In the 2000s, Castro forged alliances in the Latin American "pink tide"namely with Hugo Chvez's Venezuelaand formed the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. I witnessed the spectacle of a totally spontaneous revolution [T]hat experience led me to identify myself even more with the cause of the people. Mengistu's regime was barely hanging on by 1977, having lost one-third of its army in Eritrea at the time of the Somali invasion. Before he died Meyer Lansky said Cuba "ruined" him. ", "Viva Fidel Castro!" Until his uprising against Batista, Castro typically kept a pencil-thin moustache along with combed back hair, typical of upper-class Cuban men in the 1950s but grew out both during his years as a guerrilla fighter and retaining them afterwards. Fourteen were put on trial for crimes allegedly committed before the revolution, while the others were returned to the US in exchange for medicine and food valued at US$25million. [271], In the late 1970s, Cuba's relations with North American states improved during the period with Mexican President Luis Echeverra, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau,[272] and US President Jimmy Carter in power. [125] Entering Havana, Castro proclaimed himself Representative of the Rebel Armed Forces of the Presidency, setting up home and office in the penthouse of the Havana Hilton Hotel. and "Down With Yankee Imperialism!". [200] By 1962, Cuba's economy was in steep decline, a result of poor economic management and low productivity coupled with the US trade embargo. [228] From this conference, Castro created the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS), which adopted the slogan of "The duty of a revolution is to make revolution", signifying Havana's leadership of Latin America's revolutionary movement. Castros propaganda efforts proved particularly effective, and as internal political support waned and military defeats multiplied, Batista fled the country on January 1, 1959. In 1945 he entered the School of Law of the University of Havana, where organized violent gangs sought to advance a mixture of romantic goals, political aims, and personal careers. [410][411], Balfour described Castro as having a "voracity for knowledge" and "elephantine memory" that allowed him to speak for hours on a variety of different subjects. [257] Castro always maintained that he took the decision to launch Operation Carlota himself in response to an appeal from Neto and that the Soviets were in fact opposed to Cuban intervention in Angola, which took place over their opposition. [113], The US instructed Cantillo to oust Batista due to fears in Washington that Castro was a socialist,[114] which were exacerbated by the association between nationalist and communist movements in Latin America and the links between the Cold War and decolonization. After his parents divorced, Fidelito's mother, Mirta, moved to Spain. Peter Bourne, Castro biographer, 1986[184], In January 1961, Castro ordered Havana's US Embassy to reduce its 300-member staff, suspecting that many of them were spies. His closest and most trusted friend was Ral Castro, his younger brother by five years and longtime armed forces minister. The members of the Escort Castro was closest to was the former Mayor of Havana Jose "Pepn" Naranjo who became his official aide until his death in 1995 and his own personal physician, Eugenio Selman. [470] Ral, who had much more stronger paternal feelings towards his family, was often the one who played the role of surrogate father to Castro's children, in particular Fidelito and Alina. [360], In July 2010, he made his first public appearance since falling ill, greeting science center workers and giving a television interview to Mesa Redonda in which he discussed US tensions with Iran and North Korea. [496][497] According to political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, the Cuban regime entailed "full authoritarianism (like China and Saudi Arabia)", as there were "no viable channels for opposition to contest legally for executive power. [352], Commenting on Castro's recovery, US President George W. Bush said: "One day the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away." By the time Urrutia was forced to resign in July 1959, Castro had taken effective political power into his own hands. Cuba asserted that this was a manifestation of US hegemony, and refused to allow an investigative delegation to enter the country. In contrast, his former public criticisms had centered on condemning corruption and US imperialism. Petrol rations were dramatically reduced, Chinese bicycles were imported to replace cars, and factories performing non-essential tasks were shut down. The authoritarian nature of the Cuban Revolution stems largely from his commitment to that goal. Yeltsin despised Castro and developed links with the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation. [96] They began launching raids on small army posts to obtain weaponry, and in January 1957 they overran the outpost at La Plata, treating any soldiers that they wounded but executing Chicho Osorio, the local mayoral (land company overseer), who was despised by the local peasants and who boasted of killing one of Castro's rebels. There, the assassination of popular leftist leader Jorge Elicer Gaitn Ayala led to widespread rioting and clashes between the governing Conservativesbacked by the armyand leftist Liberals. [47] On 10 March 1952, Batista seized power in a military coup, with Pro fleeing to Mexico. [291] Gorbachev conceded to US demands