Fidel Castro Ruz was born into a moderately affluent family, owners of a sugar-cane plantation in Cuba’s eastern Oriente province. His father, Angel Castro, was a self-made immigrant from Spain and his mother, Lina Ruz, had been the family cook.
Castro, one of eight children, went to Catholic elementary school and graduated from Belen, a prep school in Havana run by Jesuit priests.
He excelled in both academics and sports and was voted Belen’s best athlete in 1944. His preferred sport: the thoroughly American game of baseball. He’s said to have dreamed once of becoming a major-league player in the USA.
Fidel Castro: Among world's most influential leaders for a half-century
Castro would later seize all the church-run schools in Cuba and be excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church.
Castro studied at the University of Havana and earned a law degree. He also acquired a taste for politics as a student activist.
“I was acquiring a socialist consciousness. I had initiatives, I was active, and I struggled,” he recalled in a 1982 interview with Colombian journalist Arturo Alape. “But let’s say that I was an independent struggling person at that time.”
In 1952, Fulgencio Batista staged a military coup that established a military dictatorship and propelled Castro into the role of revolutionary.
Fidel's legacy: A repressive regime, waves of exodus
Cuban revolution
On July 26, 1953, Castro, brother Raúl Castro and 150 followers attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The assault failed, and many of Castro’s men were killed or captured. Castro was tried and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
On trial, Castro delivered a speech that became known by its final line.
“I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty,” Castro told the court. “But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades.
“Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.”
Castro, freed in a 1955 amnesty, went into exile in Mexico where he recruited and trained guerrilla fighters. That’s where he met Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine Marxist who would become synonymous with Castro’s revolution.
The next year, Castro and more than 80 followers boarded a boat named Granma and landed in eastern Cuba, setting up camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains near his boyhood home. Dubbed the 26th of July Movement, the rebels seized weapons in attacks against leader Batista’s military and received food and shelter from sympathetic Cubans.
Castro then began a slow march west, gaining in popularity as Batista was facing trouble all around. Even the U.S. government had lost faith in Batista, stopping arms shipments to him in 1958. On Jan. 1, 1959, Batista and his family fled Cuba.
World leaders react to Fidel Castro's death
That cleared the way for Castro, who rolled into Havana amidthrongs of supporters. He pledged to end corruption. He promised to improve living conditions. He had widespread support on and off the island, even as his true vision for Cuba remained a mystery.
So unclear was Castro’s plan that he was treated to a hero’s welcome during a much-publicized tour of the U.S., where he rounded up support from liberals and curious fascination from many others.
“It was a triumphal procession,” said Mark Falcoff, a former staff member of the Senate foreign relations committee and author of Cuba the Morning After: Confronting Castro’s Legacy. “He was the most popular figure in the U.S.”
It wasn’t long before the new regime began Cuba’s transformation to communism, aligning itself with the Soviet Union.
The new government nationalized businesses and banks, confiscating more than $1 billion in American-owned property. Thousands of those dubbed “enemies of the revolution” were executed or imprisoned, and school curriculum was reshaped by communist doctrine. Free speech was not an option, and the Cuban press was an extension of the government. That prompted many wealthy Cubans to leave the country — the first of several waves of residents to flee Castro’s Cuba.
Fidel's rule: Popular overseas, a 'disaster' at home
U.S. breaks diplomatic ties with Cuba
In January 1961, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. Exiles in Miami, supported by the CIA, trained in the Everglades to topple Castro. In April of that year, 1,300 Cuban exiles made a disastrous invasion of Cuba at a southern coastal inlet, the Bay of Pigs.
Many in Miami viewed the humiliating event as a betrayal by President John Kennedy, who failed to send additional forces the Cuban exiles expected. Ill will toward Kennedy, a Democrat, turned many Cuban Americans against the political party. To this day, they remain among the most loyal Republican voters.
Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said the failed invasion gave Castro the ability to claim that he was being targeted.
In fact, U.S. intelligence acknowledged eight failed attempts by the CIA to assassinate Castro between 1960 and 1965. But Gomez said Castro continued using the constant threat of a U.S. invasion as a way to control the Cuban population.
“He continues to talk about ‘There will be an American invasion of Cuba,’ ” Gomez said. “”That’s very unlikely now.”
In Miami, celebrations break out after Fidel Castro's death
The United States and the Soviet Union almost went to war over Cuba in 1962, after a U.S. U-2 spy plane photographed the construction of Soviet missile sites in what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba to force Moscow to remove the missiles. Khrushchev agreed, in return for a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba and to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.
In later years, U.S. efforts to dislodge Castro centered on economic and diplomatic measures. Tightened trade and travel restrictions replaced blockades.
Tensions continued as Cuban exiles flooded South Florida at various times over the decades. More than 125,000 refugees flooded the United States in 1980 during the Mariel boatlift. In 1996, two planes flown by Brothers to the Rescue — a group that patrolled the Florida Straits for endangered rafters — were shot down by Cuban fighter jets. Castro claimed the planes violated Cuban airspace.
How social media reacted to Fidel Castro's death
The Elian Gonzalez saga took the political standoff to an international stage. Eleven Cuban refugees headed for Florida died on Thanksgiving Day1999, including Elian’s mother. The 5-year-old survived.
Elian’s relatives in Miami fought to keep him in the U.S., while his father in Cuba, with Castro’s fierce support, demanded his return. After a lengthy legal battle and a middle-of-the-night raid on Elian’s relatives’ house in Miami, the boy was sent home in June2000.
