
But I never really had time to do the research. It was very time consuming to go digging back. During the pandemic, in fact, I had all this spare time on my hands all of a sudden, which allowed me to do the Freedom of Information Act research and a lot of newspaper research, which was now, thankfully, online. And I discovered a lot more about him and this extraordinary story that he turned up in Havana after the victory.
00:20:45
Speaker
and was appointed to run the executions in Havana for Che and Fidel, which was, of course, the most controversial element of the early revolution. It was this hugely popular thing in the United States, but then it was the first sort of discordant note where people were like, hang on, what's going on here? They're shooting all these, you know, the war criminals, they call them, they're like Batista dictatorship sinister figures. No one had much sympathy for them, and yet,
00:21:15
Speaker
uh it's it's starting to get you know seem to be getting spinning a little bit out of control so not only that i did a bit more digging and just like new york times research really just like looking up his name everywhere and it's like it turned out he he was he'd been running the executions for a while and then he fled by hijacking a um a boat from uh from the isle of pines uh with his
00:21:39
Speaker
girlfriend from Manhattan, this model. And it was like this extraordinary story and he sneaks into the United States. But then even more, he gets arrested in the United States and he becomes a sort of weird civil rights hero because they stripped him of his citizenship. And the ACLU came to defend him. And it's like, and he's on the front page of the New York Times and no one knew any of this.
00:21:59
Speaker
And this is literally by, we're just like, you know, reading the newspapers at the time. It's like he'd become this extremely famous and bizarre figure. So I just found this as like, this is one of these extraordinary forgotten lives. And so I became sort of obsessed with it.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah, so what direction did Herman take your reporting and how did you get your head around all the information that you were able to find on him given that there wasn't a whole lot of attention given to him really until you kind of unearthed the guy's wild and crazy biography?
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, I was sort of really digging around, like I went onto ancestry.com, you know, like finding out where, you know, where his relatives were and whatever, and then finding one of his nieces, Penlow, who lives in, he came from Milwaukee, he was sort of this Polish-American, hard-scrabble, miserable sort of childhood. But the family is, you know, still there. And this niece, Penlow, who I called, just, you know, found the phone number and called her up.
00:23:01
Speaker
And she was like, Oh, yeah, Uncle Herman. Everyone was afraid of Uncle Herman. And like, you know, her parents wouldn't let it go anywhere near it. When he came to visit, he wasn't even allowed on the lawn because he was this sort of very strange figure. And then sort of, you know, and then I was able to dig up his, um, you know, because what happened when he was in Havana, you know, he was sort of like, he told everyone that he was like, you know, a Korean war veteran. And he'd sort of like, was just a gun enthusiast as a kid and doing all this stuff.
00:23:27
Speaker
And then it came out that he was actually an ex-con who'd been arrested 32 times in 10 states across the United States, from Hawaii to Maine. He was even arrested once in Australia, where I'm from. It was kind of like when he was in the Merchant Marines.
00:23:42
Speaker
And so he was turned out to be this low level hood, this sort of like, you know, in and out of a form school, just one, you know, screwed up sort of incident after the next, usually drunk and disorderly or just a vagrancy or like stealing a car.
00:23:57
Speaker
at one stage he robs some poor woman and it turns out he gets like 28 cents worth of mothballs and he's arrested because he was in prison for six months. So he's a total screw-up. He's like this, he's like, to me, and yet, I mean this is a slightly different point, but I, you know, he's sort of not a terribly sympathetic character in some ways, and yet you sort of like see him as sort of a, I start just seeing him like he's this film noir sort of figure. He's kind of like one of these characters,
00:24:25
Speaker
He's sort of this lowlife from the 1950s, never had a chance, always trying to work an angle and always screwing up. He just reminded me of the character in The Postman, always rings twice. He's this sort of drifter going around, never holds down a job. And then he comes up with this idea of why not sign up to join the revolution and become a gorilla. And he's on a shrimp boat.
00:24:49
Speaker
in the Florida Keys, and he suddenly decides he hears that a friend of his was murdered by the secret police in Havana. And he decides to go and reinvent himself over in Cuba. So he's got this sort of Gatsby-like aura around him that's kind of a comical version, sort of a low-life version of Gatsby. Yeah, the research was so bizarre, you know, these little tips, these little pieces of information that you can find about him.