to reduce support for Cuba,[292] with Soviet-Cuban relations deteriorating. In April of that year the U.S. government secretly equipped thousands of Cuban exiles to overthrow Castros government; their landing at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, however, was crushed by Castros armed forces. [2] His father, ngel Castro y Argiz, a veteran of the SpanishAmerican War,[3] was a migrant to Cuba from Galicia, in the northwest of Spain. In his own mind he had done what generations of Cubans had only fantasized about: he had taken on the United States and won. Barack Obamas historic visit to Cuba with a 1,600-word letter in Granma. Considered spoiled by his parents from a young age, he was long considered the "trouble child" of the family. [295] The low oil prices of the 1980s had also changed the Angolan attitude about subsidizing the Cuban economy as dos Santos found the promises made in the 1970s when oil prices were high to be a serious drain upon Angola's economy in the 1980s. [290], In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became Secretary-General of the Soviet Communist Party; a reformer, he implemented measures to increase freedom of the press (glasnost) and economic decentralization (perestroika) in an attempt to strengthen socialism. [294][400] He was also an avid fan of cinema, particularly Soviet films. He is either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline-my guess is the formerHis ideas as to how to run a government or an economy are less developed than those of almost any world figure I have met in fifty countries. Returning to Cuba, Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading the Movement in a guerrilla war against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra. "[133] A number of economic changes were proposed, and subsequently put to a national referendum. [148] After conservative press expressed hostility towards the government, the pro-Castro printers' trade union disrupted editorial staff, and in January 1960 the government ordered them to publish a "clarification" written by the printers' union at the end of articles critical of the government. [489] Bourne described Castro as "an influential world leader" who commanded "great respect" from individuals of all political ideologies across the developing world. He came to interpret Cuba's problems as an integral part of capitalist society, or the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", rather than the failings of corrupt politicians, and adopted the Marxist view that meaningful political change could only be brought about by proletariat revolution. [447], Castro also had a keen interest in gastronomy and was known to wander into his kitchen to discuss cookery with his chefs. [348] On 21 April, Castro met Wu Guanzheng of the Chinese Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee,[349] with Chvez visiting in August,[350] and Morales in September. in front of foreign journalists, while Cuba became the first Latin American nation to beat the US to the top of the gold-medal table. I would not be stopped by the hatred and ill will of a few thousand people, including some of my relatives, half the people I know, two-thirds of my fellow professionals, and four-fifths of my ex-schoolmates. [505] Similarly, Wayne S. Smiththe former Chief of the United States Interests Section in Havananoted that Castro's opposition to US dominance and transformation of Cuba into a significant world player resulted in him receiving "warm applause" throughout the Western Hemisphere. Castros brother Ral, minister of the armed forces, ranked second to him in all government and party posts. [380] A funeral procession travelled 900 kilometres (560mi) along the island's central highway from Havana to Santiago de Cuba, tracing in reverse, the route of the "Freedom Caravan" of January 1959, and after nine days of public mourning, his ashes were entombed in the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. [178] Fearing counter-revolutionary elements in the army, the government created a People's Militia to arm citizens favourable to the revolution, training at least 50,000 civilians in combat techniques. On each trip, he was eager to visit factory and farm workers, publicly praising their governments; privately, he urged the regimes to aid revolutionary movements elsewhere, particularly those fighting the Vietnam War. A number of senior military officers, including Ochoa and Tony de la Guardia, were investigated for corruption and complicity in cocaine smuggling, tried, and executed in 1989, despite calls for leniency. [403], Biographer Leycester Coltman described Castro as "fiercely hard-working, dedicated, loyal generous and magnanimous" but noted that he could be "vindictive and unforgiving". [264] Barre who saw seizing the Ogaden as the first step towards creating a greater Somalia that would unite all of the Somalis into one state rejected the federation offer, and decided upon war. [138], Proceeding to Canada,[139][140][141] Trinidad, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, Castro attended an economic conference in Buenos Aires, unsuccessfully proposing a $30billion US-funded "Marshall Plan" for Latin America. Without a doubt, he was one of the most recognizable people in the world in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. [41] Caring little for money or material goods, Castro failed to pay his bills; his furniture was repossessed and electricity cut off, distressing his wife. [130] More recent estimates place the