Fidel Castro (1926 - 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary, lawyer and politician who led the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and governed Cuba for almost five decades, first as prime minister and later as president. He built a one-party socialist state aligned with the Soviet Union, extended free education and health care to the whole population, and suppressed political opposition, independent media and dissent throughout his rule. [1][2]
Early life and education
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on 13 August 1926 near Birán in eastern Cuba, the son of a prosperous sugar planter. He was educated at Jesuit schools, including Belén in Havana, and studied law at the University of Havana, where he became involved in student politics and in campaigns against governments in the Caribbean region. [1]
Revolution
After the coup that returned Fulgencio Batista to power in 1952, Castro turned to armed opposition. On 26 July 1953 he led an attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The assault failed, many of the participants were killed, and Castro was tried and imprisoned, using his defence speech, later published as History Will Absolve Me, as a political manifesto. [3]
Released under an amnesty in 1955, he went into exile in Mexico, where he formed the 26th of July Movement and met Ernesto "Che" Guevara. In December 1956 the group landed in Cuba from the yacht Granma and, after heavy initial losses, established a guerrilla base in the Sierra Maestra. Batista fled the country on 1 January 1959. [3]
Government
Castro became prime minister in February 1959. His government carried out land reform, nationalised foreign-owned enterprises and, from 1961, declared the revolution socialist. Summary trials and executions of officials and opponents in the early period, and the closure of independent newspapers and political parties, established single-party rule under the Communist Party of Cuba. [1]
Relations with the United States collapsed rapidly. Washington imposed a trade embargo and in April 1961 backed the failed Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles. The following year the stationing of Soviet nuclear missiles on the island produced the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, the closest confrontation of the Cold War. [4]
Domestic policy emphasised a mass literacy campaign, universal schooling and a public health system that achieved life expectancy and infant mortality figures comparable to far richer countries. These gains were accompanied by rationing, chronic shortages, restrictions on travel and private enterprise, imprisonment of dissidents and the internment of homosexuals and others in labour camps during the 1960s. Successive waves of Cubans left the island, including some 125,000 during the Mariel boatlift of 1980. [2]
Foreign policy
Castro positioned Cuba as a leader of the non-aligned and anti-colonial movements, sending troops to Angola and Ethiopia and dispatching doctors and teachers to many developing countries. Cuba depended heavily on Soviet subsidies, and their end after 1991 brought the severe economic contraction known as the Special Period. [1]
Later years and death
Castro served as president of the Council of State from 1976. In 2006 illness forced him to transfer responsibilities provisionally to his brother Raúl, who formally succeeded him in 2008. Castro continued to publish commentary and met foreign visitors until shortly before his death in Havana on 25 November 2016. [2]
Assessments of his rule remain sharply divided between those who credit the social provision and the assertion of Cuban independence from the United States, and those who point to the repression of political freedom and the long stagnation of the Cuban economy. [1]