00:25:13
Speaker
And then I started, you know, because he had been put on trial, you know, when he was arrested by the immigration authorities and they tried to deport him and he became a sensational national case, you know, he's denounced by Roman Kennedy, you know, on the front page of the New York Times. He's like defended by the ACLU. And so I went back and was able to, with the freedom of information and to get a hold of, you know, the court testimonies. And then I went to the ACLU archive, which is in Princeton.
00:25:42
Speaker
It was a day trip to go there and they've got this massive file because he went through various cases. It was in New York. It ended up in the Supreme Court. They had this sort of case of stuff. From that, I was able to get the trial testimony in New York State, the appeals, and then embedded in all of that is this incredible amount of correspondence.
00:26:03
Speaker
He's in court, they're quizzing him all about his life. His criminal record was there. The psychiatric assessment done when he was like 15 or 16 is there. All this amazing stuff. And it's kind of fascinating. I mean, it was fascinating to me because a lot of it, after I went to the ACLU files before the pandemic, which is to show how long it took for me to dig all this stuff up. But there's a lot of other stuff I was able to just make these sort of requests.
00:26:31
Speaker
Eventually, the Immigration Service, which is now run as an archive run by the Homeland Security, they sent me 2,700 pages of documents scanned. I'm like, Jesus, this is going to take me a month to go through this. There's that and the trial transcripts were able to be sent over. There's an extraordinary amount of stuff.
00:26:53
Speaker
Um, the FBI, you know, there was some stuff that was embedded, you know, in, in the INS thing about the FBI, but there's, you know, even they were kind of helpful. I mean, back and forth about information.
The Mystery of Herman Marx's Fate
00:27:04
Speaker
It's kind of, it's kind of exciting, but I never would have had the time to do it if it wasn't for the pandemic, because it was kind of like, there's my little project, you know, it's sort of expensive to do one of these, you know, requests takes, it's like all day and it's like, you know, and, you know, figuring out how to do it online. I was like,
00:27:23
Speaker
mind-boggling. And there's always, you always screw it up. And they're like, oh, no, you can't do that. You've got to do it this way. You're like, okay, you know, the bureaucracy is incredible. And they keep turning you down. But then you sort of go, actually, what I meant was this, you know, what I meant was that. And then, you know, if you've got the patience to do it, it sort of works. Were those the way you worded your FOIA requests? Is that what one of the mistakes you're referring to?
00:27:48
Speaker
Oh, no, there was even worse. That's right. I was one of them. Because there turns out to be two Herman Frederick Marx's. You have to prove either that you have to have the date of birth, but also you have to have proof of death for privacy issues to get a hold of their file. And Herman Marx, my Herman Marx, disappeared. He just sort of like, you know, he from Milwaukee, he's gone into his car one day and drove off.
00:28:15
Speaker
uh in like 1968 and no one actually knows what happened to him so it's kind of like oh bummer and um but he was born in august 1921 so it was kind of like okay uh but you know but when i made the request it wasn't quite a hundred years but there was another Herman Frederick Marx who died in Miami
00:28:32
Speaker
And I've got a photo of, you know, online, you get a photo of his tombstone. And so I sent that to them and it was like, they're like, okay, that's fine. And, um, you know, it's stuff like that. And then I was able to get his social security number, you know, all this sort of weird stuff, his draft card.
00:28:48
Speaker
It's online somewhere. So that's how I was able to show this olive skin, this swarthy complexion. But it turns out he appears in so many weird recollections, because he was kind of famous in his time. And early after the revolution, New Year's Day in 1959, when the dictator flees. Anyone who's seen Godfather Part II knows this sort of amazing scene where the dictator flies off and suddenly everyone panics and leaves Havana.
00:29:15
Speaker
And then eight days later, Fidel turns up with the guerrillas. But it's often referred to as the honeymoon of the revolution, because everyone loved it in America. So all these journalists lie down. Hemingway's there. Writers like George Plimpton, the editor of the Paris Review, go down. Tennessee Williams turns up. And then there's this amazing meeting, which I start the story in April, where they all gather at El Floridita Bar, this famous bar in Hemingway's favorite bar.