death toll between 1,000[131] and 4,000. Four were killed before Castro ordered a retreat. All political dissent and opposition were ruthlessly suppressed. There Fidel Castro organized Cuban exiles into a revolutionary group called the 26th of July Movement. [142] In May 1959, Castro signed into law the First Agrarian Reform, setting a cap for landholdings to 993 acres (402ha) per owner and prohibiting foreigners from obtaining Cuban land ownership. Over 500,000 Castro-supporters surrounded the Presidential Palace demanding Urrutia's resignation, which he submitted. Around 200 policemen were on the scene, but the protesters continued to chant slogans and throw pennies in support of Fidel Castro's socialist movement. [208][209] Castro was left out of the negotiations, in which Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a US commitment not to invade Cuba and an understanding that the US would remove their MRBMs from Turkey and Italy. Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born in Birn, Holguin Province, Cuba, the fifth of nine children of ngel Mara Bautista Castro y Argiz, a plantation owner originally from Galicia, Spain, who operated a plantation in Cuba's Oriente Province. [5] After the collapse of his first marriage he took his household servant, Lina Ruz Gonzlez (19031963)of Canarian ancestryas his mistress and later second wife; together they had seven children, among them Fidel. [520], Historian and journalist Richard Gott considered Castro to be "one of the most extraordinary political figures of the twentieth century", commenting that he had become a "world hero in the mould" of Giuseppe Garibaldi to people throughout the developing world for his anti-imperialist efforts. [6] At age six, Castro was sent to live with his teacher in Santiago de Cuba,[7] before being baptized into the Roman Catholic Church at the age of eight. Also known as: Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz. [227], In 1966, Castro staged a Tri-Continental Conference of Africa, Asia and Latin America in Havana, further establishing himself as a significant player on the world stage. [443] Osmany Cienfuegos designed the a private bungalow, guesthouse, bridge, marina, and a building for the use of the bodyguards and support staff. Omissions? In February 1959 Castro became premier and thus head of the government. Castro responded that "revolutionary justice is not based on legal precepts, but on moral conviction. [254] Cuba's government underwent a restructuring along Soviet lines, claiming that this would further democratization and decentralize power away from Castro. The base was over five acres large and surrounded by high walls, essentially a "city within a city" consisting of support personnel for transportation, communications, electronics, food, and an extensive armoury of Kalashnikovs, Makarovs, and Browning's. On July 31, 2006, Fidel Castro passed power on a provisional basis to his brother Ral in order to recover from surgery for a serious intestinal illness. [381], Castro proclaimed himself to be "a Socialist, a Marxist, and a Leninist",[382] and publicly identified as a MarxistLeninist from December 1961 onward. He was 84. [524] He was awarded a wide variety of awards and honours from foreign governments and was cited as an inspiration for foreign leaders like Ahmed Ben Bella[517] and Nelson Mandela,[525] who subsequently awarded him South Africa's highest civilian award for foreigners, the Order of Good Hope. Since the triumph of Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959, there has been a steady influx of Cubans into the United States, punctuated by four significant waves: 1959-1962; 1965-1974 . [419] He promoted the idea that Jesus Christ was a communist, citing the feeding of the 5,000 and the story of Jesus and the rich young man as evidence. Victor C. Sanchez had been diagnosed with the illness earlier this year and died Thursday after a fainting episode, Nunez said. [425] During speeches, Castro regularly cited reports and books he had read on a wide variety of subjects, including military matters, plant cultivation, filmmaking, and chess strategies. [174][175] Subsequently, visited by Polish First Secretary Wadysaw Gomuka, Bulgarian First Secretary Todor Zhivkov, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Indian Premier Jawaharlal Nehru,[176] Castro also received an evening's reception from the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. [160] Productivity decreased and the country's financial reserves were drained within two years. Influenced by Guevara, he suggested that Cuba could evade most stages of socialism and progress straight to communism. [103] Frank Pas was also killed, leaving Castro the MR-26-7's unchallenged leader. A court ordered the publisher to pay . Ral has been consistently dogged by rumors that Angel Castro was not his real father. [156] Major emphasis was placed on education, and during the first 30 months of Castro's government, more classrooms were opened than in the previous 30 years. [190] Castro's victory reverberated around the world, especially in Latin America, but it also increased internal opposition primarily among the middle-class Cubans who had been detained in the run-up to the invasion. [88] Other militant anti-Batista groups had sprung up, primarily from the student movement; most notable was the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), founded by Jos Antonio Echeverra. In March 2011, Castro condemned the NATO-led military intervention in Libya. He allowed