Fidel Castro

August 13, 1926 – November 25, 2016

Fidel Castro (1926-2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who led Cuba from 1959 to 2011. He served as prime minister from 1959 to 1976, president from 1976 to 2008, and first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 to 2011. Under his administration Cuba became a one-party communist state, and industry and business were nationalized.

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Biography

Fidel Castro was born in eastern Cuba in 1926, the son of a wealthy sugar planter. He studied law in Havana and became involved in radical politics. In 1953 he led a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks against the dictator Fulgencio Batista and was jailed.

After his release he went to Mexico, where he met Che Guevara, and in 1956 he landed in Cuba with a small force. His guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra brought down Batista on 1 January 1959.

Castro turned Cuba into a one-party communist state allied to the Soviet Union. He nationalised American property, defeated the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and accepted the Soviet missiles that caused the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. He ruled as prime minister and then president until illness forced him to hand power to his brother Raúl in 2006–08. He died in 2016.