00:29:45
Speaker
and one night they're all hanging out with Hemingway and then the next night they're all meant to meet Hemingway but he doesn't turn up but instead Herman Marx turns up and invites them to an execution. So everyone who is there writes a different account about this sort of night and it's also you know he sort of piece it together and they're all like invited off to see an execution and it turns out that was like a tourist attraction. He was like inviting people you know everyone wanted to go see an execution. If you went to Havana you'd go to you know
00:30:10
Speaker
go to a nightclub, you go to the Tropicana, you go see an execution. That was kind of the thing to do if you're going to get to the revolution. So it was kind of this fascinating thing. So they all write about it, and they said they have descriptions of him. And it turns out in the press, all the journalists wanted to meet him. Once they discovered that American was running the executions, it was like, awesome. The Senate is going down. They had the Hollywood actor Errol Flynn. He was there. And there's all these marvelous accounts. So you sort of piece it together. And Norman Lewis was an English journalist.
00:30:40
Speaker
a very beautiful writer and great novelist as well. He went down like a buddy of Ian Fleming's, you know, James Bond, you know, author. He goes down there and hangs out and writes these beautiful sort of accounts of meeting, you know, Herman Marks and going to the trials. And, you know, these are wonderfully evocative sort of things. It's kind of like there is actually a mine of information if you've got like four months and nothing better to do sitting around in your apartment in New York.
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah, give us a sense of what his interactions were with the literary class in Cuba. Yeah, I mean, the great one is where like George Plimpton and Tennessee Williams and Kenneth Tynan, who was the theater critic for the New Yorker, and his wife Elaine Dundee, who was this very successful novelist, they're all hanging around. So he just sort of turned up and introduced himself.
00:31:32
Speaker
And, you know, they, they were sort of intrigued, but he's sort of a, he's sort of a redneck. He's like, you know, it's kind of funny that, you know, like Tennessee Williams and the cat, you know, has a street kind of just a high, you know, he has a Stanley Kowalski. This is like, you know, Stanley Kowalski turning up, you know, because he's like this Polish American dude who's like this sort of, you know, he can't, you know, he's semi, you know, and he's semi literate, but he's sort of kind of this extraordinary character. He has this aura of
00:32:02
Speaker
danger and excitement. He'd been very successful as a guerilla and in fact had helped Che run the training up there because a lot of the volunteers had never fired a gun or they'd turn up with some carbine from the 19th century. And so Herman was up there.
00:32:21
Speaker
actually training them in various tactics and how to use guns and whatever. So he sort of was quite successful, even though he was a bizarre figure. And so people were sort of fascinated by him, but they were also, there's a sort of a snobby sort of thing, you know, he's kind of a low life. So they're often, you know, this sort of slightly snide references to the way he talks, the way he dresses, you know, he's like dressing like a tourist, he sort of, you know, with this giant hulking gun and often a little bit
00:32:51
Speaker
And yet sort of fascinated, you know, this sort of aura of danger. I mean, Tennessee Williams even confesses that he'd sort of always fantasized about, you know, being kidnapped by the rebels and spending a raunchy weekend up in, you know, with Fidel and Che up in the mountains. So there was a sort of fascination. So with Herman, it was like,
Philosophical Discussions with Errol Flynn
00:33:14
Speaker
You know, they were very wary of him. And, you know, he had sort of like also this aura of danger and this reputation for sadism as well. These rumors went round because he always had to do the coup de gras, you know, the final bullet in the head to make sure that, you know, someone was dead after them in shot. And there were rumors that he would empty his cartridge into the guy's head or even into the face so they couldn't be recognized as a sort of a brutal, ruthless sort of
00:33:15
Speaker
you know,
00:33:44
Speaker
sinister sort of last act. So there were all these stories that surrounded him. And Errol Flynn was particularly fascinated by that. He was like, I mean, Errol was like a great writer and a, you know, a philosopher in many ways, weirdly. And so they even he invited, he met Herman Marx at a party, you know, in Havana, and then invites him around for dinner in his hotel suite, where he's there with his, I mean, Errol's there with a 16-year-old, Leslie Aslan.
00:34:11
Speaker
And so they have dinner together and they're discussing, you know, whether the philosophical aspects of execution and the death penalty and whether the condemned man should be able to choose the manner of death, things like that. So it's kind of fascinating and bizarre.