revolutionary groups from around the world, from the Viet Cong to the Black Panthers, to train in Cuba. For more on the Cuba embargo debate, visit ProCon.org. [220] Castro was deeply concerned by the assassination, believing that a far-right conspiracy was behind it but that the Cubans would be blamed. [323] Economic hardship led many Cubans toward religion, both in the form of Roman Catholicism and Santera. In part it read, I do not bid you farewell. [269] When American critics claimed that Castro had no right to interfere in these nations, he countered that Cuba had been invited into them, pointing out the US's own involvement in various foreign nations. "[418] During a visit of Jesse Jackson, Castro accompanied him to a Methodist church service where he even spoke from the pulpit with a Bible before him, an event that marked a beginning of increased openness towards Christianity in Cuba. This was the last time his private life was reported in Cuba's press. Pedro Juan was the son of Casimiro Felipe/Phelipe de Castro Fernndez and Maria Lpez Juana Mndez. [288] In a July 1983 speech marking the 30th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, Castro condemned Reagan's administration as a "reactionary, extremist clique" who were waging an "openly warmongering and fascist foreign policy". [266], After forcing back the Somalis, Mengistu then ordered the Ethiopians to suppress the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, a measure Castro refused to support. [155], Castro's government emphasised social projects to improve Cuba's standard of living, often to the detriment of economic development. I joined the people; I grabbed a rifle in a police station that collapsed when it was rushed by a crowd. [91] The plan had been for the crossing to take five days, and on the Granma's scheduled day of arrival, 30 November, MR-26-7 members under Frank Pas led an armed uprising in Santiago and Manzanillo. [35] Castro had moved further to the left, influenced by the Marxist writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin. [373] In September 2016, Castro was visited at his Havana home by the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani,[374] and later that month was visited by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. After bombing the invaders' ships and bringing in reinforcements, Castro forced the Brigade to surrender on 20 April. After graduation, Castro became a member of the Cuban People's Party. Anyone who attempted to convince him that he was wrong or even making a suggestion that it could be improved slightly was making a "fatal error". [524] Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed him "one of the most iconic personalities of the 20th century" and a "great friend", while South African President Jacob Zuma praised Castro for aiding black South Africans in "our struggle against apartheid". Calling the situation "incredible and absurd", he maintained that war would not benefit either side, and that it represented "one of the gravest risks of nuclear war" since the Cuban missile crisis. Castro also disliked worrying about his appearance and hated shaving, making the beard and uniform all the more convenient for him. Instead, he advocated hard work, family values, integrity, and self-discipline. [9], In 1942, Castro transferred to the Jesuit-run El Colegio de Beln in Havana. Economic decision-making power was concentrated in a centralized bureaucracy headed by Castro, who proved to be an inept economic manager. Policies introducing central economic planning and expanding healthcare and education were accompanied by state control of the press and the suppression of internal dissent. In March 2016 Fidel, who seldom had been seen in public in recent years, made a high-profile appearance in print when he responded to U.S. Pres. [366] In March 2012, Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba for three days, during which time he briefly met with Castro despite the Pope's vocal opposition to Cuba's government. Political scientist Paul C. Sondrol characterized Castro as "quintessentially totalitarian in his charismatic appeal, utopian functional role and public, transformative utilisation of power". After legal means failed to dislodge Batistas new dictatorship, Castro began to organize a rebel force for the task in 1953. Fidel Castros revolutionary career began while he was enrolled at the School of Law of the University of Havana, when he participated in resistance movements in the Dominican Republic and Colombia. [241] Seeking Soviet help, from 1970 to 1972 Soviet economists re-organized Cuba's economy, founding the Cuban-Soviet Commission of Economic, Scientific and Technical Collaboration, while Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin visited in October 1971. Subsequently, Fidel ordered two mechanics from his bodyguard unit to West Germany to purchase several second-hand Mercedes-Benz 500's to replace the obsolete Alfa Romeos. In February 2008, just days before the National Assembly was to vote for the countrys leader, Fidel Castro (who had not appeared in public for 19 months) officially declared that he would not accept another term as president. He knew how to bear with integrity and without hesitation the sufferings that some of us involuntarily caused her. [465][466] In his earlier years in power, he showcased some of his family life, in particular his eldest son Fidelito in order to portray himself as a normal "family man" to the apprehensive American audience, but eventually abandoned that as he became more concerned about his personal safety. Castro became a symbol of communist revolution in Latin America. As in '68 and '92, here in Oriente we will give the first cry of Liberty or Death! Sturgis purchased boatloads of weapons and ammunition from Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) weapons expert Samuel Cummings' International Armament Corporation in Alexandria, Virginia. Though Chibs came third in the 1948 general election, Castro remained committed to working on his behalf. Certain restrictions on emigration were eased, allowing more discontented Cuban citizens to move to the United States. [80], In 1955, bombings and violent demonstrations led to a crackdown on dissent, with Castro and Ral fleeing the country to evade arrest. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully . He despises any system in which one class or group of people lives much better than another. By November, Castro's forces controlled most of Oriente and Las Villas, and divided Cuba in two by closing major roads and rail lines, severely disadvantaging Batista. [386] In this it drew upon a longstanding tradition of Cuban nationalism. [65] Believing Castro incapable of planning the attack alone, the government accused Ortodoxo and PSP politicians of involvement, putting 122 defendants on trial on 21 September at the Palace of Justice, Santiago. Fast Facts: Fidel Castro Known For: President of Cuba, 1959-2008 Born: August 13, 1926 in the province of Orient, Cuba Parents: ngel Maria Bautista Castro y Argiz and Lina Ruz Gonzlez Died: November 25, 2016 in Havana, Cuba Education: Colegio de Dolores in Santiago de Cuba, Colegio de Beln, University of Havana Fidel Castro: Early Years Castro was born on August 13, 1926, in Birn, a small town in eastern Cuba. [369], In December 2014, Castro was awarded the Chinese Confucius Peace Prize for seeking peaceful solutions to his nation's conflict with the US and for his post-retirement efforts to prevent nuclear war. [278] Desperate for money, Cuba's government secretly sold off paintings from national collections and illicitly traded for US electronic goods through Panama. I am sure this would bring happiness to the Cuban people. Parents and Siblings. Beginning on 9 April, it received strong support in central and eastern Cuba, but little elsewhere. But these reforms were accompanied by more-suppressive ones: the elimination of a free press, the jailing of dissidents, and the implementation of a one-party state. [400][469] Popular with women and often recognized as a sex symbol in Cuba,[461] Castro never had difficulty in finding love and seduction, and Snchez denies that Castro ever engaged in any unusual or un-consensual behaviour. He ensured that the government implemented policies to cut corruption and fight illiteracy and that it attempted to remove Batistanos from positions of power by dismissing Congress and barring all those elected in the rigged elections of 1954 and 1958 from future office. [442], Castro's main vacation destination was Cayo de Piedra, a small key island formerly the site of a lighthouse, approximately a mile long and divided into two by a cyclone in the 1960s. [148] The Cuban government also began to expropriate the casinos and properties from mafia leaders and taking millions in cash. [49] Intent on opposing Batista, Castro brought several legal cases against the government, but these came to nothing, and Castro began thinking of alternate ways to oust the regime.[50]. Tobacco products such as cigars and cigarettes were the only manufactured products among Cuba's leading exports, and even these are produced by a pre-industrial process. All of them were killed or captured except Fidel and Ral Castro, Ernesto (Che) Guevara, and nine others, who retreated into the Sierra Maestra to wage guerrilla warfare against the Batista forces. While married to his first wife, ngel Castro began an affair with one of his servants, Lina Ruz Gonzlez, whom he later also married. [25] Returning to Havana, Castro took a leading role in student protests against the killing of a high school pupil by government bodyguards. He was also extremely manipulative; with his formidable intelligence, he was capable of manipulating a person or a group of people without much difficulty. [310] Castro hoped for a restoration of MarxismLeninism in the USSR, but refrained from backing the 1991 coup in that country. [377][378] The cause of death was not disclosed. [436] Initially restricted for his own private use and other members of the Politburo, it was later presented as diplomatic gifts for allied countries and friends of Castro, most notably seen smoked by Che Guevara, Josip Broz Tito, Houari Boumdine, Sukarno, and Saddam Hussein. In response, Pro agreed to quell the gangs, but found them too powerful to control. [308], With favourable trade from the Soviet bloc ended, Castro publicly declared that Cuba was entering a "Special Period in Time of Peace". [458] His security was provided by Department 1 of the Personal Security Directorate of MININT (Ministry of the Interior). The most likely candidate, former rural guardsman Felipe Miraval, never denied nor confirmed the possibility. Parents and Siblings. The Cuban Missile Crisis ended when the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its nuclear weapons from Cuba in exchange for a pledge that the United States would withdraw the nuclear-armed missiles it had stationed in Turkey and no longer seek to overthrow Castros regime.

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