Cuba's Former President, Fidel Castro Is Dead


Cuba's Former President and leader of the Communist Revolution, Fidel Castro has died aged 90, his brother, the president has announced.

"The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died at 22:29 hours this evening (03:29 GMT Saturday)," President Raul Castro said.

Fidel Castro ruled Cuba as a one-party state for almost 50 years before Raul took over in 2008.

His supporters said he had given Cuba back to the people. But he was also accused of suppressing opposition.

Throughout the Cold War, Fidel Castro was Washington's bete noire.

An accomplished tactician on the battlefield, he and his small army of guerrillas overthrew the military leader Fulgencio Batista in 1959 to widespread popular support.

Within two years of taking power, he declared the revolution to be Marxist-Leninist in nature and allied the island nation firmly to the Soviet Union.

Yet, despite the constant threat of a US invasion as well as the long-standing economic embargo on the island, Castro managed to maintain a communist revolution in a nation just 90 miles (145km) off the coast of Florida.

Despised by his critics as much as he was revered by his followers, he outlasted ten US presidents and defied scores of attempts on his life by the CIA.

Who was Castro?

Fidel Castro was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who governed Republic of Cuba for 50 yrs., was born on August 13, 1926. 

He was a Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008 when he handed over to his brother Raul Castro.

Fidel Castro was born at Birán in the south-eastern Oriente Province of Cuba in 1926 to a wealthy farmer, Castro adopted leftist anti-imperialist politics while studying law at the University of Havana. 

After participating in rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he planned the overthrow of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, launching a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. 

After a year's imprisonment, he traveled to Mexico where he formed a revolutionary group, the 26th of July Movement, with his brother Raúl Castro and Che Guevara. 

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. 

After Batista's overthrow in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's Prime Minister. 

The United States was alarmed by Castro's friendly relations with the Soviet Union, and unsuccessfully attempted to remove him by assassination, economic blockade, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. 

Countering these threats, Castro formed an alliance with the Soviets and allowed them to place nuclear weapons on the island, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis—a defining incident of the Cold War—in 1962. 

Adopting a Marxist-Leninist model of development, Castro converted Cuba into a one-party socialist state under Communist Party rule, the first in the Western hemisphere. Reforms introducing central economic planning and expanding healthcare and education were accompanied by state control of the press and the suppression of internal dissent. 

Abroad, Castro supported anti-imperialist revolutionary groups, backing the establishment of Marxist governments in Chile, Nicaragua, and Grenada, and sending troops to aid allies in the Yom Kippur War, Ethio-Somali War, and Angolan Civil War. 

These actions, coupled with Castro's leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979–83 and Cuba's medical internationalism, increased Cuba's profile on the world stage and earned its leader great respect in the developing world. 

Following the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991, Castro led Cuba into its "Special Period" and embraced environmentalistand anti-globalization ideas. 

In the 2000s he forged alliances in the Latin American "pink tide"—namely with Hugo Chávez's Venezuela—and signed Cuba to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. 

In 2006 he transferred his responsibilities to Vice-President Raúl Castro, who formally assumed the presidency in 2008

Castro was a controversial and divisive world figure. 

He was decorated with various international awards, and his supporters laud him as a champion of socialism, anti-imperialism, and humanitarianism, whose revolutionary regime secured Cuba's independence from American imperialism. Conversely, critics view him as a totalitarian dictator.

Through his actions and his writings, he significantly influenced the politics of various individuals and groups across the world.

Some portions of this article is culled from Wikipedia. 

SOURCE: BBC News