00:34:31
Speaker
Now I understand that the beginning was something that you and Jonah really wrestled with in a way that you tried multiple beginnings before settling on this more or less salon of the writers around Herman Mark. So maybe you can talk a little bit about how you basically kind of workshopped a few beginnings and then settled on the one that leads off this piece.
00:34:57
Speaker
Well, the original piece that I did was quite long. It was something of an epic. And it was a sort of a ruminative start where I was sort of setting the scene in Havana, really, in a weird way, in spring. Because the Floridita was this extraordinary place where Hemingway sort of presided. And it became the Ricks Cafe in Casablanca, where the arms dealers, the CIA agents,
00:35:24
Speaker
and the British Secret Service was there, the musicians, actors, they were shooting our man in Havana in that month. And it was like everyone wanted to be in this one place. It was like Berlin in the 90s or...
00:35:40
Speaker
you know Shanghai in the 30s or Paris in the 20s, everyone wanted to be in Havana and I just found this sort of fascinating and everyone in particular wanted to be in this bar and that's where Hemingway meets Tennessee Williams at this very famous sort of meeting and this famous encounter and it's kind of hilarious you know these two literary lines and everyone's there and so I sort of started with that and then but it was the next night they all turned up you know so this is a double thing and it was like
00:36:09
Speaker
So it sort of took a long time to get to the meeting where Herman Marx turns up because the next night they all turn up thinking that Hemingway is going to be there and instead this other guy from the Midwest turns up. This sort of bizarre figure who weirdly was born like 70 miles away from where Hemingway was born.
00:36:27
Speaker
on the lakes up there, very strange sort of coincidences. And then I thought, oh, that's taking too long to get to this meeting. And so then I thought, well, another one was like, you know, what about where Errol Flynn meets Herman Marx? Because when he invites him around to dinner and has this amazing sort of conversation, it's quite bizarre. You know, have this sort of Hollywood, you know, matinee idol.
00:36:50
Speaker
He's not as well remembered now, but he was like one of the gods of Hollywood who played Robin Hood. He played pirates, this very heroic sort of figure who had actually been in Cuba for many months and reported with Fidel on the front lines and in the east of the island and was there the day he was the only reporter who was there when Batista, the dictator, fled. And he wrote for this thing, the New York Journal of America,
00:37:18
Speaker
another publication that no longer exists. So there was that extraordinary thing and that sort of weird conversation that they were having. That was a possibility. God, I think we tried a couple of others as well. But Joanna very correctly said, why don't we just go with that meeting where Herman Marx turns up and then all these guys are there.
00:37:39
Speaker
And this invitation to go to the execution, and we get cut to the chase of meeting this extraordinary character, the very idea that there's an American who's running the execution is the most controversial element. To this day, the executions, the number of executions are still argued.
00:37:59
Speaker
and it's still a very controversial thing. So why don't we just start, you know, like get straight into it, hit its stride. And I think it was the right decision. It was clearly the right decision. It was like, let's get right into it. And suddenly the narrative just kicks off from there.
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, and you alluded to it earlier in that how Marx, after he flees Cuba, he's arrested in the States, and he had his citizenship stripped because he fought in a foreign army.
Civil Rights Implications of Marx's Case
00:38:27
Speaker
But this turns out to be a giant civil rights case because
00:38:31
Speaker
Anyone who might have not been born in the States who had fought in an army and came over and was naturalized might be subject to deportation and everything so suddenly marks as much of a monster as he is becomes this this token of actually we need to protect this guy for the for the good of the country and
00:38:52
Speaker
Yeah, American history's least lovable civil rights martyr is in the irony. I mean, the ACLU today was basically born to defend after the Red Scare in the First World War. It was like where the US government would use stripping of citizenship as a weapon, as a political weapon. So in the First World War,
00:39:16
Speaker
You know, against communist anarchists, anyone who was radical leanings, they would sort of be targeted. And it was very easy to target immigrants, you know, because they just say they came into the country illegally. In the case of Emma Goldman, the most famous, you know, she was an American citizen.
00:39:34
Speaker
But all they had to do was go, oh, we actually gave you the citizenship by accident. It was a mistake. And so deport her back to Russia. So it was used in the First World War at various times, and it became more and more bizarre laws. There was one that
00:39:51
Speaker
If a woman marries a non-American and go live overseas for three years, you lose your citizenship. All these weird rules, but they were ones that could really be used to target people. And one of them.
00:40:09
Speaker
originated in 1940 but was sort of revived in particular during the McCarthy years and that was which is the end of the second Red Scare so they're always targeting you know unpopular you know you know radicals was if you'd served in the foreign army which is totally bizarre given that in the First World War 70 Americans served on the in the British and French side before entering the war and the Second World War the Spanish Civil War all these different you know occasions and then and they you know they talk about the Marquis de Lafayette in
00:40:38
Speaker
the American War of Independence. There's all sorts of extraordinary examples. But because of Cuba and obviously this sort of romantic view of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 after the early days of Castro winning, to the point where Castro came to the United States in 1959 in April and did this triumphant tour where he's like fated all over New York and Washington. He's carried on his shoulders
00:41:03
Speaker
around and he's like he's compared to George Washington as this whole extraordinary sort of thing this incredible popularity and that but that sours in 1959 and then by 1960-61 he's demonized and so anything to do with Cuba is suddenly like toxic.
00:41:19
Speaker
So these Americans who were sort of serving in the military after the revolution, they're targeted one by one and they're stripped of their citizenship. And so the ACLU realizes that this is a precedent that could really be used
00:41:35
Speaker
You know, against, you know, in various ways against people. And the idea is that citizenship is a right. It's not something that the government can grant and take away. It's something that you're born in the United States, you know, or you become a citizen. That's your right. You can't, you know, it just can't be at the whim of the government under various laws. It's part of the
00:41:57
Speaker
14th Amendment. So that was what the argument was, and it seems a very particular and bizarre case, and it sort of was in some ways, but the ACLU realized that it could really be abused, and they sort of pounced on it. And they were able to defend Marx in various, various, various cases. This guy, this crusading lawyer, Gordon Murray, did it, joined up.
00:42:21
Speaker
uh working pro bono and um uh really like this extraordinary character and fights you know all the way to the supreme court they were and eventually it didn't really help him in marks but like you know a year or two later it was you know the the supreme court did overturn all these these cases and made it unconstitutional to try and strip away citizenship and it was such a complete victory but today you know telling people that you know you could lose your citizenship you know if you'd married the wrong person or if you'd you know
00:42:51
Speaker
did, you know, any number of, like, weird things. And people wouldn't, you know, Americans don't really believe it. You know, it's like the idea that citizenship rights were ever really at risk is sort of fantastical. And yet it was in the 60s. And, you know, so it's kind of an extraordinary moment. How did you go about winnowing a lot of the legal stuff down? Because I imagine it was a wealth of information and yet, you know, you don't want to weigh the narrative down too much with courtroom stuff.
00:43:23
Speaker
When you're first reading it, you're like, what? And it went through so many different appeals. And there were two elements to Marx's case as well, which is very confusing. First, the idea that he was stripped of his citizenship in Cuba, so he entered the United States illegally. And then when he's in the United States, they're deporting him because of moral turpitude, because he had a carnal, his criminal record as including a carnal knowledge case in 1951.
00:43:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of mind-boggling to...
00:43:51
Speaker
So there's two sort of weird things going on. There's the constitutional case and then there's this sort of like immigration case. And so luckily there was a book written about it that's actually quite good by the sovereign citizen.
00:44:09
Speaker
that I found and it's this whole book on this very issue written by a Yale visiting professor and it's actually very clear and very lucid and so reading that it sums up everything in such a sort of concise sort of way it's like okay I get this and it's true that like if I tried to put it all in it would have been
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah, you know, of interest only to legal scholars, you know, so it was so trying to clarify that sort of thing. I mean, that's, you know, hopefully we did it. And then, of course, the fact checkers were like, you know, we were back and forth about how do you say this and like, you know, get the legal terminology right, but still in a sort of a that the layman can sort of figure out. So I hope it worked. I think it sort of all makes sense. But but it's definitely it was definitely a challenge.
00:44:56
Speaker
Yeah, and the structure is five parts with a short epilogue. So when you were setting down to write this piece, what was the machinations of coming up with the right structure to tell this story?
Cinematic Storytelling and Marx's Disappearance
00:45:11
Speaker
You know, it had a very cinematic sort of element to it. It seemed to me. And, you know, and just starting at this moment where like, yeah, Herman Marx doing it, you know, like running the executions about him. And I liked the idea of, it coincided with like the honeymoon of the revolution where everyone loves the revolution. It's very exciting. And Herman Marx is at his sort of, it's his golden moment where he's sort of, he's respected, you know, he's like, you know, everyone loves him in Havana because he's doing this, you know, he's doing the,
00:45:41
Speaker
And it seems like dirty work, but he's executing these guys. They're like Nazis, these guys. They're really sinister figures. And so there's no sympathy. And in fact, for the years, long years of the dictatorship, the secret police have been running around kidnapping people, torturing them, bodies being strung up in the streets. And humans have been living for this seven years. And they do have these sort of trials, and lawyers can
00:46:10
Speaker
They were revolutionary tribunals, but still there was evidence back and forth. And he's the one who's doing it. So he's sort of a beloved figure in Havana. He goes to the restaurants, he gives the best tables. Everyone knows him. You know, Captain Herman. He's like, yeah.
00:46:27
Speaker
And it starts dating as a Manhattan model, who's his photojournalist there, and Jean Sicon, and Jean Sicon. And she's sort of like, so he's got this sort of like moment in the sun. So it's like starting with that, and then sort of like pulling back.
00:46:43
Speaker
to his sort of bizarre earlier life and then suddenly like the narrative is like oh wow then the narrative has its own sort of logic but it was very it is very cinematic it's like you know consciously or unconsciously you know you've got this amazing scene and then stepping back and then the narrative going along and then
00:47:03
Speaker
this other turning point where the revolution goes awry, and this conflict between the United States and Cuba suddenly becomes more and more extreme. And Herman Marx, as well as Jean Sicon and these other Americans who were there, suddenly caught in this
00:47:21
Speaker
geopolitical machine, where it's becoming more and more extreme, and suddenly their lives, their dream lives in Havana, where they're like, you know, having this great time in the revolution, suddenly it's going very, very wrong. And they're like, you know, they're about, you know, they're in danger of being like, you know, arrested and tried as spies and this whole thing. And so
00:47:41
Speaker
they come to the conclusion, like, get out of here as soon as we can. But how do you get out of an island where the government, you know, it would see Herman Marx as a deserter, you know, and Jean Zacon had been doing this sort of research on communism, all this sort of weird stuff. So they end up hijacking a boat, you know, and then running out of petrol halfway to Mexico. It's kind of like, you know, it was this amazing adventure story. And then the next stage, you know, where there's the midnight doorknob in a walk up
00:48:09
Speaker
apartment in Manhattan, and the INS tracks him down and arrests him, and he becomes a sort of national figure. You know, it's like, you couldn't make it up. So it's like, that was the narrative, you know, it was like, and the only thing that I wish that I could have found out is, you know, is like, what happened to the guy? Because he literally, you know, and, you know, he's like there, you know, and everything sort of screwed up for him. And he manages to alienate
00:48:39
Speaker
Everyone from sympathy, you know, he's like, he gets arrested, he falls out of a tree, you know, spying on some woman, you know, in the Upper East Side and breaks his leg, goes home to Milwaukee, lives with his mom, you know, and then gets accused of child molestation. It's like, oh my God.
00:48:55
Speaker
And I was like, Herman. It wasn't very Hollywood friendly, I got to say. It was like, oh, God. The charges may have been trumped up. We don't know. There's a whole romantic, weird romantic thing that was going on with the woman who accused him. It was like, who knows? But then he, it's just not ideal. And then he's sort of like, he's about to be charged. So he just gets in his car and drives off. And no one knows what happens. His mother, when she's dying some years later,
00:49:23
Speaker
It puts out a plea in the newspapers to come back. Herman, the Salvation Army is looking for him in Skid Row in Chicago. See if he's like he's on Alco there. The FBI has reports that there's one report that he went back to Cuba and was shot. That's sort of fanciful because he would never have gone back to Cuba. It would have been insane. It was like it would have been suicide.
00:49:46
Speaker
there was a report that he was in Canada that turns out to be they got the wrong person. The family thought that he'd fled to Mexico, which is by far the most logical thing, you know, because in those days, I mean, he crossed over from Mexico by using his, you know, Wisconsin driver's license was out of date. And the you know, the Border Patrol guy didn't even ask him for it. He just said he had a driver's license in his pocket. So in those days, going back and forth to Mexico and disappearing in Mexico is
00:50:13
Speaker
you know, it was very, very easy. I mean, you could have done it within the United States as well. You know, in the 60s, you know, it's hard to imagine how, or to remember, you know, to realize how easy it was to disappear as compared to now. So he, in Mexico, he could have just gone back and reinvented himself, you know, as some American dude and just sort of like, you know, dissolved into
00:50:35
Speaker
into the landscape there. So I was trying to get the CIA files. That was the thing that really bummed me out. And the CIA just wouldn't do it. And then I tried everything, public interest, whatever. And there's a clause that
00:50:55
Speaker
There's this national security clause that, in fact, I believe the Biden administration won't really reaffirm to last week that they won't release some JFK assassination documents on this sort of national security clause. And it's, you know, I have a friend who actually works in the Freedom of Information sort of field.
00:51:16
Speaker
And he's like, no, you're never going to get it. It's never going to happen. They just anything to do with Cuba during the revolution. They're just like, you know, there's no way of forcing the CIA to reveal this file, which is unfortunate because it means that conspiracy theorists, you know, you know, because I did, in fact, contact the CIA when he got back to the United States through to say, like, you know, I have all this information I was, you know, personal contact with Che Guevara and Fidel and
00:51:43
Speaker
you know, I know who everyone is, where they live, you know, it was never followed up, apparently. But, you know, conspiracy theorists would assume, you know, that like, if the CIA is not revealing the files as a reason for that, you know, that maybe he signed up with the CIA, and you know, it was got a, you know, witness protection thing. And, you know, I was just like, working as an agent for the CIA. You know, we'll never know. It seems kind of unlikely, given he was such a
00:52:12
Speaker
loose cannon, but it's possible. Yeah. Yeah. A lowlife Gatsby probably wouldn't be able to be an unassuming figure throughout the rest of his life. I mean, the CIA dealt with some pretty strange people. You know, it's like if you look at who they were dealing with, especially with Cuba. But I did actually when I was doing a story on the Bay of Pigs invasion for the 60th anniversary for Smithsonian. So I went down to Miami and I met, you know, the surviving, you know,
00:52:42
Speaker
Bay of Pigs veterans who like they have two museums down there like they're all in their 80s and 90s but they're like you know lucid and you know like they all get together for these anniversaries. In fact I went to an open casket you know funeral for one of the guys and they're all there hanging out and I asked them all and they're like you know and in fact Felix Rodriguez who's the who is the guy who is the CIA's major point man
00:53:06
Speaker
is still alive. He was the guy who helped track down Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967 and flew back with Che Guevara's body to La Paz. So he's the guy. He said, no, he never had any contact with him in the United States.
00:53:25
Speaker
And he said that if we had, it just implied that it would not have ended well for Herman because he was working for Castro. He was doing the executions and the whole thing. So unfortunately for Marx, he was hated by everybody.
00:53:44
Speaker
You know, it was like, you know, he fled the, you know, the, the, the Batista people hated him because, you know, he was executing their members. He fled the Castro revolution. So all, you know, he was considered a turncoat. You know, the FBI wanted him, you know, they hated him. The, the immigration people wanted to arrest him. So it was like, everyone hated him. And, you know, I thought there was kind of like an existential level to it, if you can have any sympathy for him, because he was the, you know, the ultimate outsider.
00:54:10
Speaker
when he was growing up. He was just in and out of one problem after the next as a teenager and couldn't hold down a job. He was a problem. Drifting around the United States was unable to
00:54:30
Speaker
you know, this amazing moment of prosperity in the States, you know, and in the surface, it's just sort of, you know, very extraordinary middle class lifestyle that's sort of building all over the United States. But there's also this underclass, you know, if you just can't, can't make it in the, you know, in this, this sort of burst of wealth that's happening. And so,
00:54:51
Speaker
there's a sort of this poignancy, I thought, that he goes over to Cuba and sort of joins the revolution. He reinvents himself. No one knows who he is. He's able to use his weird skills in the Sierra Maestro and sort of like, you've got to do this job. No one really wants to run execution squads, but he'll do it. And he sort of becomes this respected figure. And then we're like,
00:55:18
Speaker
Within a couple of years, he's beyond the ultimate outsider. Everyone wants to get rid of him. The US government's against it. The Cubans are against it. No country becomes a stateless figure because he loses his citizenship, and yet no country wants to take him.
00:55:34
Speaker
You know, it's kind of like the Mexicans refuse to have him. The Cubans refuse to have him. You know, everyone hates him. So he's wandering around the United States. He can't get a job. You know, his Teamster Union card is revoked because the INS contacts the Teamsters Union and tells him about his criminal past. So he loses his job there. And so he ends up working in his, you know, his cousin's, you know, hair styling salon in Milwaukee. It's like, you know, it's just
00:56:04
Speaker
He's in an even worse position than he was when he was growing up. So if there's any sympathy to be had for this guy, that's sort of it, I think.
Closing Remarks and Future Podcast Directions
00:56:13
Speaker
Well, it's an incredible story, Tony. And I got to commend you on the pacing and everything about it, because it was a real gripping read. So thanks for the work you did on it. And of course, thanks for the time to hop on the podcast to talk all about it. Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure. I can talk for hours about
00:56:31
Speaker
I've had all this. I don't know, with Cuba you get sort of obsessed. And you sort of lose perspective. But I was like, I just thought this was such a great untold story. And kudos to the eight of us. They really let me run with it. They saw the potential.
00:56:58
Speaker
All right. Thanks to Jonah and Tony for the time. But more importantly, thank you for listening and hanging around for the after party. See, see, after the interview, it's not just credits. See, a lot of times people will front load their podcast with a whole lot of P.S.
00:57:15
Speaker
Granted, I have a little bit of BS up there, but I tend to get in the interview pretty quick. But I save a lot of that BS for the post credits. I don't think anyone listens to it, but it's there if you want. In any case, this is the behind the velvet rope portion of the podcast.
00:57:33
Speaker
The price of admittance is your time, if you care. If you're loading the dishwasher, walking the dog, or ignoring your kids, I'm here for you. Grab a beverage. I'm sipping on anti-light-bations these days, part of a sober October, possibly longer thing because I drink way too much and I'm out of shape and look like Shrek without the self-assuredness.
00:57:55
Speaker
And I figure if I can focus on just one freaking thing for six months, say my health and wellness and mobility and strength, then maybe I can set a new baseline from which to work and play from, you know?
00:58:09
Speaker
I got this kind of thing going on with my left knee. I don't know if it's a mobility thing or something more structurally damaged. I keep wrenching my back during back and front squats. Again, don't know if that's just a muscle pull or something more structurally damaged. Going to see a doctor about this finally and get this the other day. My dog got stung by a bee and while we were hiking.
00:58:33
Speaker
freaked out. Who wouldn't? I mean, getting stung by these sucks. And we didn't know how he would react. We just knew that it was really bugging him. And so that was effectively the end of the hike. But we were three miles from our car. I was forced to run with a pack to the car and it did not go well.
00:58:55
Speaker
The the whole time I got to thinking that fitness shouldn't be about vanity though Instagram and Men's Health and women's health magazines and their airbrush roided up cover my models wouldn't have us think otherwise, you know fitness is about being useful What if you have to carry someone several miles? What if your dog got bit by a snake or and not a bee and you had to carry all 75 pounds of Hank three miles to a car and
00:59:22
Speaker
What if your cute neighbor needs you to move that heavy thing? What if you can unload all the groceries in one trip for your partner? And shouldn't you be able to hold your arm out straight while your kids do pull-ups on them without fear of your rotator cuff exploding?
00:59:38
Speaker
So as I ran as fast as I could over hills and Stuff and hiking boots and a pack and hiking pants a sweatshirt Yeah Taking 40 fucking minutes to run three miles. I got to thinking that I need to I need to make some changes
00:59:56
Speaker
And that probably means I'm not drinking so goddamn much Oregon Delicious Frothy Hoppy High ABV IPA. And oh my god, do I have a problem or am I just bored? So there you are. I'm happy you stuck around. Are you happy you stuck around? I don't know. Magazine.adivis.com. Dig it. Stay wild, see ya in efforts. And remember, if you can't do interview, see ya.
01:00:42
Speaker
you